2 Projectors 1 laptop

[jameshorsley1976]

I am a member of a mobile church and have learned most of what I know about church multimedia flying by the seat of my pants and people on this forum and others. We are a mobile church and have moved to a new location in which we must have 2 projector screens. We run Zionworx from a Toshiba satellite noitebook 1.6 ghz processor, 512 mb of ram and Windows Xp home. What am I going to need to add to my laptop to run 2 projectors at the same time. Any help would be appreciated

James Horsley
New Castle Baptist Church
Birmingham, Alabama
USA

[Pete]

First does one of the projectors have a vga output connector on the back if so you could just run a lead from there to the input of the second projector.

Your second option is to get a vga spliter box and use that. a quick search reveils http://www.keyzone.com/splitters/monitor-splitters.htm

Or the final option is to get a usb or pcmiia video card for the laptop but that will only work if the software you use will support 3 video cards which zionworx of powerpoint don't. But this final option will give you the option to display a different image on each projector if you software does support 3 or more video cards.Again a quick search reveals.http://www.usbgear.com/USB-Video-Card.html

Please note the links given where a quick 30 sec search on google and are not a recommendation i have not dealt with either company before, I supplied the links as some where for you to start looking.

[brainier]

I have three video outputs on my PC for ZionWorx. To make it work, the first output (defuault monitor) is where the management window is displayed and the other two screens where the words etc. appear.

To make both the extra screens display the words I use the clone features of the video card (this is an ATI Raedon card). The two extra displays are for the projector and a monitor for those sitting at an acute angle to the screen and thus cannot see it. Two projectors would work the same here as well.

Note that the two projectors used in this example must be set to the same resolution as the cloning of the second display just echo's its display onto the third output and if the two projectors do not work well at the same resolution as each other then this will not work.

[Pete]

Brainer

The card/s that outputs to the projector is that a dual head card or is it 2 different cards?

It's just I don't know if cloneing would work across 2 seperate cards which is what would have to happen in james's situation. Since he is working with a laptop and therefore cloning the laptop screen to the laptop output is easy (they are on the same card) but this would not be useful since the laptop screen needs to be the management window.

But cloning across the external output from the laptop and a second video card (ie usb or pcmiia) i don't know if that would work.

Has anyone done this option and if so how.

Come to think about it i do have a spare graphics card lying around somewhere i might pop it into my desktop and experiment (if I can find a spare hour some time in the next few days) I'll post my findings on this list.

[brainier]

The external card would need to be dual headed and support cloning across the outputs.

The laptop screen is Display 1, and one of the external outputs is Display 2 (cloned onto the second external output).

With a dual-headed video card, and a standard single output video card on a desktop PC, our church has the following.

* Single headed card = Display 1 = management (set as primary display in Windows XP - BIOS, boot logo and login all appear on this screen as well)
* Dual headed card (one VGA and one DVI output) are cloned at 1024x768 resolution, which is what the external LCD monitor (DVI - Display 2) and projector (VGA) work at. Had to return a larger res monitor as the cloned image would stretch on this screen and look bad - hence the comment above about both projectors needing to work at the same resolution.

Can get VGA/VGA cards or DVI/DVI cards, and these work the same as the VGA/DVI that we have - but not sure if you can get these inside external devices for use with a laptop.

In Windows XP the third card appears greyed out in the Display Control Panel applet, and I need to use the horrible ATI software to enable cloning - which was initially quite hard to find, but was finally found under the configuration wizard and nowhere else.

[Williamting]

Hi Brainier,

The installation for your church is interesting. I have been trying to get that config to work without success.

What sort of interface do you have on those cards, ie, PCI for dual headed and AGP for the single headed card?

My motherboard has a built-in display output and I am installing another AGP dual headed display card. I have not been able to get the three ports to work at the same time. Anyone has tried this before?

Thanks,
William

[brainier]

PCI: One DVI and one VGA output, cloned with the DVI being the primary monitor in the clone using the ATI tools. The DVI is connected to the side monitor for the area of the church where it is hard to view the screen and the VGA is connected to the projector. The clone is configured as Theatre Mode in advanced settings so that we can show video full screen on the projector

AGP: VGA only. Configured as the primary monitor in Windows XP and this is where the software is controlled from (currently Zionworx and the CCLI databases, and soon to be the WMA/MP3 recording software

There is no motherboard display adapter in the PC we use.

[Williamting]

Brian, Thanks.

You have just confirmed what I have been suspecting! I have been using AGP dual headed display card which is the cause of the problem.

[mikeyp]

Why not a simpler cheaper option?

My Collecge has a VGA divider between every PC and projector which allows the signal from the graphics card to be split between the monitor and the projector simultaneously. In you case, you would use it with both projectors, and a fair amount of cable.

[brainier]

Simple answer: Signal loss is greater this way

[mikeyp]

Simple answer: Signal loss is greater this way

yes but incase you haven't noticed he's using a laptop, like me, and not all churches can afford high powered pcs with multiple graphics cards. anyway the vga splitter I was suggesting is a powered model not simply a cable splitter.

In the end it comes down to a compromise between what you can afford, and quality. The powered vga splitters aren't that bad anyway...

[brainier]

Laptops are the worst culprits in this. To reduce battery drain, laptop manafacturers typically reduce the output to the VGA port, which means that the signal cannot travel far. A desktop and VGA card (£30) do not have this impact.

Therefore distance matters, and it is not line of sight that you need to take into account, you need to run the cable along the floor, up the walls, over the beams etc. until you reach the projector.

Total cost of the computer and cable needed at our church was less than £300. PC was going to scrap (its an old Dell P3 machine about 6 years old) and the most expensive item was the projector.

[webmaster]

We use a cat 5 extender for the VGA.

This give's the ability for 150Metres of cable cat 5 is cheap and smaller than VGA cable.

Spec.

TX box,

1 x VGA IN
2 x VGA OUTPUT
1 CAT 5 Extender output


Rx box,

1 CAT 5 Extender input
2 x VGA outputs


We got this from http://www.cpc.co.uk for about £58.00

It works great and we have place 2 Ca 5 leads in for when we move to a HDMI System as Gefen to a HDMI to 2 Cat 5 Extender box this allowed us to think for the future.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Edd
Webmaster

[paulstokes]

You did well - the Cat 5 extender RX & TX is £101 at present!