Dual Screen Problem

[meep]

I have a dual screen problem that I wonder can anyone help me with before I contact sage support....

I have SageTV Server running on my HTPC which has two screens attached;

1. A 4:3 LCD OS display running 1024x768
2. A 16:9 CRT Projector running 1280x720

My usual setup is to work on the utility screen for installing programs etc. but watch movies via TheaterTek on the CRT, switching off the LCD while doing so.

My current aim is to get SageTV to playback on the larger projector screen. In trying to do this, I observe the following behaviour;

When I launch SageTV on the utility screen and maximise it, the UI occupies the entire screen and video plays across the entire screen.

When I launch SageTV on the utility screen, move the window across to the Projector screen and maximise it, the UI scales to the correct proportions but fully one quarter of the screen along the right edge is 'missing' or blank. That is to say, a vertical strip obscures the interface and any playing video.

This happens if I maximise the window or manually enlarge it on the projector screen.

To further confuse matters; if I close SageTV when it's window is positioned on the projector screen and then open it again, the window reappears on the projector screen as expected. However, when I maximise the screen, it 'jumps' to the utility screen and displays only 3/4 of the UI, as if the interface extends beyond the right edge of the screen trying to occupy a 16:9 ratio.

It's as if SageTV is taking it's aspect ratio from the screen it's on but it's pixel display area from the other screen.

Any thoughts?

Peter

[Opus4]

This is known & I think it is a side effect of DirectX (or, at least it doesn't happen when 3D Acceleration is disabled) when the monitor dimensions are different. After moving to the other monitor, you can put SageTV to sleep in the system tray, then wake it and it will fill the width of the screen. (That essentially resets it w/o toggling 3D Acceleration off & back on.)

- Andy

[meep]

Thanks Andy

[reggie14]

Don't you have problems with the display aspect ratio on the two monitors? Sage only remembers a single display aspect ratio. But, you need that set on 4:3 for the 4:3 display, and 16:9 for your 16:9 display. I have a 5:4 monitor and a 16:10 monitor. To get Sage to work on both monitors without screwing up the aspect ratio when going from monitor to monitor I have to use this plugin: display aspect ratio switcher.

But, that doesn't solve the problem you were talking about. I have that problem too, and there doesn't seem to be way to fix it, except for the workarounds the two of you have already pointed out. I'm not sure where the problem is. It seems plausible that it is a DirectX issue, but at the same time Sage is the only program that seems to have this issue. Other media players, like WMP, PowerDVD and VLC, don't have this issue. If it is a hardware acceleration issue that would explain why VLC works, but not why WMP and PowerDVD work (since Sage and WMP use the PowerDVD decoder for mpeg2).

[gandalf]

This is not a DirectX problem as such, though it may be an artifact of how DirectX handles dual displays.

Many programs, including Windows Media Player and slide show player cannot even do full screen on the second display. At least Sage can do that.

What happens is that Sage sets its UI aspect ratio and screen size based on the primary screen. The secondary screen (projector or whatever) can be a 16x10 widescreen but Sage will see it as 4x3 if that is what the primary desktop display is. This can be corrected in the display magnification settings and is a lot more flexible than most DVD player software. The big issue is that the UI component of the display has its boundary defined by the primary screen not the screen on which it is displaying. As a result, you end up with a UI display 1024px wide on a screen that is 1360px wide. Sage now gets totally confused and generates a display that is 1360px wide but only fills the left 1024px with data. This makes clicking buttons in the top right rather hit and miss, since the buttons do not display. They do, however, click if you can find them "in the dark".

The actual DirectX component (the video) has no problem. It displays full screen with only the aspect ratio issue mentioned earlier.

Fixes needed (and Sage knows about them) are:
1) to allow the client software to register what the aspect ratio is of the area of desktop currently in use (ie which display we are on)
2) to allow the client to set the UI display boundary according to the physical display size

What we need to know please is when these issues might be slated to be fixed because this dual display issue is going to get more common. The problem exists with Placeshifter client as well as with SageTV itself.

[voidpt]

+1

Using a 24" (1920x1200 / 16:10) as primary monitor. And a pivotet 19" (1024x1280 / 4:5) as secondary monitor on right side.

Experiencing most of the 'features' described here I have just learned to work around them. Not voluntary though. I would very very much like them to become obsolete.

[thescott2k]

24" 1920x1200 and 20" 1600x1200 here. SageTV is literally the only playback program on my computer that does this. This and the "XP window in Vista" thing both should have been fixed a long time ago.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by gandalf

Many programs, including Windows Media Player and slide show player cannot even do full screen on the second display. At least Sage can do that.

WMP has no problem playing back full screen on a second display. And, it doesn't have the same problems that Sage has when dealing with monitors with different aspect ratios.

What happens is that Sage sets its UI aspect ratio and screen size based on the primary screen.

Correct, but the plugin I pointed to in my previous post fixes this issue. It doesn't solve a second problem where Sage won't always fill the whole widescreen monitor with video (if the Sage window opened up on the secondary 4:3 screen to begin) though, which is what you were talking about in the rest of your post.

Fixes needed (and Sage knows about them) are:
1) to allow the client software to register what the aspect ratio is of the area of desktop currently in use (ie which display we are on)
2) to allow the client to set the UI display boundary according to the physical display size

Don't hold your breath. Sage made the changes that resulted in these issues a couple years ago (I think), and I immediately told them about it. Luckily GKusnick made the plugin which fixes the aspect ratio problem, but Sage has shown no interest in fixing these issues for a couple years, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

[thescott2k]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Don't hold your breath. Sage made the changes that resulted in these issues a couple years ago (I think), and I immediately told them about it. Luckily GKusnick made the plugin which fixes the aspect ratio problem, but Sage has shown no interest in fixing these issues for a couple years, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Oh Jesus. Who do I talk to about getting my 80 bucks back? 7MC can take the HD PVR with a utility, this is clearly not the droids I'm looking for.

[gandalf]

Let me lift the hood a bit on how this whole aspect ratio issue seems to work and how to actually work around what SageTV currently cannot do.

I am using Placeshifter and I have a 4x3 primary monitor and a 16x9 TV as a secondary monitor.

When I first set up the display in Placeshifter I did what seemed reasonable and selected a 16x9 display and calibrated the secondary display. I ran into all the problems discussed earlier - and reported the fault.

The problem is caused by the way the UI is rendered. The generation of the UI is done based on the display in use (as it should be) however the rendering of the display with the UI active is done for some reason based on the primary display. With my setup that means the UI rendering stops after 1024px, leaving a black bar down the right side of the screen. The UI data continues behind this black bar and mouse clicks are correctly detected - you just have to guess where the buttons are Interestingly (and this goes some way to confirming the fault) if you window the second display and reduce the width you will see the black bar shrink until you reach the width of the primary display and you have a window on the secondary display that is the same size as the primary display itself.

My workaround is to setup Placeshifter for the primary display 4x3 aspect ratio. It all works fine - the UI displays, everyone is happy. Apart from the minor irritation that SageTV is now generating a 1024px wide image but rendering it onto a 1365px display - stretched by 25%.

This however is easy to fix with the Setup magnifications - of which there are settings for 4x3, 16x9 and FILL.

For 4x3 we want to reverse the stretching - so set the horizontal magnification to 75% and you will get a pillarboxed display with circular circles.

For 16x9 the width is fine, we just need to stretch the height to loose the letterbox bars - so set the vertical magnification to 133%.

If you watch anamorphic DVDs then what SageTV has done stretching the image horizontally is close to what you need - so leave the settings for FILL at 100% both ways.

Then just select the required display mode and enjoy a working system.

Remember - you have to set the aspect ratio to the Primary display and then fix the magnifications manually.

If the primary display is larger than the secondary display (eg 16x10 monitor and a 4x3 projector) then you will not have the problem because the UI rendering will continue to the edge of the display screen.

If you are still having video cutoff issues then here is another fix (for a different problem but similar symptoms). Some LCD TVs have sync problems working with some video cards when the signal is lost during screen saver blanking or the like. When the signal reappears, the TV has lost the phase lock and will offset the image. The solution is to change the TV input and let the TV resync and rephase to a different signal. Then go back to the PC input and the TV will now resync and rephase correctly.

It would be nice to get Sage to acknowledge that this dual display UI-rendering issue is a fault and to have a planned fix in the pipeline. Meanwhile the above workaround is running my system perfectly fine.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by thescott2k

Oh Jesus. Who do I talk to about getting my 80 bucks back? 7MC can take the HD PVR with a utility, this is clearly not the droids I'm looking for.

Is it that awful? The plugin fixes the problem with aspect ratios. The other problem, where part of video screen gets cut off, has a workaround that's effective, but admittedly annoying. The problem seems to happen when you close/sleep Sage on the 5:4 monitor, open it back up (causing it to open on the 4:3 monitor), and then play something back on the 16:10 monitor. The workaround is to drag the Sage window to the 16:10 monitor, put it to sleep, wake it back up, and then play something.

Have you guys tried the plugin I linked to in my first post?

By the way, I certainly understand your frustration with dual monitor support. If you look at my history, you'll find I've started several threads over the years related to dual monitor support. I created a thread on one of the issues being discussed in this thread shortly after Sage v6 came out in December 2006 (I contacted Sage support as well). Considering that was two and a half years ago, I don't have much hope for this getting resolved. It doesn't impact me very much anymore though, since I don't watch TV very often on my dual monitor workstation.

[thescott2k]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Is it that awful? The plugin fixes the problem with aspect ratios. The other problem, where part of video screen gets cut off, has a workaround that's effective, but admittedly annoying. The problem seems to happen when you close/sleep Sage on the 5:4 monitor, open it back up (causing it to open on the 4:3 monitor), and then play something back on the 16:10 monitor. The workaround is to drag the Sage window to the 16:10 monitor, put it to sleep, wake it back up, and then play something.

Have you guys tried the plugin I linked to in my first post?

By the way, I certainly understand your frustration with dual monitor support. If you look at my history, you'll find I've started several threads over the years related to dual monitor support. I created a thread on one of the issues being discussed in this thread shortly after Sage v6 came out in December 2006 (I contacted Sage support as well). Considering that was two and a half years ago, I don't have much hope for this getting resolved. It doesn't impact me very much anymore though, since I don't watch TV very often on my dual monitor workstation.

It's been around for years, you don't have much hope for getting it resolved, the plugin doesn't really solve the problem, and you're giving me "is it really that awful?" This is the ONLY program that does this! If the pixels on a 4:3 monitor were a different shape than those on a 16:10 monitor this might be understandable, but for pete's sake 1280x720 is the same 1280x720 on every modern screen. I was annoyed at first when I thought it was just a current-version idiosyncracy, but if this has been around for years...80 bucks. Want it back.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by thescott2k

If the pixels on a 4:3 monitor were a different shape than those on a 16:10 monitor this might be understandable, but for pete's sake 1280x720 is the same 1280x720 on every modern screen.

This is the reason why I was asking how big of a deal this is to you. It sounds like a lot of people are just complaining about the aspect ratio bug where you can only set one display aspect ratio for all of your monitors. The plugin completely fixes that problem. Yes, there is another annoying bug that rears its ugly head too, but maybe that's not such a big deal after you fix the AR problem.

I think you should complain to Sage. I'd like to see a fix for this too. But, apparently several people are going to have to go to Sage before they're going to start seriously caring about Sage support on dual monitors.

[JonTom]

I have this problem too (one portrait monitor screwing up full screen viewing on other monitor). I will try the sleep workaround but it would be great if sage could make this work properly as expected.