Video panel lost on 2nd monitor on laptop VGA port

[jeth32]

When I set up laptop to display output on both my LCD screen and an attached TV using the VGA output, normal output looks OK on both screens.

However, if I play a video using Media Center or several other viewers, the video portion of the window is blanked out on the TV screen. All of the surrounding material display OK, but that portion containing the video is gone.

One suggestion I received was to try setting up the screen as a dual screen setup with the TV screen an extension of the laptop one, and then dragging the media window over to the second screen.

As I tried that, the video remained in the portion still showing on the laptop, but not in the portion that had been moved to the TV.

I tried a different type of playback, a slideshow in Firefox, and that was fine; it appears to be just video.

BTW one sample file was in MPG format and the other in TS or MPEG format.

The video chipset is from ATI, a Radeon XPRESS 200M series.

A neighbor has had a problem with his ATI All-In-Wonder card that may be similar. If he is playing a video and tries to capture something from that window when it is paused, the capture consists of a blank screen.

[Baldrick]

It's because of video overlay / hardware acceleration. Set the vgaout as the primary monitor and you will get the video.

[jeth32]

Thanks.....

I'll give that a try later.

If I want to leave the setup with both monitors having the same information, is it still possible to indicate that the VGA one is the primary?

[jeth32]

Thanks again, Baldrick,

That suggestion did the trick; as far as getting video on the TV attached to the VGA port.

I also managed to have both screens with the same information, "except" for the video, which still displays only on the primary monitor.

I guess that will have to do.

What I will work on next is to try and find an easy and quicker way to switch modes when I am not using the TV for the videos.

Joe