Nvidia X.org question - Cloned displays

[Sean Crago]

This may seem a little odd, but it beats reading & feeding the trolls:

My Nvidia card's S-Video out jack is limited to 1024x768. It has two
DVI-I DualLink (NOT the dual monitor DVI standard) jacks besides. The
chances that HDMI will work at 1080* are next to nill, IMHO, given the
HDCP requirements and the fact that I'm asking this here and not in
some Windows group. Still, though, it may work alright at a lower
resolution. My current config is as follows:

Video card - LEADTEK PX8600GT 256MB w/the following lspci output:
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GT
(rev a1)
DISPLAY=:0.0: Samsung 225BW w/DVI connector running at its native
1680x1050 resolution (16:10)
DISPLAY=:0.1: Crappy little Acer AL1917W running at its native
1440x900 (16:9) - Lacks a DVI port, so it's connected via a DVI-->VGA
adapter
DISPLAY=:0.2: Hitachi 42PD9500TA 42 Multi-System HDTV Plasma TV
connected via an S-Video port & a 1/8in audio-->RCA audio jack

Note that the Hitachi HDTV lacks a VGA port (le sigh) but does have
two HDMI ports and multiple S-Video and composite out jacks. The
Hitachi will plainly support 720* resolutions, which are pretty much
the same as the native res of the Acer monitor. Running over the
S-Video jack, however, there's no way to feed it anything other than
1024x768. This means that if I play a DVD or whatever through this
jack I've always got to have every media player I use explicitly set
to re-jigger the 16:9 content into whatever the ratio is to get it to
render as 16:9 at a 4:3 resolution. No massive quality loss/the
quality is still quite good, but it seems like there must be a cleaner
way to set this up, all the same:

The monitor is effectively useless as a third monitor, due to its
distance from my primary and secondary displays. It would be much,
much better if I had a nice, neat projector-room style setup where the
Acer and the Hitachi show the same stuff, without having to give up
the other monitor. I'm perfectly willing to give up sound, which I'd
have to if I used a DVI-->HDMI adapter, as the HDMI adapters don't
have RCA audio-in jacks. My TV requires that you use HDMI as the sound
input on the HDMI video input sources, but I've got a decent stereo I
can jack into, too. No big loss.

Is there anything I can do to make this setup work in such a way that
the smaller Acer display is a cloned image of the TV's screen without
having to run completely different X sessions? If not, is there a way
to do it without that caveat?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Sean Crago
Kathmandu

PS: I'm hesitant to replace the relatively new 8600-series video card
at the moment/without a local buyer, but I'm perfectly willing to buy
DVI-->HDMI adapters or whatever if I thought they'd work. I've shopped
around for a DVI---->DVI&VGA splitter, but it seems like the only ones
on the market will drive one or the other, but not both
simultaneously. The VGA compatibility pins in DVI are apparently
disabled, at least in most cases, when the DVI pins are in use, again,
from what I've read - Haven't plunked down money to try to disprove
that, but it seems like a silly waste if I can't find evidence that
someone's gotten it working somehow.

PSS: I can get mail/UPS/whatever forwarded here, so unless you're
proposing a >70lbs solution or one bigger than a small coffee-table,
it's not a problem to order it.