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I've been battling for several evenings trying to figure out how I can run XBMC on Ubuntu, with an ATI graphics card connected via DVI to a 1280x1024 monitor and via component video to a 1920x1080 projector. All I want to do is be able to launch XBMC so it displays on the projector.

I have the screens setup (using the Screen Resolution utility), so that both screens are showing the correct resolution. That's a pain in itself, since whenever you launch anything, the window appears on the projector, not on the monitor.

I launch XBMC and in Appearance->Resolution I can scroll through all the xrandr settings for both the monitor and the projector. So I choose COMPONENT_VIDEO 1920x1080. When I do this, XBMC appears to change the display settings to mirrored (vs independent) and all I see is the XBMC display shrunk on both the monitor and projector.

How do I just run XBMC on the 1920x1080 screen? I thought the wmctrl idea here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=36305 might help, but no luck. Seems that there is only one X display (:0.0) even though I have independent outputs to the monitor and projector.

Any help appreciated. I had this running fine on Vista, except the OpenGL approach can't reliably decode HD movies - I was hoping this would work under Linux, but I have more fundamental problems

Anthony

So you just want to have XBMC on one screen and other stuff on the other screen? I think all you need to do is set these up as separate X displays. Should be in the nvidia-settings applet.

What is weird is that it sounds like you have your displays set up to be cloned, but that should not work -- your resolution should be messed up on one screen or the other.

Just to clarify -- you have your projector resolution set to 1920x1080 and your DVI monitor to 1280x1024? What exactly happens when you start XBMC, on each screen? Does XBMC take up the full screen on the projector? How about on the monitor?

jkrellner Wrote:So you just want to have XBMC on one screen and other stuff on the other screen? I think all you need to do is set these up as separate X displays. Should be in the nvidia-settings applet.

Exactly. But I have an ATI card, not Nvidia. And I can't figure out how to get separate displays.

jkrellner Wrote:What is weird is that it sounds like you have your displays set up to be cloned, but that should not work -- your resolution should be messed up on one screen or the other.

Just to clarify -- you have your projector resolution set to 1920x1080 and your DVI monitor to 1280x1024? What exactly happens when you start XBMC, on each screen? Does XBMC take up the full screen on the projector? How about on the monitor?

That's right. When I start XBMC, the logo is split between the screens, then XBMC comes up on both screens. It doesn't fill the screen on either screen. The resolution is set to COMPONENT_VIDEO 1920x1080, but on the projector screen, XBMC just occupies the top left - basically a mirror of what is shown on the LCD monitor.

I'm playing around with xrandr to see if I can get two X displays. I tried creating an xorg.conf as described here http://hobbylobby.wordpress.com/2007/09/...-ati-card/ but the X server doesn't start - I just get garbage on the screen.

Thanks for your help

Quick update. I now have two independent displays. Problem was in xorg.conf, "PCI:1:0:0" needed to be "PCI:1@:0:0". Only issue is that the screen on the 1280x1024 LCD monitor appears to be 1920x1080, so I only see a portion of it.

I can move my mouse to the projector screen and can run XBMC from there. The 1920x1080 full screen setting works. The 1920x1080 29.97Hz setting doesn't work (the display is squashed horizontally).

This is all fine, but I don't want to have the projector on to be able to run XBMC (the component video is connected to a matrix switch that goes to other TVs in the house). And also, once you run it like this, the mouse is captured to that display, rendering the other display useless. So I need to be able to run XBMC from the LCD monitor and move it to the component video display. I've tried wmctrl on the LCD monitor and can't get XBMC to move to the other display. I'm using Ubuntu 8.10.

Anthony