Movie Display problem

[marklin]

I'm having difficulty with a Compaq nc8000 laptop that is to be used
for multimedia presentations on a data projector. When playing movies
(eg. mpg, avi etc) via Media player the movie is not displayed on the
external monitor. Everything else is there, the desktop, media player
itself is there just the area where the video should be showing is
blank. I can resolve by setting the projector as the primary display
device but then the problem reverses and the movie is not visible on
the laptop display. It is very important that I have both displays
exactly cloning one another so that the movie will appear on both
displays. The video card used in the laptop is an ATI Mobility Radeon
9600. Any help will be much appreciated

 

[kony]

I'm having difficulty with a Compaq nc8000 laptop that is to be used
for multimedia presentations on a data projector. When playing movies
(eg. mpg, avi etc) via Media player the movie is not displayed on the
external monitor. Everything else is there, the desktop, media player
itself is there just the area where the video should be showing is
blank. I can resolve by setting the projector as the primary display
device but then the problem reverses and the movie is not visible on
the laptop display.

True, it plays on the primary display because it uses an
overlay. That's a "feature" per se, because doing without
the overlay means significant increase in CPU overhead, and
sometimes worse quality depending on manual settings options
available.

It is very important that I have both displays
exactly cloning one another so that the movie will appear on both
displays. The video card used in the laptop is an ATI Mobility Radeon
9600. Any help will be much appreciated

See if there's any setting to disable the overlay for
playback... might be video driver properties, or might be a
player setting , or try another player.

 

[marklin]

Thanks Kony, "Overlay" was the magic word. The video driver had a
settings tab for overlay and buried another level below this was an
option to change the overlay display mode from "standard" to "same on
all" This has resolved the problem. So far no performance problems,
but the video being shown is fairly ordinary low res. stuff that
doesn't seem to make the machine work too hard.