[jubilex]

I recently switched to XBMC from Meedios and love it; it is far superior in all ways but one, that is unfortunately pretty major for me.

With Meedios, I used an Autohotkey script to identify my monitors (by resolution), and to then start Meedios on, say, my projector (the only 1080p display). The monitor number identified by the script as the projector (or as the PC, the tv, etc) was always correct; that number would work in both Meedios and as a commandline switch for MPC-HC to start those apps on the correct screen.

This doesn't work in XBMC. My script is identifying my tv right now as the 4th monitor; when Meedios and MPC-HC are set to monitor 4, they start on my tv as they should. However, I currently must set XBMC to "Screen #2" to get output on the tv. And unfortunately it is not as simple as adjusting for the variance, because it is not consistent -- with the tv off, for example, another LCD is identified by the script (and Meedios, MPC, etc) as the 2nd monitor, and yet in XBMC it is again "Screen #2" that gets output on that display. At other times getting output on my tv has required me to set XBMC to "Screen #3", with that again not matching the monitor # identified.

This of course carries over to the advancedsettings.xml, which is what I'm actually attempting to use to launch on the appropriate screens. <screen> and the first digit of <screenmode> under <videoscreen> do not correspond in any reliable way to the actual monitor identification.

Can someone tell me what XBMC uses to order its screens and if there is some pattern I'm missing?

[jubilex]

Update: I've tried several other programs that have configuration options that set which monitor to use, or use commandline switches, and all of them match perfectly the monitors identified by my script. XBMC is so far the only exception.

[jubilex]

I think I have figure out that XBMC ignores the Windows monitor assignation numbers that all other programs seem to follow, and it also ignores the monitor names given to each display by Windows (DISPLAY2 etc). It apparently numbers them in order of the hardware configuration; i.e. the primary monitor on the onboard VGA is 1, the tv plugged into the onboard HDMI is 2, the projector on add-on card HDMI is 3, and the LCD on add-on card VGA is 4. But of course these numbers change depending on what is plugged in, so if the tv is turned off, the projector becomes 2 and the LCD 3, etc.

So my neat little Autohotkey script becomes a clumsy mess of ifs and elses, but it seems to be working reliably (for the moment).