If you get a digital TV card for the PC like so;



Can you run it on a second monitor?

SO you could have one monitor running from the PC, doing your normal PC stuff, and the digital tv card supplying TV pictures to a second monitor?

Or would you need a dual head graffix card for that?

 

Bearing in mind there's no vga output, or dvi output on it, there's a jack rabbit slim chance of you connecting it to a monitor

 

Very good point there Dan

So what I would need is a dual header graffix card then right?

How do I choose which monitor see's which application then?

 

Yeah, basically what you need is a graphics card that has 2 x vga or 2 x dvi outputs.

What you then do is install the software & drivers. Once done, when you go into the display properties, you'll have 2 monitors and can adjust the resolution etc, etc. You should also specify it so that it extends your desktop onto monitor 2.

I had 2 x 17" monitors before this flatscreen, Had e-mail open on screen 1, firefox on screen 2. You just drag the open windows over onto the other screen

 

Sounds a bit complext to me

Basically, I want to get a pair of widescreen LCD's (24/26/27 or similar) and have the PC running on one, and digital TV on the other, or a DVD/MPG whatever.... That way I can get rid of my big ass TV that takes up too much room.... Basically so as to use my PC as a media centre, without forking out for a new Media Centre PC... Tho having the ability to record live TV to my HDD would be incredibly usefull....

 

So, basically, you want to use your pc as a tv ?? 2 x 27" LCD monitors would be smaller then your current tv ?? What size tv do you have ?

And I assume you have a hefty spec machine to run it on ?

 

TV is a 24" 4:3 ratio CRT, and as such is big n bulky... A 27" LCD would be smaller in overall size, but give a bigger picture....

Machine spec is 2.8gHz P4, 1.5gb ram, currently on standard on-board gfx card...

 

Although this is not something I've never looked into m8, i'm not sure that spec machine would do what you want it to. You'd need a bigger power supply mainly for the graphics card. As much RAM as physically possible inside the machine. And a lot of hard drive space.

 

I thought I might need a bigger PSU, as the decent cards all seem to have a power plug on them (like you connect to CD drives)

As for ram tho, most of the Media Centre PC's I have looked at only seem to have a max of 1gb RAM, some only having 512mb!!! I could easily slot in another stick of 512mb tho, to bring mine up to 2gb total - can you get 1gb sticks? If so I could run 4gb of ram, which is HUGE....

The only problem thing might be the processor, being a 2.8 with 533mhz FSB and L2 cache, it's not the quickest on the market....

 

That's why I would stock it full of ram m8

 

That said, I was reading the paper today and saw a dell ad in it - they are advertising a PC package that has a dell tower, with a 3.0gHz Celeron D processor (522mhz FSB, L2 cache), 512mb RAM and 80gb drive, and it comes installed with XP Media Centre Edition on it already!

 

I've not got media centre yet, and trying to find out from microsoft what spec machine is required is like getting blood out of a stone

 

Most systems I have seen running on it range from 3.0ghz Celeron D processors with 512mb RAM, to 3.2ghz P4's on 1gb RAM, and most inbetween (P4's with 512mb RAM, Celeron's with 1gb RAM, etc)

Most seem to have fairly decent gfx cards, but I'm guessing that's more than likely for the DVI output...

 

Yeah it will be m8. If it run's on a shonky Intel then any AMD on the market will handle it without even trying