I'm assuming your setup is basically like this:
0. You have a laptop, or a desktop computer with its regular monitor set up somewhere that you can see the TV and the computer monitor at the same time (I didn't bother to look).
1. Your computer has an HDMI cable going from the computer to the TV itself. You don't have a receiver with HDMI inputs, but the TV has an HDMI input.
2. The HDTV is showing up as a second monitor attached to your computer, in "extended desktop" mode, so that you can drag windows back and forth from your PC monitor's desktop to the TV's desktop.
3. Your computer has a regular sound device connected with the analog outputs to speakers of some sort (maybe a 7.1 surround receiver, maybe just a nice set of computer speakers)
So those are my assumptions. Even if I'm not perfectly right, this should give you very good places to start.
The way Jim is describing works for selecting the Audio playback device. Since you're using the analog outs on your soundcard, I'd set it to "Same As Audio" and then configure the settings under T
ools -> Options -> Audio. Try changing the Output mode there to WASAPI - Event Style (which is better quality than the regular default DirectSound mode). If you have trouble, switch it back to DirectSound or try updating your audio drivers. Then under the Output mode settings button, you can choose which output device is used. The easiest is to just
set the Pavillion's default audio device in Windows to the internal sound card and tell MC to use the default playback device.
Options for MC's audio playback can be found under
Tools -> Options -> Audio and
Tools -> Options -> Video, depending on the source type and choices. For analog outputs, it is
usually best to set the Video choice to "Same as Audio" (like it is in Jim's screenshot above) and then configure the settings via the Audio section. For digital outputs where you want to pass through encoded audio (like DTS, AC3, DTS-MA, TrueHD, etc), the settings under the Video section can be useful.
To choose which monitor gets Fullscreen video, start a video file playing back, right-click on the playing video itself and choose
Display Options. In here, you can explicitly choose which monitor will be used when you play a file back fullscreen. By default, it is whichever monitor is "nearest" (which just means, whichever monitor MC's main UI has been dragged onto) but you can say essentially "always use monitor #2 for fullscreen video" in that dialog. But don't do it quite yet.
Depending on your needs, there might be a better way.
You can also "detach" the display, and drag the window to the other monitor, and then double click it to go fullscreen. To do this: Just go anywhere the video or display (visualizers, etc) is playing, right click, and choose Detach Display. Drag the new window you get over to the other monitor and double click on it. Until you close it or close MC, it'll stay there, and all the "visuals" of your playback (images, video, visualizers, etc) will go there when you play files. MC's main UI keeps working normally on the "main monitor". You can even use Theater View on the main monitor and the playback will happen on the big screen (ask if you want to do this).
This also makes it easy to "pull the video back" if you want it to return back to "regular", which could be especially important using a laptop (you don't want the video to ALWAYS go to the other screen). One limitation is that the playing window itself doesn't show the playback controls and scrub bar, as they stay "attached" to the main MC UI (though this is less important now with all of the OSD improvements). The nice thing is that if you "reattach" the display (close the detached display or click where MC tells you to "double click to bring it back"), MC will remember the detached display's positioning and size (including fullscreen status). So next time you "detach" it again, it will go back where it was last time automatically (so maybe fullscreen on the TV).
One extra awesome thing is that ALL of these settings work "per zone". Zones work basically like "groups of settings" that are designed to work for different playback devices or setups. You configure the settings for a particular zone just like you always would if you didn't even know zones existed, but since you can make multiple zones, you can quickly switch between these "sets of settings". Not all of the options and configuration dialogs in MC work per-zone, but basically all of the "playback device related" ones do.
So, as an example, try this: Using the default zone you're probably already using, get it all set up just the way you like using the stuff explained above. Then right-click on
Playing Now in the tree and choose
Add Zone. This will create a new Zone called "Zone 2". Change the name to something like "HDMI Audio". Then make it the active Zone (just click on it in the tree to highlight it).
Then, go back into
Tools -> Options -> Audio and change the playback device under Output mode to the HDMI output on your video card (which can carry audio on the Radeon card you have just fine as long as the audio driver is installed). Now, you've just changed this option for the new "HDMI Audio" Zone ONLY, the "regular" ones stayed where they were. When you select this zone and then start playback, it will send the audio to the TV instead of the regular speakers. But, if you switch back to the Default zone and play something, it will play from your speakers again. That way, you can keep it on the "default" mode most of the time, but if you want to use the TV's speakers for some reason, you can just switch to the HDMI Zone and play something. All you have to do to "switch" is stop playback, then select the other Zone under Playing Now in the tree, and then start playback back up.
Even better? Both zones will work at once. They each can have their own separate "Playing now" list (you can also link them together if you want). That's why you need to stop playback before you switch Zones, or you'll get a weird "double playback." So imagine this:
You could easily select the "regular" zone (I think the default is called "Here", I renamed mine "Standard"), start some music playing. Then switch to the "HDMI Zone" and play a video on the TV, maybe a home movie or a bunch of home movies. Both will play independently, simultaneously. The audio from the video would play on the TV and the audio from the music would go to the speakers. Zones even remember the detached display's settings independently, so you could conceivably have TWO different videos playing simultaneously, each one using separate devices (though what purpose that would serve aside from sheer cool factor is unclear in your instance).
Cool, right?
PS. These instructions are for MC16. If you are using MC15, you can do all of the same things, but the way you manage adding and switching zones is a bit different.
Author
Topic: Video to 2nd Monitor (HDMI) (Read 6532 times)