New Decoders not Working on Secondary Monitor

[peternm22]

I recently purchased the Sonic CinePlayer DVD Decoder Pack to use as the decoder for SageTV. The problem is that it won't play anything in SageTV on the secondary monitor (I get audio, but no video).

Here's my setup:

SageTV 5.0.4
SageMC 6.10a
WindowsXP Home
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB
-primary display is 17" VGA monitor
-secondary display is HDTV connected using the component dongle
A64 3000+
1GB RAM

I've used an older Intervideo decoder with no problems on a secondary monitor, but the Sonic decoder just won't work unless I set the display as the primary. Any ideas what's happening? Have I forgot to change a setting somewhere?

Thanks.

[Opus4]

Are you using Overlay? Some decoders don't handle overlay on a secondary monitor properly. I think that is one of them, but I'm not entirely sure.

- Andy

[peternm22]

Andy,

Yes, I'm using overlay. I tried VMR9, but that didn't work on the secondary monitor either.

Is there another option I can try?

Thanks.

-Peter

[Opus4]

DirectX won't work as well on a secondary monitor anyway.

You could make the TV be the primary monitor. If you really want the TV to be the secondary monitor & the Sonic decoder can't do that, then all I can suggest is to use another decoder that can work that way. You could have a different issue, but if it works on the primary & not on the secondary, then this is my best guess.

- Andy

[peternm22]

Andy,

Thanks for the help, I guess I'll just stick with my older Intervideo decoders.

-Peter

[peternm22]

I've decided to try making the HDTV the primary display. One small problem with this...

All windows (from other applications) want to open by default on the primary display (obviously). I only want SageTV running on that display though. The only reason I need the HDTV set as the primary display is for overlay support.

Is there anyway to open all windows (by default) except for SageTV on the secondary monitor? Or is this beyond the capabilities of Windows XP?

-Peter

[nielm]

Originally Posted by peternm22

Is there anyway to open all windows (by default) except for SageTV on the secondary monitor? Or is this beyond the capabilities of Windows XP?

I think one of the features of the nview desktop manager is to make sure certain windows open on certain displays

[peternm22]

Isn't nView just for nVidia cards?

[peternm22]

OK... big problems.

ATI has something similar to nView called HydraVision. I didn't have this installed (I believe it's in the ATI control panel), I was only using the ATI driver and not the ATI control panel.

So, I download the ATI control panel and install it. When I try to open it, nothing happens. No window, no error, nothing. I figure I might need to install it at the same time as the driver. I downloaded the driver/control panel from ATI, and install it. All works well.

I try to set up the multi-monitor stuff to my liking, but it doesn't appear to have the capabilities I'm looking for. No harm done, tried it, didn't work, everything is still ok.

At this point I still have my HDTV set up as a secondary display, and SageTV is using the older Intervideo codecs which work in overlay on a secondary display.

I go into Sage to watch some TV. As soon as the video opens, it immediately crashes. An error relating to ivivideo.ax (which is the Intervideo decoder). I tried the other decoders, and they all crash Sage. Before there would only be a blank screen (never had a crash). I test it on the primary display and it works fine.

The functionality I had before trying the ATI Control Panel is now gone. I uninstall the new drivers/control panel and then re-install the original ones (from a CD). It still crashes Sage everytime I try to play something on the secondary monitor. I uninstall the Intervideo decoder, and re-install it. It still crashes. I download ANOTHER version of drivers and try those... still crashes. I uninstall all the MPEG2 decoders on my system, and I uninstall all the graphics drivers. I re-install the latest ATI driver (no control panel this time), and re-install the Intervideo decoder..... it still crashes.

Does anyone have any ideas? I had this functionality yesterday before I tried installing the ATI Control Panel. Now I can't get it to work anymore. Whenever I try to play a video in SageTV, all it displays is white and then it crashes.

Any help would really be appreciated... I don't know what to try next except re-installing Windows.

Thanks.

-Peter

[Paul365]

The ati control panel requires the .net framework, did you have to install this and if so, did you remove it?

If you didnt have .net and didnt install it then you got the modem version of the ati control panel, the full blown one might work better, but will require the dreaded .net

Failing all that you might be better of doing a system restore from a point close to where you started.

Good luck

[peternm22]

Thanks for the reply. I already had the .net framework installed.

I thought I had disabled system restore, but luckily it was still there. Went back to a restore point yesterday morning, and everything is working again.

Thanks for the help - I appreciate it.