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More => Old Versions => Media Center 16 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: mckaymckaymckay on June 30, 2011, 05:47:26 am

Title: Dual monitors including touch screen and 40" TV
Post by: mckaymckaymckay on June 30, 2011, 05:47:26 am
Hey guys,

Ok, ive been trying for a few weeks now to get version 16 working how i want it with no success. Basically my setup is as follows:

10" touchscreen mounted on the wall with fullscreen theater view of albums...which works excellent for audio playback. Ive used it like this for a number of weeks with no issues.

Ive come to notice i can do a similar layout for my videos too, so i imported a couple of AVI files/MKV files and tagged them from wikipedia etc..

Now, what im trying to do is basically what ive done in the past with MPC-HC and have the controls etc.. on the touchscreen (screen 1) and the fullscreen video on the TV (Screen 2). This works excellent in MPC-HC as i can control the whole frontend on the touchscreen and have full screen video on my TV at the same time.

Ive tried numerous ways to get this to act the same in version 16 of MC but it either outputs fullscreen to the touchscreen or crashes when i drag over to the 2nd screen.

My main goal here is to have theatre view on the touchscreen at all times to control playback of the video and go back to the library view, and have the full screen video on my TV (and youtube etc..).

Any ideas how to do this?

Many thanx!

Chris.
Title: Re: Dual monitors including touch screen and 40" TV
Post by: JimH on June 30, 2011, 06:45:57 am
Welcome.

Are you using build 121?  It's on this board, near the top.

This should work if you use "Detached Display".  What video hardware do you have?

Try Red October Std.
Title: Re: Dual monitors including touch screen and 40" TV
Post by: glynor on June 30, 2011, 09:17:08 am
Yep.  A detached display will let you do exactly that.

It'll be easiest to open the detached display using MC in Standard View, position the display onto your external monitor (send it fullscreen) and then just leave it there.  MC remembers the display size (including fullscreen/not status) and position of the Detached Displays even when you close out of MC totally and re-open it later.  Then, switch the main UI of MC into Theater View on your Touchscreen display.

In fact, you can have MULTIPLE detached displays if you set up additional zones.  Each zone gets its own.

Theater View (touch optimized) isn't really ideal for acting as a controller for things like scrubbing playback and whatnot though.  It works great for picking and choosing media, and for navigating through a Playing Now list, but the one problem is that with a Detached Display, you don't have access to a scrub bar over the video like you do in Display View.  This is generally good (usually if you are using a detached display, you NEVER want to see any UI chrome there).

I haven't really tried using Theater View to scrub through video with the Theater View Playing Now "dot scrubber" on a touchscreen.  I bet it works, but probably isn't ideal for a touch UI (I could be totally wrong).

My plan is similar, though.  I want to get a Touchscreen Windows tablet and use Theater View on it (running in "tremote" mode to control another instance of MC on the other machine) to control the detached display on my Video Wall.  The tablet I have now is old and uses a resistive touchscreen though, so it is a fairly bad example and I haven't really even tested it.
Title: Re: Dual monitors including touch screen and 40" TV
Post by: mckaymckaymckay on June 30, 2011, 10:55:07 am
Many thanks for the comments.... i think i have the latest version but will have to check when im home later.

Also with regards to the video rendering, which one will be best for the 2nd screen?

I have GT220 with HDMI for screen and VGA for touchscreen...

MPC-HC works brilliant for this, not sure i could do something similar with MC?