[nuggetman]

On my friend's inspiron XPS, if he connects his SVIDEO adapter and starts playing a video in Windows Media Player, then the svideo will only output the video, allowing you to do other things on the computer and still watch the movie on the tv

i havent gotten my video adapter yet, but can the powerbook do this?

[effgee]

Hooking up a TV to the PB will work like a second monitor - with desktop background and all. No problem to do other stuff while playing a video file on the TV (via QuickTime player, DVD player, VLC, etc.)

On the 12" PB (rev. B, dunno about the others) the video adapter hooks into the external monitor output - my TiBook oth has an external monitor out as well as a dedicated S-Video port.

[Link]

This relies on something called monitor spanning, since (no matter how it's connected) on any recent ibook/powerbook, the TV comes up as another monitor, what you'd do is make sure mirroring is off (so that the TV doesn't have the same stuff as your powerbook/ibook/emac/etc), drag the video window over to that screen, and do full screen.

Unfortunately, some things like iTunes visualizer blank out the primary screen as well.

[dwood]

Originally posted by Link:
This relies on something called monitor spanning, since (no matter how it's connected) on any recent ibook/powerbook, the TV comes up as another monitor, what you'd do is make sure mirroring is off (so that the TV doesn't have the same stuff as your powerbook/ibook/emac/etc), drag the video window over to that screen, and do full screen.

Unfortunately, some things like iTunes visualizer blank out the primary screen as well.

only powerbooks can span out of the box
ibooks have a spanning hack, but spanning is disabled by default, and the same should go for the emac, although not sure about the spanning hack on that.

[SSharon]

Well not every iBook can do monitor spanning. In fact I don't know of any that can. Of course it is theoretically possible with a spanning hack (just search for it) it is not posssible with a stock iBook, only on the powerbooks.

[milkmanchris]

Originally posted by nuggetman:
On my friend's inspiron XPS, if he connects his SVIDEO adapter and starts playing a video in Windows Media Player, then the svideo will only output the video, allowing you to do other things on the computer and still watch the movie on the tv

i havent gotten my video adapter yet, but can the powerbook do this?

Yes it will, mine does.

Only problem is you will also need to hook up an audio cable as well, unless you are going to listen to the movie through the PB speakers or phones.

Hope this helps.

[tooki]

It's easy: hook up the S-video or composite cable and the audio cable, detect displays (either by waking the computer, or by the such labelled button in the Displays preference pane), and then open your media app. Both DVD Player and QuickTime Player let you show a movie in fullscreen on one display without blacking the other display. (In DVD Player, you need to look in the preferences for the checkbox to dim other screens in fullscreen mode. Make sure it's not set to dim other screens. QuickTime Player will darken the other screens if you use the Present... command, but if you just drag the movie window to the screen you want, and choose Full Screen, it will leave the other screens untouched.)

Early iBooks' hardware was not capable of monitor spanning. In more recent models, the hardware can do it, but it's disabled in software. The "hack" simply removes the software limitation, allowing it to function just like a PowerBook's monitor spanning.

tooki