Outputting to TV?

[GardenWeasel]

I have video in a variety of formats (primarily DVD and mpeg, standard def only). I need some hardware/software that allows me to output the video directly to a TV but control playback from the computer monitor.

I attempted to setup a dualview profile with a nvidia card I had that had tv-out. It sort of worked, but I'd like to avoid having the video be part of the windows display. I can't have my users accidently dragging windows or their mouse pointer on the video.

Any suggestions?

 

[Tu13erhead]

Hmm...I know my 6800gt has a feature where, say you're online looking at streaming video, it takes whatever video is on the screen and puts it in fullscreen on the second monitor. Dunno if this is what you're looking for or if yuor card will support it, but it may.

 

[So]

Originally posted by: Tu13erhead
Hmm...I know my 6800gt has a feature where, say you're online looking at streaming video, it takes whatever video is on the screen and puts it in fullscreen on the second monitor. Dunno if this is what you're looking for or if yuor card will support it, but it may.

I know ATI has that feature in their drivers too. They cally it theater mode, IIRC.

 

[GardenWeasel]

Thanks for both of your replies, I'll look into this "theater mode" option, it defintely sounds like something I should investigate.

Ideally I will be able to find a PCI or external solution, as the computers in question lack AGP slots

 

[So]

Originally posted by: GardenWeasel
Thanks for both of your replies, I'll look into this "theater mode" option, it defintely sounds like something I should investigate.

Ideally I will be able to find a PCI or external solution, as the computers in question lack AGP slots

A PCI geforce 4MX or Radeon 9200 type card can probably do this as well.

 

[Peter]

Yes of course PCI cards can do that too - although the video feed might have a hard time running smooth, given the bandwidth limitations of the ancient PCI bus.

 

[aka1nas]

I am doing the same thing and WinAMP with dualview mode on Nvidia cards worked great as when you fullscreen it on the 2nd display it takes up the whole screen and you cannot drag another window over the video or see a mouse pointer unless you first exit full screen mode.

 

[CrispyFried]

Originally posted by: Peter
Yes of course PCI cards can do that too - although the video feed might have a hard time running smooth, given the bandwidth limitations of the ancient PCI bus.

Nah, my pci ati 7200 32 meg has no probs displaying movies on a HDTV.

 

[GardenWeasel]

Again, thanks for all the responses

Well I'm not *too* worried about PCI bandwidth limitations. The videos I am dealing with are primarily low resolution CCTV captures.

I got dualvision setup with an old Geforce 4mx card I had laying around. It will be clunky for my users, but it seems to work. I have to check it for accuracy today (feeding the video into magical "black boxes" that do cool stuff) since it appears that the Geforce is doing some kind of correction. I'm still hoping I'll stumble upon a better solution

 

[HDTVMan]

I have an older PNY MX440 that does the job very well at SVHS output. No monitor connected. I use it with the creative labs pvr card. Was not a good seller but is in my opinion the best PVR card ever made for a PC. About as close to TIVO without any headache of configuration.

For HDTV output I use a Radeon 9500 with the Component video output. I tried a XGI volari but it had problems with 1080i outputs. Just didnt seem fast enough. I know its supposed to do it well but it doesnt. I am using an ATI HDTV wonder in that machine. The software sucks from ATI and I hope Windows MCE improves just slightly with the next release to install MCE.