Video not displayed through projector

[roo20487]

Hi guys,

I'm new to the forum and hope this is the right area to post this, apologies if it isn't. Btw I love the "FFS!" area - awesome!

Anyway my problem is this, the newer teacher laptops seem unable to display video over both the new and older projectors in the school. Its wierd because they display the video on the laptops screen but when viewing it over the projector Windows Media Player is up but where the video should be playing is just an empty black space (this goes for any software that we have to play DVD's).

I've tried playing around with the Display settings - changing screen resolution, graphics acceleration etc but nothing seems to work.

Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

[Jona]

I've come across this before, but never found a completly satisfactory solution (other than some video cards just don't seem powerful enough to do this).

A short term fix is to switch the display entirely to outputting to the projector and don't output at all to the laptop LCD, this usually fixes it.

Cheers
Jona

[mac_shinobi]

Sounds like you are coming across one of the "security features" of dvd playback to stop you from playing it back on more then one monitor hence why outputting playback of a dvd to one screen works.

Don't think I am allowed to suggest anything legal to help you fix it on a pc unless in display prefs you set the projector as the main display ( that or if you have an intel chipset you go to graphics properties and you can either try and clone the displays - short of that like above set the projector as the main display )

The dvd will not display on the laptop and hence the black window but at least it will work on the projector.

[bizzel]

I think using VLC in place of WMP fixed this for me, it was a while ago though. Worth a shot. It certainly shouldn't do anything to prevent a DVD from playing on two screens simultaneously, if that's what WMP is doing.

[jcollings]

We had this with some laptops using ATI cards. We found a tick box somewhere in the settings called "theatre mode" - clicking that cured it for us.

[Michael]

On laptops there's usually an "fn" key and corresponding icons where the numbers are located across the top of your keyboard.

This allows you to switch so the video is outputted through the VGA port on your laptop and displayed through the projector. Typically this can be achieved pressing fn + F5, but each make and model do vary.

On desktops, I use a hardware VGA splitter so it will automatically output on both the computer screen and projector, first time, every time. This has pretty much squashed any support calls to do with playing DVDs or anything interactive on the whiteboards.

[RoyG]

Try this -

Media Player - Tools - Options - Performance - Advanced

Make sure "Use overlays" under Video Acceleration is not ticked.

You might have to untick "Use overlays" under DVD playback too.

RoyG

[SYNACK]

Its to do with the primary display setting in the video card driver, you should be able to go in to the driver settings of most of these and set up a shortcut key that will turn on display mirroring and also set the external monitor (projector) as the primary display. This should result in the movie playing on the projector and the black screen ending up on the laptop screen.

[roo20487]

Thanks a lot for the replies guys. I'll give all the suggestions a whirl and let you know.

[Sirbendy]

We find our Clevos do this (S3 chipsets). Video drivers - make sure you have the latest one. It's a swine when that happens.

[ashleyrobinson]

you may find that some laptops, especially older ones cannot support video playback on both screens plugged directly into projector even with all of the above options.

best option is a video splitter or to display on one screen at a time (using fn+f5/f7/f8 whiechever the laptop switch screen combo is.

Ash

[Newton]

Had this one loads of times
Numebr of fixes that I have found
1. Reduce the hardware graphics acl on the display properties
or
2. turn off overlays (click on blank screen, options, advanced)
and
Update the display drivers

also had this with a green blob being displayed in media player the above fix also worked