Grrr @ Ati drivers - Video on secondary monitor, without clone mode?

[Breadfan]

Guys, is there anyway to get video to play on my secondary monitor WITHOUT enabling a clone mode? I DO NOT want to simply clone my single monitor into two monitors. THAT defeats the purpose of having two monitors. But, I cannot get these darn ATi drivers to let me play a stinkin' video file on the secondary monitor.

I'm using extended desktop, and the odd thing is, this was all working just fine until I rebooted. No, I don't know how I got it set up before, I think like most settings in ATi drivers it was a glitch in my favor.

I'm getting so sick of Hydravision and Multidesk and Ati's inability to write drivers that will put video on both monitors I'm VERY close to ditching this card and going back to nVidia. If it wasn't for Easyshare TV (which I FINALLY got working, again by accident) I'd do just that. But that's another story.

Anyway, I have cats 4.9 on my tivo server with an 8500dv. On that there are special buttons for each display on the display tab. One of them enables some sort of primary emulation that allows video to go on all the outputs. So video shows up on the monitor as well as the TV. (Granted I'm cloning there...) On my main rig with extended desktiop those settings are gone and overlay can't be enabled.

I tried disabling overlay in WMP but that did not help. I still get black screen on monitor 2...

Any help at all is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Just noticed divx files in wmp work fine. But mpgs appear to not work.

[JigPu]

Does it display a black screen when in full screen on the second monitor, or does it do it while WMP is a window as well? I'd suggest disabling all the acceleration options (though overlay should have done it) and see if that solves the problem. If it does, you can re-enable them one at a time until you find the offending one.

Also, under the display properties, you may try selecting monitor 2 and then clicking the "use this device as my primary monitor" checkbox. I believe this will solve your problem, though it may end up causing other weird problems like windows opening there by default instead of on monitor 1 (I'm not sure though since I've only been runing dual monitors for 2 days :D)

JigPu

[Breadfan]

Well somehow the Easyshare TV window starting working in both displays. So this basically just means I may not be able to watch a DVD on the one screen, but that's not that big a deal.

I have a 20" and a 17". When I'm on the computer, I'd like to be able to watch a little TV or something on the 17". But when I'm just sitting watching a DVD and not on the computer, I'll play it on the 20". So, setting the secondary to primary will just move the issue around a bit. :)

I think I'm gonna drop this for now, as the majority of things I would watch while working on the computer are now being shown on monitor two. I will continue to say though that after last night (and a few other late nights in the past) I'm really not to thrilled about certain aspects of ATi's software.

I think Easylook and Easyshare are nice programs (once I got Easyshare to work that is...), and the Catalyst 3D drivers get great reviews (and seem fine to me) but pretty much everything else including hydravision and multidesk has been a pain and felt inferior to nvidia's software offerings.