From the beginning - a pc and a tv...

[pheitman]

I'm sorry to have to ask such a basic question. If anyone can point me at a tutorial or the answer, I'd really appreciate it.

I have WinXP, an nvidia fx5600, a monitor and a tv. I've been trying to get them all to work together nicely but haven't yet been able to do so.

What I'd like to be able to do is to run SageTV in fullscreen on the TV and use the monitor for browsing the web, email, etc. I've gotten it part way, but can't seem to figure out the last pieces.

I went in to the WinXP Display Settings and arranged the two boxes in the order that I have my tv and monitor (my tv is to the left of the monitor). I click on the secondary display (the tv) and select 'Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor'. That allows me to drag SageTV over to the TV once I've started it and leave my monitor free for other programs. I set both the monitor and the tv to 1024x768 so that when I put SageTV in fullscreen mode it fills the screen instead of overfilling it.

I can now navigate SageTV but when I play a DVD it runs full screen on the tv and I don't see the mouse or any of the toolbar (dvd menu, home, slow, play, faster, etc). Even stranger in my mind is that if I leave SageTV on the monitor and play a dvd it shows up full screen on the tv and in a window on the monitor. Still no toolbar, but if I right click I can bring up a dialog that allows me to go back to home.

I'm sure I've fiddled with things that I haven't mentioned - there were references to overlays in the nvidia fx5600 specific dialogs for each monitor that I think I set to both, etc.

Can someone start at the beginning and help me set this up so that I get great video on the tv, have the monitor free for other uses and things just work? :)

Thanks in advance.

Peter

[Mike Young]

Not sure about the Nvidia, I did a bit of experimentation with the settings for my Radeon, which has an Overlay setting called "Theater Mode" this allows you to have automatic Full screen on the secondary monitor (presumably your TV)
and you can go about doing whatever you want on the PC monitor without affecting that. This mode is very good for tuning the picture since you can see what it looks like full screen while you adjust the control. The drawback though, is that once its in Overlay it seems to be "locked" .
This sounds like what you are experiencing. It would be great if it stayed "locked" but allowed the Sage menu, but I havent figured out a way to do that.
Maybe someone else has been able to do this.

[stanger89]

Sounds like you have "Video Mirror" or whatever nVidia calls it, enabled in the Overlay Control Pannel. I used to use that on my GF2MX440 a lot, it takes whatever video is playing and makes it fullscreen on the secondary display, you won't see anything but the video on the secondary display while video is playing. Try turning that off, I know Sage can run happily on a secondary display and work fine since I ran it for a while like that.

[pheitman]

That seems to have done it. I can watch the video fullscreen on the tv and respond to this thread on my monitor. Thanks to both of you who replied!