Nvidia X.org question - Cloned displays

[Billy Crook]

I hope this isn't too simple of a solution, but if I were you, and I
wanted the hitachi and acer to have the same picture, I'd get a vga
splitter, and a vga-to-svid converter.  Split port 1 so that it
connects to the acer, and the vga-to-svid converter.  Then connect
that converter to the hitachi.  Many of those converter boxes are
equipped with hardware enabled zoom and panning, which could come in
handy, and none of them will ever have a driver go weird on you, when
you have a presentation to give in 5 minutes.

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 07:06, Sean Crago <cragos at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
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