Dimming the Display after a set time without action (1 Viewer)

htpcman

Portal Member
September 12, 2004
35
0
Frankfurt, Germany
Hi,

Another idea; Would it be possiblle to dim the main display to say 10% brightness after e.g. 10 sec. of no keyboard, Mouse or remote action? (configurable)

Why I think this is useful; for those folks like me who have a monitor connected to the main VGA output for navigation and a projector hooked up to the TV output for watching movies (overlay as full screen like in matrox DVDMax or ATI Theatre mode) . When the movie is playing the brightness of the monitor can be a distraction especially when the room is darkened. By dimming it down it will not interfere with the Projector and still allow navigation if needed.

Another general advantage is that the screen will be less likely to suffer burn-in this is extremely important if you use a Plasma display because these devices burn-in very quickly.

just a thought... unfortunately I do not have the knowledge to write any code so I hope someone out there will find the time to do it...

cheers

htpcman
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I would like a variant of this for plasma preserving - if you are in the menus (i.e. not watching a movie/tv/visualisation fullscreen) then the menu dims after a configurable amount of time of no input.
 

Czar63

Portal Member
April 23, 2004
46
0
Padova, Italy
Hi HTPCMAN,
could you please explain better how you are able to send movies to Tv out?
I understand you use it as second monitor, is it correct?
I posted a couple times to ask support for sending movies on second display, but it seems it will be a future feature.
My config is different from yours. I use the Tv out of the integrated Vga controller to the TV set that is my main screen and I'd like to send movies and pictures to another VGA controller (aTNT2 clone) to a Projector through Powerstrip, keeping the menus on the TV set.

The best would be having the choice for videos to see them either on TV or on projector.

Bye
 

htpcman

Portal Member
September 12, 2004
35
0
Frankfurt, Germany
Hi Czar63,

the key for this to work is a graphics adapter that has overlay detection. this is not a feature of MP but of the graphics card driver. I have two systems and it works on both.

System #1 uses a Matrox G400 (with a very good video output) here you have to enable "DVDMax" in the "Dualhead Section" if this is enabled the driver will find any overlay and show it fullscreen on the TV out. Now if you also enable "Clone Mode" you will get the following behaviour; When there is no overlay the desktop will be also shown on the TV out. When on overlay is detected e.g. DVD or video playback the TV out will automatically switch to the fullscreen overlay output.

Unfortunately the G400 card is quite old and it supports only DX7. This creates a problem with the Pictures modul :-(

Unfortunately Frodo does not seem to have the time to add the complete support for older cards (maybe someone else here can write a patch for the my Pictures module?).

So on my other system#2 I am using a ATI Radeon 9600. Here you get similar behaviour if you activate "theatre" mode in the "overlay" section of the driver.

I am not sure if other graphics adapters can be configured in the same way I have no Nvidia card so I have not tried this.

Cheers

htpcman
 

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