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Active desktop with dual monitors and bonus resolution question
Trinis
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm having some trouble with active desktop. The why doesn't really matter but I'll go ahead and tell you guys for the hell of it. I've connected my tv to my video card through s-video, and have dualview set up and working just fine. The problem is I want a different wallpaper on the tv.
I saw that this is easy enough to do with a locked active desktop item. The problem is, my active desktop is disabled. When I go into display properties > desktop > customize desktop" there is only a "general" tab there and no "web" tab. I probably disabled active desktop somewhere thinking 'I'll never need that shit' long before I got a nice tv.
This also brings me to a second problem. My tv is much nicer than my monitor, it's a 1080p lcd vizio, but in display settings I can only set a max resolution of 1080 x 768. I'd love to stream things from the web and play games on it in its full 1900 x 1080 resolution, but there is no option for this.
I've spent an hour now searching for answers, maybe you good folks can help me. Anyone have some input?
I saw that this is easy enough to do with a locked active desktop item. The problem is, my active desktop is disabled. When I go into display properties > desktop > customize desktop" there is only a "general" tab there and no "web" tab. I probably disabled active desktop somewhere thinking 'I'll never need that shit' long before I got a nice tv.
This also brings me to a second problem. My tv is much nicer than my monitor, it's a 1080p lcd vizio, but in display settings I can only set a max resolution of 1080 x 768. I'd love to stream things from the web and play games on it in its full 1900 x 1080 resolution, but there is no option for this.
I've spent an hour now searching for answers, maybe you good folks can help me. Anyone have some input?
Trinis on
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Otherwise, I can't be of much help. Good luck though, I know that can be confusing stuff sometimes.
First problem, you're going to need to connect your tv usuing a dvi->hdmi cable to get the resolution you want. Does your video card have dual dvi out?
Nope. S-video is my only option. Thanks for the info though, I didn't know s-video had that resolution limitation.
Edit> Is there any way to get a widescreen resolution going for the tv? There isn't an option on the slider for it so I'm guessing no, but the stretched look is ugly
Apparently it fakes 1024 x 768 fairly well, but seeing what text looks like on there was shamefully bad. Oh well.
Maybe I should make a new thread sometime in the future, but as an aside, anyone know if I can run two xbox 360 wireless controllers on my pc through a single USB wireless thing that Microsoft sells?
I'm pretty sure regardless of what type of connecting cables you use, DVI, S-Video, etc., that your limiting factor is going to be your TV's max resolution. Most nicer TV's in the 30-60" range be it LCD, Plasma or what have you only go up to 1366 × 768. There are no common marketplace TV's that go higher than that.
That's not correct. Some tv's are limited when you connect with vga but using hdmi should allow the native resolution of 1920x1080. Several tv's also allow this when using vga - my samsung does.
Hmm. Well that is something I shall have to experiment with. I have a DVI cable that I've hooked up to my 60" plasma and played on my PC with it before, but the max resolution I could get was 1366x768. I'll have to try an HDMI cable - are there DVI/HDMI converters?
Yes.
I'm using one to get native 1080p resolution on my 42" right now.
In response to OP; does your video card have a second VGA port? my old card had 1xDVI and 1xVGA, I was able to go VGA to my television and get AT LEAST the 1024x768 that looks pretty decent.
And yes, S-Video will support widescreen formats so check your video drivers for that option. you may need to update them in order to get better S-Video out functionality.
Nope, it's s-video or bust. Thanks for the input on drivers though, I'll look into updating them (for video card). Unsurprisingly the vizio website was no help, and the manual doesn't even tell you that you can arrange this via s-video. I think calling their tech support might result in "so you're trying to hook your computer up to your tv? that's impossible" or some less exaggerated but equally stupid scenario.
That's your set's native resolution - http://hd1080i.blogspot.com/2006/12/1080i-on-1366x768-resolution-problems.html