ATI Radeon HD 3650 - Display issues... Help!

Hi Guys,

Im at the end of a loooooong journey to build a working set up of a HTPC, Blu-ray capable.:stupid:

See post in the ATI forum - http://forums.hexus.net/ati-multimed...y-support.html

I bought the bullit and purchased a budget VGA so I can get decent Dual DVI output.

My final hurrdle (I hope) is that when I drag the Powerdvd 8 window playing a Blu-ray (sucessfully yey!) from monitor 1 across the extended desktop to monitor 2 (LCD tv) the powerdvd window is still there and audio still playing (SPDIF) but the actual video image has disappeared and is just a black window. Drag powerdvd window back to monitor 1 and the image is back again! Ive tried just using the one monitor (the LCD tv) and it works on there no problem, so its not a display problem in that sense. When I drag across, say, VLC player watching a downloaded video file, theres no problems.

Anyone know why this is doing this? The whole setup is kinda pointless if i cant actullay watch blu-ray on my 40'' LCD.

Any help greatly appreciated:bowdown:

I think your only real option is switching the LCD to be the primary display.

It's a DirectX limitation - same happens if you drag Windows Media Center to the 2nd display, and presumably WMP too.

Apparently PowerDVD has an option in the advanced configuration for dual-display support? Worth a look.

Quote on the issue from another forum:

Quote:

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Its a limitation of directx, beyondtv uses directx to perform the rendering of the interface and the video. Directx will not allow creation of a VMR surface on a non-primary monitor, and in the rare cases that it does the VMR does not get hardware acceleration support and is in effect being rendered in software. As a result when you try to use beyondtv on a secondary monitor you will get any of the following or a combination thereof:
- No video (black screen/see through to the background)
- Laggy / choppy video (no acceleration support)
- Program unresponsiveness
- Possible crashing

The only real way to get output without fooling with crap is to set the tv out as a clone/mirror for the monitor and run beyondtv on both. You can if you are creative use other programs to switch the tv out as primary then switch it back to secondary after starting beyondtv, but this can also lead to reduced performance. The problem is directx and most video cards arent designed to pull full hardware support on both displays at the same time.

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That's from 2004, so things may have changed since then - it might be completely different with Vista for instance - but that used to be the issue.

Something worth a go is setting up 2 desktop shortcuts through the Catalyst Control Centre with 2 profiles. I can't test this as I don't have 2 screens, but by the looks of it you can change the primary display within the CCC. Make a profile with your normal monitor as primary, selecting the desktop shortcut option when you make it, then change the primary monitor to be that of your LCD TV and make another profile.

Hi Gav,

Many thanks for your detailed response.:)

I have now managed to get everything working! Really chuffed with the setup.

To solve the video issue, I updated everything from http://ati.amd.com, including the latest drivers and latest version of ATI Catalyst control centre. This appears to have solved the problem. I love it when a simple update can make all your problems go away! Who knows why it wasn't working previously, I assume that as the whole HD and Blu-ray dealio is still relatively new, the support wasn't there from my drivers etc.

The only prob I'm now experiencing is as slightly lag on the audio, so at times its out of sync. A little frustrating at times, the tv is connected by DVI-HDMI and the audio is SPDIF to my amp. I'm thinking perhaps it could be a hardware issue, but unlikely.

Do you think this could be a codec issue?:confused: