Mirror displays with different resolutions?

[liquidsense]

Is it possible to mirror the display on two monitors, but employ differing native resolutions on the monitors?

I have a motherboard with an onboard G31 video, which has both a DVI and VGA output. I connected an LCD (1920x1020) to the DVI and an HDTV (1280x720) to the VGA. Whenever I try to "mirror" or "duplicate" the monitors, the resolution defaults to the lowest common denominator (i.e. 1280x720), and applies that resolution to both monitors.

Can I avoid this problem if I purchased two independent graphics card, one with VGA output, and the other with DVI output?

I've searched high and low, and cannot find an answer to this. Based on my research, I found that *most* agree that this cannot be achieved with one dual-output video card (or onboard dual output, as is the case here). However, some people think that it *could* be done. Nevertheless, if I have to get two separate video cards, I will. I just want to know if my setup is possible *in any way*.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[veri745]

What you're trying to accomplish doesn't really make sense to me.

Think about it, how would the mouse cursor move on one monitor vs the other?

 

[TemjinGold]

If it could be done, I haven't found it. I looked for over a year and then gave up. To "solve" the problem, I'm using a 1080 HDTV instead of a monitor so that it and my 46" TV have the same res, which makes the mirror a snap.

 

[liquidsense]

What you're trying to accomplish doesn't really make sense to me.

Think about it, how would the mouse cursor move on one monitor vs the other?

I'm not sure what you mean. The mouse would move in the same way that it would move if I had only one monitor set up at its native resolution, and then unplugged that and then plugged in the other monitor at the native resolution. In other words, the mouse would move the same relative distance across either screen (e.g., 5 inches to the right on a 20 inch monitor, and 10 inches to the right on a 40 inch monitor). The technical aspects of how this would be acheived is obviously beyond me. But, from a strictly visual perspective, I see no problem with it.

I thought that if I had two video cards, I could output two different native resolutions, one to each monitor. I'm really surprised that this cannot be done.

 

[nitromullet]

Apparently, you can do this with UltraMon.

http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/tour/mirroring.asp

 

[nitromullet]

dp

 

[mwmorph]

I'm not sure what you mean. The mouse would move in the same way that it would move if I had only one monitor set up at its native resolution, and then unplugged that and then plugged in the other monitor at the native resolution. In other words, the mouse would move the same relative distance across either screen (e.g., 5 inches to the right on a 20 inch monitor, and 10 inches to the right on a 40 inch monitor). The technical aspects of how this would be acheived is obviously beyond me. But, from a strictly visual perspective, I see no problem with it.

I thought that if I had two video cards, I could output two different native resolutions, one to each monitor. I'm really surprised that this cannot be done.

The computer has no idea how large your screen is, it measures pixels. When you move your mouse, your pointer moves a set # of pixels in the X and Y directions. For example say my mouse moves 400 pixels in 1 inch of physical travel.

Having a program do that would require it to interface not only with the display but also the input. I could see it working, but then you have your own issues. The simpliest way would to be to render at the highest resolution and then cull every 3rd pixel to create a 1280x720 image from a 1980x1080 original, but I can demonstrate the impact here (simple culling from 1280x1024 to 1024x786 of a screenshot I just took of my desktop)
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/8703/86541256.jpg
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/5507/98039119.jpg

The ultramon program probably does a better job by getting low down into the driver and interface, but there are things you cant do without pixel culling like predefined graphics(aka icons, pointers, etc) to get them down to a smaller proportional size.

I can't imagine it looking all that great. Acceptable, probably, but an actual quality, perfect mirror? Probably not. Scaling rasterized graphics well in real time is difficult. You can do it very quickly with direct pixel culling, fairly well, but somewhat blurry with something like bicubic scaling or very well and very slowly with more exotic calculations calculations (like OnOne genuine fractals), which would take a couple seconds per image at that resolution.

Note: The above screen shots are very much a worst case scenario, I had to use MS Paint's simplistic pixel culling scaling algorithm since I haven't gotten around to installing Photoshop on my new Win 7 box yet. Either way though, there will be image quality losses.