copying displays!!

[blaze15301]

i am working on this cliants computer. he wants a video card that can copy displays. i have a 8400 gt. from what i can gather he wants to display everything he is doing on his 24 inch to his 50 inche tv. the tv is hooked up via a tv tuner. but im kinda worried about the video card being able to handle it.

so how would i go about doing all this in vista.

[slaveofconvention]

I can't speak specfically about the nVidia drivers, but ATI's catalyst control centre allows easy duplication to secondary screens. I'm fairly sure that when you connect a TV to the TV out it duplicates the main display by default without any special settings, but I think the last time I used TV out on a video card, I was using Windows 98SE lol.

One problem you may come across is that the 24" probably has a higher resolution than the 50" (weird, but very possible) so the image may appear distorted on the 50" - you'll just have to play with settings until you get something which works.

[x88x]

/\ What he said, with one addition. It doesn't matter if the nVidia, AMD, Intel, or whatever graphics control panel specifically has that function, Windows has had multi-monitor stuff (extend, clone, etc) built in for a long, long time. I want to say 98 SE even had it. Personally I hardly ever touch the actual vendor-specific control panels.

As slave said, the displays may be different resolutions. In fact, if he's driving the TV with anything besides DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort it almost definitely is (btw, it won't be hooked up to a TV tuner; TV tuners accept incoming signals, they don't output signals). The 24" panel is either 1920x1200 or 1920x1080, depending on the frame ratio. The TV, on the other hand, may be 1920x1080, but considering how you're describing how he has it hooked up, it's probably a max of 1280x720....more likely 800x480...or even 480i...

The problem that you will run into is that if you are cloning displays, it has to scale the higher resolution one down to whatever the lower resolution one is, which in this case will likely make his 24" monitor look like crap.

My suggestion would be to talk to your client and find out what it is he actually wants to do. Not to sound condescending or anything, but in my experience with situations like this, a lot of times when people get an idea of what they want to do and then try and find a way to do it, they really don't know much about the options available, so they will latch onto first thing they see or hear that sounds kind of like what they want. In cases like this, I have found it much more beneficial (both for the client and my sanity) to sit down with them and figure out what they are trying to accomplish, and explain their options to them. I find that more often than not I am able to find a solution that works better, makes the client happier, and makes my life easier (if only by not having a 1920x1200 monitor displaying at 480i on my conscience )...of course you will occasionally run into someone who just wants it the way that they want it, damn the consequences...funnily enough, those same people are the ones most likely to then complain that it looks like crap.