Configuring PC to HDTV with Nvidia forceware and DVI to HDMI cables

[mcaron1234]

Hi all,

First, my HTPC system:

ASUS A7S333 Socket A Mobo w/ Athalon XP 1700+
512mb memory
WinXP pro
SageTV 4.0 and Sage TV Client 4.0 with 2 MVPs running Matt's Plugin
Video Card MSI 5200 128 mb

I am trying to ditch one of the MVP’s and hook my HTPC directly to my 1080i Toshiba 26HF85 TV via DVI to HDMI cable. The problem I am having is in configuring the NVIDIA forceware to work with my TV. Does anyone know of any current sites that have a write up on the procedure using a recent forceware version? I found the write up at www.anandtech.com/multimedia/showdoc.aspx?i=2181 which is very old and doesn’t really help.

Basically I want to have the TV and a monitor connected in “duel mode”, in separate rooms in the house, and have SageTV run on the HDTV and that be the only interface I have on the TV. The problem I am having is that if I set SageTV to open on the secondary monitor (the HDTV) in the forceware settings it opens up on that monitor not maximized. If I go into SageTV and set it for full screen mode it pops back to the pc monitor (in the other room) in full screen mode. If I could just get sage on the TV in full screen I can adjust overscan from sage and be totally happy as sage can do everything I want via plugins.

If you guys can help or point me to some resources I haven’t come across it would be immensely helpful.

Thanks-Matt

[jptaz]

Two things Matt...

1. I have tried this with a 5200 card and 6600GT and neither worked well. I did get it to work, but the playback was jumpy and stuttered alot. Reading in the documentation they clearly state that video playback is not optimal in a dual monitor mode.

2. To directly answer your question so that you can test it yourself you need to setup the TV as your Primary monitor. You can then move the task bar to the secondary monitor and configure all applications except for SageTV to be sent to the secondary monitor. I don't remember the details though...sorry.

John

[mcaron1234]

1. I have tried this with a 5200 card and 6600GT and neither worked well. I did get it to work, but the playback was jumpy and stuttered alot. Reading in the documentation they clearly state that video playback is not optimal in a dual monitor mode.

Thanks for the heads up on this John. Would you recommend that I only connect the TV to the PC? Do you think that connecting the tv and the monitor in clone view would be any better?

The only reason I wanted the moniter on the computer at all is so I can easily grab a keyboard and mouse and do any system maintance. I never messed with remote desktop but I could look into that for maintance if I need to get rid of the monitor.

Thanks again-Matt

[AboveUnrefined]

You can do both... if you're luck you can extend your desktop out and have it running soley sagetv so you can use your monitor like you would a normal computer... I tried this and I could do it if I lower my resolution on my TV to 640x480 (Unfortunately I bought a refurbished card and it is flakey at that resolution... tv doesn't display right) at 800x600 Sage plays videos fine, but is unresponsive to my commands (there's too long of a lag). You do have a much better video card than I do so I think you could luck out on it... be aware that it will really raise CPU clock time quite a bit....

What worked best for me is to set my card into clone mode and to enable full screen video on my secondary device (TV). What this does is when I open Sage the TV will go from showing me what's on the computer screen to showing Sage full screen while it is windowed on my monitor. It only works well if I keep Sage showing most of the video in the foreground... what's great about it too is that my cpu usage stays very low that way and I can watch tv without turning my head while I'm typing this message and still have it playing on my TV for other people to see.

[jptaz]

Matt,

If the only reason is for maintenance then I would use VNC or Remote desktop to enable the 2nd only when you need to do maintenance or just do it from VNC remote desk top. I found it rather annoying to try and config SageTV with two monitors when all I needed was occasional maintenance. Some people have applied the dll and registry change to XP to allow simultaneous logons. Basically you can use Remote Desktop to logon to a seperate session while the main display still shows SageTV.

John