View BeoyondTV on second monitor

[Edwardml]

In a couple other media players I've used, I've been able to change the settings so that the players interface and playing video showed on my television (i'm using an nvidia graphics card with TVOut), while allowing me to use my regular desktop to do other things...I'm not sure if I'm being very clear, but I don't know quite how to describe it. Does anyone know of a way to do this with BeyondTV?

[jkoon]

BTV does not work as well when it is on the secondary monitor, but that should accomplish what you want.

Depending on the power of your system (cpu and your video card model) you should be able to set your tv as a secondary monitor and then just move the btv window to that screen.

[Edwardml]

but to do that, wouldn't I have to view it in windowed mode? Wouldn't that leave the border around the show i'm watching?

[jkoon]

well once you move it to the other monitor you can hit alt+enter and it will go full screen.

Edit: As mentioned below, I made a mistake, the keypress to switch between fullscreen and windowed mode is alt+enter (not ctrl+enter as I originally wrote).

[Edwardml]

Ok, Thanks

[Seattlite]

I don't think that's going to work too well, I've never had too much luck watching the ViewScape on my secondary monitor. Other posts have linked it to a Direct X issue, needs to be on the primary monitor... but there is a work-around if you have a software encoder tuner card.

Open the Web Administrator http://localhost:8129 it will open a browser that you can drag to your secondary monitor. Under "Tasks" click Live TV and once the embedded Windows Media Player starts up, you can full size it, and it should stay full sized working with other programs, etc until you either click the desktop on your primary monitor, or double click the player on the second window.

*That is if you have a software encoder card.

P.S. to toggle ViewScape between windowed and full screen its <Alt>+<Enter> not <Ctrl>+<Enter>

[jkoon]

How well my suggestion works is very much dependant on the type of hardware being used. It’s success depends on the power of your video card/cpu and the abilities of your video cards drivers (nvidia will allow it, I’m not sure if ati will or not).

Also, thanks for the correction on my previous post about the ctrl+enter, I have edited my original post to reflect the correction.

[Seattlite]

Originally Posted by jkoon

How well my suggestion works is very much dependant on the type of hardware being used. It’s success depends on the power of your video card/cpu and the abilities of your video cards drivers (nvidia will allow it, I’m not sure if ati will or not).

You could be right about that... You have a PVR-250 (hardware encoder) I have the ATI TV Wonder Pro (software encoder). You may have better performance because of this. Whereas whenever I drag my ViewScape window to the secondary monitor, the video gets much more choppy. It will be fun to experiment with when I upgrade to the PVR-500MCE.

Or perhaps its the ATI 9700TX video card. My secondary monitor is running in portrait mode (thanks to ATI -finally- adding rotation orientation for displays in its drivers).

Or some combination of both. (or the development of a grumpy 'system ghost')

[Edwardml]

If I can't get it to work well with my secondary monitor, does anyone have any suggestions on a program i can use to watch my videos that will work well on a secondary monitor (preferably free/cheap)? Most of my recordings are just set up once for an entire series, so it wouldn't be too difficult to just do those from the computer if I could easily navigate the already recorded ones from my living room.

[jkoon]

Windows Media Player should work.

[Seattlite]

By the way, what kind of TV Tuner card are you using?

[Edwardml]

It's a really old avertv card (by avermedia).