Second Monitor Issues

[gregsmith]

Hi there,

I'm running mediaportal with a Twinhan Magic Box Pro and it seems to be working ok. I have a dual monitor setup and want mediaportal to run in full screen on the secondary monitor pretty much all the time. It runs ok on the primary display, a little slow but ok. Going fullscreen is a little painful but after a short wait it happens.

Now, I take the window over to the secondary monitor and it doesn't seem overly happy about it, but again after a short wait it is fine. Then I try and maximise it onto the secondary display and the software crashes.

I have a P4 2.8 Prescott, 1Gb DDR 400 RAM, Radeon 9700 Pro, so I assume my setup is good enough. I have directx 9.0c.

I did read something about only the primary display being accelerated by directx, but checked my dxdiag and tested both - they're fine.

Also, when it starts to go full screen on the secondary display (then crashes), the taskbar seems to disappear on the primary display. Is this the norm, if so is there a way to have it stay there?

Any advice appreciated.

[Jetboy]

Originally Posted by gregsmith

Also, when it starts to go full screen on the secondary display (then crashes), the taskbar seems to disappear on the primary display. Is this the norm, if so is there a way to have it stay there?

I suspect you have the option "Hide taskbar in fullscreen mode" (or whatever it's called) checked. It's in the configuration, under the general settings.

As for the second monitor, there has to be hundreds of posts stating that directx can't run on a secondary monitor. I don't know why it works for you with dxdiag, I don't have that kind of knowledge about directx. Maybe someone else can answer that, but I doubt you'll get MP running unless using it on your primary screen.

[gregsmith]

Thanks a lot for the reply. I've been looking through and found that people have written plugins to get mp starting full screen on the second monitor, so it must be possible to run it this way. I assume there's some option I've not noticed to stop using directx or something? My knowledge of directx is low.

Unfortunately I'm not at my home machine at the moment so can't look.

EDIT: On further reading I've found that you can disable the directx exclusive mode or something, but it means that all the work is being done by the CPU, hence the slow performance. I'm sure you already know all this
Hopefully there'll be some sort of workaround at some point. I don't want to have to use different software as I love mediaportal.

[Lolita]

I don't think that disabling exclusive mode means to render all by cpu, but when i use it and move MP to secondary my system go realy slower, but compared to use software render with MP (which is 100% CPU) it is about 1000 times faster ... anyway i am going to try MS MCE in near future (: and i hope it can run withouth problem on secondary.

If there is someone with windows mce and can send me some files from it so i can run it on my windows 2k3 withouth installing windows mce tell me it (:

[onkl]

Originally Posted by gregsmith

Thanks a lot for the reply. I've been looking through and found that people have written plugins to get mp starting full screen on the second monitor, so it must be possible to run it this way. I assume there's some option I've not noticed to stop using directx or something? My knowledge of directx is low.

Unfortunately I'm not at my home machine at the moment so can't look.

EDIT: On further reading I've found that you can disable the directx exclusive mode or something, but it means that all the work is being done by the CPU, hence the slow performance. I'm sure you already know all this
Hopefully there'll be some sort of workaround at some point. I don't want to have to use different software as I love mediaportal.

These plugin in general don't enable MP to play on the secundary screen, but switch that screen to primary and switch back to secundary on program close. This setup works quite OK (for me at least)

[gregsmith]

Yeah, I stopped using mediaportal and thought I'd try GB-PVR. After a lot of messing around, it doesn't seem to wanna support my card. I'm thinking about persevering with mediaportal again, cos at least it fully supports my card.

[onkl]

Originally Posted by gregsmith

Yeah, I stopped using mediaportal and thought I'd try GB-PVR. After a lot of messing around, it doesn't seem to wanna support my card. I'm thinking about persevering with mediaportal again, cos at least it fully supports my card.

I believe that Ati cards come with some helper apps. I think one of them was able to switch resolutions on a program start. Otherwise, you might want to try Ultramon, but this isn't freeware/open source.

[ky-tmp]

Hi,

I have nVidia Geforce FX 5500 video card. NVidia driver comes with a lot of usefull features like setting up a single application to run on specific motior/tv and this works quite well for other applications. But I have a problem making MediaPortal to run on my TV.

When I run MP with my monitor set to primary it runs fine showing everything on monitor. But if I switch the settings to make TV primary and start MP in full screen mode, it shows menu and video on both TV and Monitor.

Does anyone know the workaround to make MP to use only ONE device for full screen mode?

P.S. there are no problem when runnning MediaPlayer in window.

[Lolita]

you need to enable extended deskop / disable cloning

[totosssfr]

Originally Posted by Jetboy

I suspect you have the option "Hide taskbar in fullscreen mode" (or whatever it's called) checked. It's in the configuration, under the general settings.

As for the second monitor, there has to be hundreds of posts stating that directx can't run on a secondary monitor. I don't know why it works for you with dxdiag, I don't have that kind of knowledge about directx. Maybe someone else can answer that, but I doubt you'll get MP running unless using it on your primary screen.

It's totally bullshit. I run MP 0.2.0.0 RC3 on my secondary display (my TV) with direct X acceleration on a GF6800GT.

The fact is that Direct X acceleration is only availlable on one display at a time. But nothing prevents an application from using Dx acceleration on the secondary display. You only have to tell the graphic card which display will be used.

I made a tutorial in french explaining how to do so.
http://wiki.mp-fr.com/doku.php?id=tu...deuxieme_ecran

Now, I just tested the final 0.2.0.0 and the "change device..." menu
is no longer available. I'll have to modify the source code to get the Dx acceleration back.

Please, stop saying that "directx can't run on a secondary monitor". It's totally wrong.


PS: sorry for my english, it's not my mother language.