3rd TFT screen on directors pc? for seperate app utilising HDMI

Hi All

Needs a graphics specialist / dual/triple screen enthusiast on this one!

At my workplace we have a director who needs the ability for an extra screen to view stats from the main call centre. Ideally he wants a new PC to show just these new stats. Ideally I don't want to do this as he's got a PC with a separate graphics card which has DVI, VGA and HDMI! A seperate PC would just be a waste and consume lots of room.

Currently he has a dual screen setup utilizing the DVI and VGA port only.

Rather than give him another PC just to run this separate application. I want to give him a 3rd screen and use the HDMI port on his graphics card. He's using Windows 7.

Ideally this 3rd app I want it to run exclusively on this third screen. With a dual screen monitor the mouse goes from one screen to another but with a third screen I don't want the mouse to interact with the 3rd app if possible. Ideally I just want him to run it and leave it. If that is possible. Would a software app let me do this?

This director is constantly on his PC so don't want the 3rd screen to effect his normal work. The 3rd screen I am thinking I would like to hang on the wall as we have a spare LCD lying round which would perfect for this.

Looking for some workable solution, if you guys don't think this would work I am open to other solutions on this.

Cheers

I personally haven't seen any solutions that will let you do this. I have seen 3rd party applications that manage the multi monitor set ups a bit better than the standard windows ones, but I don't know if any will provide what you are looking for.

Also, if the card in the PC is a standard consumer one (that isn't one of the very new generations), its unlikely that it will support using all 3 ports - the vast majority of consumer cards that I've ever encountered only support 2 displays at any one time.

What is the card in his PC at the moment?

If it doesn't work allthough as you have a screen to try nothing to lose in trying and if it doesn't work a usb graphics adaptor is cheap enough.

Ben

The ncomputing U170 comes with software I believe that can be used to launch a specific app.

Ben

AFAIK, its not possible at least with a single graphics card.
I get the options to duplicate any two monitors and extend to the third or just extend across all three.
I have the laptop as the primary a 19" Samsung lapfit as a second and the 37" big screen TV as a 3rd over a long HDMI cable.
I just run the big screen App (normally SNMP monitoring stuff or CCTV) and drag it to the big screen and Win7 just snaps it to full screen and stays there, its really quite cool as the TV has PinP as well so I get the best of all the available TFT real estate.

With 1 AMD graphics card you can use 3 displays if one of them is displayport, if your monitor doesn't have that, you need an active adaptor. Also there's any internal graphics the cpu/motherboard has. As to not sliding the mouse over, the only built in option is to arrange it to only connect at a corner, which isn't brilliant.

If you want to do it properly, what about a thin client like the ncomputing stuff, an L300 RDP'ing to the app running on a terminal server.

The u170 in digital signage mode would do it as it's effectively a 2nd computer than a 3rd display his mouse wouldn't be able to move to it.

Ben

Maybe a case of building a thin client for this display, you can pick up some pretty cheap micro pc's now, i got one for my home theatre setup for around £80 minus hdd and ram(already had these laying around)