Ok, I went ahead and bought a Big Projection DTV for 400 dollars
(used), HD1080 series Mitsubishi. I am happy with the purchase and now
am ready to have a bunch of you over to watch good movies.

Anyway, I went ahead and hooked the TV's "input 1" into my computer
through a 20 foot s-video cable. After about 20 minutes of fiddling
with both the computer and TV I got the TV to display a clone image of
my desktop. My computer is a Dell 8200, 1 gig ram, 2 ghz pentium
processor, nvidea g-force mx-400 and I have the latest drivers.

Works fine except when I play a video on my computer. Then the area of
my desktop that shows the movie is black on the TV, though the movie
is
playing fine on my computer monitor. I have tried multiple video
programs. High framerate videogames showup on the TV with no problem.

I have gone through the troubleshooter and found nothing on this.

Can anyone give me some clues here? Any information you guys need? I
am
very frustrated.

michalchik@aol.com wrote:
There are two ways to render a movie with a movie player application.
In the preferences for the movie player, you may find an "overlay plane"
option. There is only one overlay plane, and there are two output
connectors on the video card. The movie will only play on one connector.

An alternative render option, is "VMR9". That can work on two screens
at once. So give that option a try.

And like anything, YMMV.

http://www.theatertek.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=6848

Paul

what is "vmr9" and "ymmv", for tha matter I am a little fuzzy on what
an "alternative render option" is.

<michalchik@aol.com> wrote ...
Google says....
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...18(VS.85).aspx

Google says....
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=YMMV

Google is your friend. It will help you avoid asking silly
questions in public.

Google isn't perfect. If offered some links about butchering
cattle, etc. :-) Perhaps Paul will clarify.

OTOH, did you read Paul's suggested URL?

michalchik@aol.com wrote:
1) Open the preferences for the movie player.
2) There may be a rendering option in there. The options would be
"Overlay plane" or VMR9. In Windows Media Player, it might be
Tools/Options/Performance/Advanced.

YMMV is "your mileage may vary", which translated means your results
may be better or worse than the link I posted.

I'm not sure I can find a nice English description of the
difference between overlay and VMR. Overlay is a hardware
feature, but I've never been able to find a reference that
explained why there is only one overlay possible. Even though
video cards now are dual head, and effectively two channels
from head to tail, implying they could do two independent
things, without one channel needing to bother the other
channel. They even show in device manager, as two objects.
It just doesn't make sense to me, that they'd share a resource
between those two channels.

I think one possible feature of overlay planes, is perhaps
hardware can DMA into it directly, for stuff like TV tuner
cards and the like. So it may have applications where software
is not involved.

VMR is another means to get to the screen, but seems to
involve more references to DirectShow/DirectDraw/DirectX
than the overlay thing. It is more of a software path,
and makes more sense when a movie is being decompressed
in software, and rendered on the screen.

And as an end user, you can certainly test the feature, and
see whether the results are good enough to use or not. If
there is an uncorrectable color cast to the results, you may
end up going back to what you were doing.

You can see another example here.

http://thedesignspace.net/MT2archives/2006_10.php

Post back how it works out.

Paul

On May 29, 2:05 pm, "michalc...@aol.com" <michalc...@aol.com> wrote:
Try changing the control panel > display settings to make the TV the
primary display. Some graphics cards can only render 1 video output
(on the primary display). Or you can try not using clone mode, just
output to TV. Or use Extended Desktop mode.

"Richard Crowley" wrote:
Propriety is also your friend. It will help you avoid being rude.

--

Regards,
Robert L Bass

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Sarasota · Florida · 34233
http://www.bassburglaralarms.com
Sales & Tech Support 941-925-8650
Customer Service 941-870-2310
Fax 941-870-3252
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Paul's on the right track here. The video card is handling the movie
playback using it's own onboard chips. That hardware acceleration means it
may or may not be able to put the video out onto both outputs at once. You
may want to check how the Display control panel is configured for the card.
There's usually a slider control for 'hardware acceleration'. Changing that
may affect whether the video plays out both at once. Bearing in mind, of
course, that this will likely also affect gaming program speeds.

You don't mention which movie player program you're using. Some have the
option of controlling which form of output they attempt to use. DirecX,
hardware, etc. One versatile player I like to use is VLC (video lan
client).

And as always, STFW for answers. As in, Search The eFf'ing Web. It
likewise works great for abbreviations.