[mythtv-users] Two X displays without screen blanking? (Monitor and TVout)

[Chris Palmer]

Greg wrote
> What I want to do is display one X screen on my
> monitor an another display on my TV using the TV out on my GeForce3
> card. I am able to do this by executing 'startx' on one console and then
> 'startx -- :1 -screen tvout' on another console. The second startx goes
> to the TV out. Both X sessions launch no problem but I can view only one
> at a time, The other screen goes blank. Is there anyway to keep both
> screens visable? My main goal here is to have MythTV running on the
> second display while still be able to use the computer on the first X
> display. 

Not going to be possible without serious changes/hacks to X.
It will only display one (VT) virtual terminal at a time.  You
might find some info on this in the archive.  I remember seeing
that someone linked a site where someone was writing their own
source code hacks to make something like this possible, but it
definitely isn't standard and will take some research on your
part to see if that is a path you want to explore.

An earlier thead discussing this can be found here:
http://gossamer-threads.com/archive/MythTV_C2/Dev_F10/Dual_%28simultaneous%29_use_of_MythTV_box_P55887/

Unfortunately, even if you get past that problem, the GeForce3 
is not dual-headed, so it cannot display 2 seperate images on 
the different outputs at the same time.  I'm pretty sure it 
cannot even display the *same* image on both the monitor and 
TV outputs at the same time.  Other models of nVidia-based 
boards have varying capabilities in this regard.  Cards based 
on the GeForce2 MX chip are probably the most well supported 
dual-headed GeForce cards.

-Chris