Dual monitor setup (laptop + external)

[Unfocused]

Dual monitor setup (laptop + external) ALSO X360 --VGA--> Monitor - no signal

I've ordered a 22'' monitor which I will use connected to my laptop. I would like to use both monitors and I wonder how I would go about that. I'm making this thread in advance, so hopefully I will have some answers before the monitor arrives tomorrow.

So what will happen when I connect my laptop@1280x800 to my external@1920x1080? In the simplest scenario, when one monitor is used at a time, it will probably show up as 1280x800 and require changing the resolution to 1920x1080. But will it automatically switch back to 1280x800, once I switch back to my laptop's monitor?

Is it even possible to have a panoramic mode across monitors with different resolutions? What'll happen if I, for example, start a game? Will it stretch across both monitors in some freaky way, or can I limit it to the external only?

Any good multi-monitor guides/software out there, I should take a look at? Thanks.

 

[sixteenth]

Yea it is possible for panoramic across different resolutions. But, it'll definitely skewer anything you drag over from 1280x800 to 1920x1080.

My advice, which is what I currently am doing now, keep your native laptop resolution at 1280x800 and set your external to 1280x1080. This of course won't be the highest resolution possible for your monitor, but when you drag things from screen to screen there won't be any resizing of the image because both have equal widths.

If you're wondering about what will happen when you shut your lid/open it, Windows seems to remember what ever you have chosen last. So lets say you close your lid. Windows treats your external monitor as the main display (as long as you don't have your laptop shut-down/sleep whenever the lid is closed). You can now change the resolution on the external to whatever. Open the lid, Windows will revert back to the panoramic view and how it was before you shut the lid. Get the idea?

For games, it'll most likely treat your main monitor as the screen to display the game on. It will definitely not pan over two different resolutions. So whatever screen you have you start menu on, that'll be the screen the game chooses to display on.

 

[VirusType2]

You sure your laptop supports these features?

 

[Unfocused]

Thanks for the reply.

You sure your laptop supports these features?

It supports a VGA and a HDMI output, it seems the rest is up to the system really.


I read a bit about this on the net and I'll try some of the software that deals with this, such as Ultramon. I'd rather keep my external in its native resolution for desktop purposes, so maybe I'll just use two desktops instead of span one across both.

 

[VirusType2]

No, I mean - it depends on the video chipset in the laptop whether it can run dual monitors at the same time and what resolutions it can run them in.

I'm sure it will be workable for you, I don't mean to worry you, sorry.


I've got a pretty old and cheap laptop (Vista era) and am able to do everything I need regarding 2 monitors. Not perfect, but pretty good. Since the chipset can't output a higher resolution than my HDTV, it's actually worked out for the better.


Keep in mind when you run 2 monitors your video chipset has to work harder, and thus you will have a loss in performance if you are pushing it (for example gaming). I would usually just switch to the external monitor (turning the laptop screen off) for gaming on a big screen.

 

[No Limit]

Any lap top with a VGA or HDMI output supports multiple monitors.

I would not recommend setting the display to the same resolution as your laptop, the image quality will be horrible on a LCD. And the fact the 2 displays are not the same resolution is not a big deal at all. Both my work computer and my home comptuer have a dual monitor set up and both have different resolution displays. Works fine.

How you enable dual monitors depends on your OS, but it's a straight forward process requiring a couple steps so you shouldn't worry too much about it. It's found where you adjust the monitor resolution.

 

[sixteenth]

This is how the setup looks (PrtSc) with 1280x800 and 1280x1024.

Spoiler

The right is a little higher because the edge of my laptop screen sits about an inch lower than my external. You can play with those settings in screen resolution settings.

If you choose to mirror, the external monitor will only display 1280x800 of the available 1920x1080 pixels (if you choose your laptop as the main monitor). At least, that's as far as Windows will support. I'm not really familiar with Ultramon.

EDIT:

And yep, your gonna probably experience mega frame rate drops when gaming with a dual-screen setup. I just disable my laptop screen and play on the higher resolution external. Though it's a bit awkward, since your keyboard is not in front of the external (I've gotten used to it).

 

[VirusType2]

Any lap top with a VGA or HDMI output supports multiple monitors.

OK, obviously it supports multiple monitors, or it wouldn't have the output on the laptop. What I'm saying is that it's up to the video chipset in the laptop:

1) The supported resolutions (for example, in mine, the highest resolution is pretty low (1080p I believe). This may not be the native resolution of the external monitor.

2) Whether the 2nd monitor will get hardware graphics acceleration. (probably will)

3) Whether it can display on 2 monitors simultaneously, or if it switches to the external when plugged in. (probably can)


I'm not trying to be a pessimist, my point was that he should have investigated his laptop specifications before buying a monitor, to be sure it will work as expected.


I was disappointed when I wanted to hook up my laptop to my HDTV. I tried 2 different cables to connect to my HDTV: HDMI inputs and Component Video cables.

I bought a VGA -> HDMI cable and a VGA -> Component Cable. My laptop didn't support that (some do), so I had to use the S-Video output of my laptop to my HDTV. Icons on the desktop are pretty much unreadable. Playing games on it looks OK, however.

 

[No Limit]

VGA is an analog signal whereas HDMI is digital. So I'm not sure what kind of converter you bought but if you didn't pay an arm and a leg for it I'm not suprised it didn't work.

I am not aware of a VGA to Component adapter using a simple cable, I would think that would be a lot more complicated than just using a simple adapter as eventhough both signals are analog they are different bandwidths.

However, if your lap top has HDMI, DVI, or VGA it will support multiple monitors at once; this is a totally standard thing these days and has been for a very long time. Yes, you do have to make sure that your TV has a port compatible with the output on your lap top but that's kind of an obvious side issue.

 

[VirusType2]

That reminds me. There are several DVI types, however, I believe we can rule out all but two: DVI-Digital and DVI-Analog.

You could, for example, connect a DVI-D output to an HDMI monitor or connect a DVI-A to a VGA monitor. However, unless I'm missing something, it wouldn't work if his laptop is DVI-A and his monitor is DVI-D, or if his laptop is VGA and his new monitor is DVI-D.

I don't even know if his laptop has a DVI or VGA output, so I'll stop there.

It supports a VGA and a HDMI output

er sorry, I should read more carefully. Never mind; you can do either, it seems.

And yep, your gonna probably experience mega frame rate drops when gaming with a dual-screen setup. I just disable my laptop screen and play on the higher resolution external. Though it's a bit awkward, since your keyboard is not in front of the external (I've gotten used to it).

Yeah, I bought a USB hub where I've plugged my USB mouse, a USB keyboard, an external USB Audio 'card', and a USB game controller into. Therefore when I need to take my laptop, I simply unplug the one USB cable and pull out the VGA monitor cable (which doesn't screw into the laptop anyway). Anyway, yeah, I didn't like using the laptop keyboard with a monitor way off to the side, so I used a USB keyboard.

It's a powered hub (plugs into a wall power receptacle, so I don't have to worry about pulling too much power from the laptop USB port.

Recently I've used a USB wireless mouse with a very small USB receiver I just leave plugged in to a separate port on the laptop. (for example: http://www.logitech.com/repository/497/jpg/4125.1.0.jpg)

 

[No Limit]

I'm not aware of any consumer lap tops or any video cards for that matter that use analog DVI at this point, it's an outdated format that serves no real purpose these days. Plus most displays from what I recall are DVI-I these days so they can actually handle both signals.

 

[VirusType2]

Oh, OK. Good information, thanks.

I was wondering because my DVI video card can connect to a VGA monitor simply with a $1 adapter. I assumed [incorrectly] that it must be DVI-A because of that. I hadn't heard of DVI-I.

I'm glad to hear I won't have to worry about [whether or not my Video card is DVI-A or DVI-D] if I get a DVI monitor.

 

[No Limit]

After re-reading I wrote the above wrong, I didn't mean most displays have DVI-I, most output devices do (your video card, etc). Looks like you see what I meant though. The displays use DVI-D. That's why your video card can be easily converted to analog since it uses DVI-I so it can output both. However, your display will only accept DVI-D through the DVI connector. Sorry about the typo. You can easily see this by looking the DVI connector on the back of your video card and the dvi connector on the back of your display.

 

[VirusType2]

Yeah, I understood, thanks. Cheers. Anything to make this shit less complicated.

 

[Asus]

If your laptop supports VGA and HDMI out then you should be good assuming you do VGA->VGA, VGA->DVI* or HDMI->HDMI.

Using a short adapter or cable adapter probably won't convert the signal unless it has a box attached to it. Those type of adapters are just used to fit the plug, not convert the signal.

I've seen VGA to Component cables but they do not modify the signal. In order to use the cable with a PC the video card would have to send a Y Pr Pb signal out over VGA rather than RGB. However if you got a box converter then it would do the RBG to Y Pr Pb.

*Using a VGA to DVI adapter is very easy and 'magically' works compared to other adapters because the DVI plug can have both analog and digital pins. Using an adapter to connect a LCD with VGA cord to a PC with only a DVI port works because the analog signal is able to be sent across without needing to be converted (LCD converts signal to digital just before it hits the pixels). Same with PC VGA ->DVI/VGA adapter->DVI LCD cord. Because they use overlapping technology it seems to just work and is not confusing to use.

VGA is very capable and can do more than 1080p but it is the settings and conversions that make it work or not with adapters. HDMI is only digital and YPbPr cables ("Component") is a RGB signal that is encoded differently. So VGA to HDMI or VGA to YPbPr is different than VGA to DVI since with the other two there has to be a conversion prior to it hitting the monitor's cable. A cable adapter itself probably won't do that. Might need a box or have hardware/drivers on the PC that can spit out the signal and settings that it needs.

 

[Unfocused]

Initially I want to do VGA->VGA with the cable that comes with the monitor, but when I get the chance, I want to buy a HDMI->DVI cable, so I can connect the monitor digitally (contrary to what I said in my other thread, I ordered a monitor with both VGA and DVI). I assume that's possible, since HDMI is essentially DVI+audio, from what I gather.

 

[Asus]

Yeah, you can do PC (HDMI) to Monitor (DVI) with a simple adapter. But of course that direction doesn't include audio.

 

[Unfocused]

OK, so the monitor arrived a few days ago and setting everything up is pretty intuitive and Windows handles it well. Thanks for the replies.

By the way (this probably warrants a new thread, but I'll post here and see what happens) - I bought a VGA cable to occassionally plug my X360 into the monitor, but I get a "no signal detected". I've reset the video settings on the console (Y + RT on startup), but it didn't help. The audio from the cable is fine BTW. Any ideas what else I can try to fix it?

 

[Asus]

OK, so the monitor arrived a few days ago and setting everything up is pretty intuitive and Windows handles it well. Thanks for the replies.

By the way (this probably warrants a new thread, but I'll post here and see what happens) - I bought a VGA cable to occassionally plug my X360 into the monitor, but I get a "no signal detected". I've reset the video settings on the console (Y + RT on startup), but it didn't help. The audio from the cable is fine BTW. Any ideas what else I can try to fix it?

What is the max res of the LCD?
What res and Hz does the Xbox360 send via VGA?

 

[No Limit]

Your xbox has a VGA output on it?

 

[Unfocused]

What is the max res of the LCD?
What res and Hz does the Xbox360 send via VGA?

1920x1080 is the native, I don't know if it can go any higher than that.

When I connect the X360 to my old SDTV, it's set at 480p, PAL-60 (though PAL-50 works as well). It's pretty much the settings you get when you reset them through the Y+RT combination.

I assumed it would automatically set itself to some working settings when I plug it into the monitor, since it won't be even using PAL, right? Anyway, I tried setting the console to PAL-50 and then plugging it into the monitor, as well as to PAL-60 and none worked.

I tried blindly setting the screen to 1080p, once it's connected to the monitor, by memorising the key combination, but it didn't seem to work either.

Your xbox has a VGA output on it?

I don't know how it's called, but it's a standard X360 one. I use this type of cable to connect the X360 to VGA (D-SUB).

 

[VirusType2]

I think it should work if you just plug it in. Otherwise it would probably post OSD "Out of Frequency Range".

If it says "check the cable", it's not getting a signal from the Xbox or perhaps it is expecting a signal from the other monitor input? Isn't there a button/switch you can press?

You try reading the manual?

 

[Unfocused]

Tried reading the manual, nothing there.

I can switch between D-SUB and DVI via an OSD menu, which is however inaccessible when there's a "no cable detected" or "no signal detected" message on the screen.

Looks like I'll just take the damn cable to the shop with my console and ask them to plug it into one of their monitors and hopefully the cable will be at fault.

 

[CyberPitz]

Using 2 monitors on my work laptop, the secondary monitor being a lower res. It sucks trying to go onto that screen sometimes, because of the size difference, it's like I'm hitting a wall. So I move my mouse down or up a bit and that is in the monitors range.

Other than that, it's a godsend.

 

[Asus]

Maybe this applies.

 

[Unfocused]

Just an update in case anyone wondered what eventually was the cause - the cable was faulty. I checked it in the store and they switched it for a working one.

Actually I'm not fully satisfied, cause when I got home and plugged it in I noticed slight ghosting (not the motion blur type, but a slightly visible replica of the image offset to the right). Not really that noticeable while playing, but it's still there. I guess Microsoft cables are not more expensive for nothing after all.

 

[VirusType2]

slight ghosting (not the motion blur type, but a slightly visible replica of the image offset to the right). Not really that noticeable while playing, but it's still there. I guess Microsoft cables are not more expensive for nothing after all.

I know exactly what you're talking about, but I don't know how to fix it. You described it perfectly.

I had a S-Video cable that I connected to a VGA adapter box that plugged into my Xbox [1], and it had that same problem. I tried several monitors and they all did it. I tried replacing the cable with another of the same brand.

It was kind of disappointing, but like you said, you don't really notice it when you play.