G400 - TVout woes

[Bentriloquist]

Hi,

I have a G400 DH with 32 MB RAM. My OS is XP. Installed drivers are 5.82.18.0. I have a monitor as primary display and I have connected my TV to the secondary display.

I would like to have my entire desktop cloned to my TV. The reason is that I would like to watch movies (and have controls) on the TV. Currently I am using Media-Box (http://www.media-box.org) as player and this program has some nifty graphics (controls etc), but they do not show up on the screen when DVDMax is used. I understand that this is by design (Matrox design, that is). When I clone the desktop the overlay windows are black... I have read in another thread that synchronizing the secondary display's refresh rate with the primary display's refresh rate should do the trick - but I can't make it work.

So, I would like to know if this can be done with combination of hardware and OS I have. If it is possible, would some kind soul provide step-by-step instructions on how to make it work. If not possible, what other graphics card can do it?

Best regards
Bent Pedersen

[Bentriloquist]

More...

Hi,

Correction: I have *not* tried setting the secondary display's refresh rate to that of the primary display, because the lowest my primary display will go is 60 hz and the secondary only supports 50 hz. What can I do about that?

Best regards
Bent Pedersen

[dZeus]

sync the refresh rates by "optimizing for performance" vs. "optimizing for quality", in the DH Clone properties in PowerDesk.

[Kuba2k]

Solution?

I had this problem in the past.

Here is solution which forks for me. Just try to open some video file in different player (Win Media Players as example). Pause and minimize this window and than open the movie in your prefered player. It works for me.

[dZeus]

when you do that, you're not using overlay any more. If you compare the playback quality to when using overlay, there is not a single reason why you shouldn't use it.

[Bentriloquist]

So far so good

Thank you for the suggestions.

I have tried swithing from "Optimizing for performance" to "Optimizing for quality" and back again, but I can see no difference. Which setting should work?

The suggestion about opening another player first does work, but as dZeus points out, the movie is played without overlay.

So my problem remains unsolved. I would really like to hear from someone who has made it work (G400/XP). Thanks again.

Best regards
Bent Pedersen