Dual monitor - XBMC in one and the video on another
#1
Hi all, greetings from Brazil!

I just got an HP DV5-1140 notebook to plug on my LG Time machine. I also want no listen to music without having to turn on my TV to operate XBMC. Is it possible to have XBMC on the notebook screen while the video playback goes to TV?

Thanks!
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#2
I'll second this request - it would be nice if you could play video to screen #2 but have all the menus to go to screen #1 so an audience wouldn't have to see you finding the files.
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#3
Not a bad idea.
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#4
Think about it in a client-server sort of way. XBMC will never directly support two monitors. What we do support, however, is an excellent event server interface that multiple client programs can make use of.

* Put XBMC on monitor 2 and put Firefox on monitor 1. Browse to 127.0.0.1 and use the builtin web interface's browser to choose your music/video file to play
* Use the Anroid/iPhone app to the same effect. Now, you're doing the same thing wirelessly from your couch
* Do both of these at the same time if you're really badass Wink
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#5
not going to happen.
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#6
garbear Wrote:* Put XBMC on monitor 2 and put Firefox on monitor 1. Browse to 127.0.0.1 and use the builtin web interface's browser to choose your music/video file to play

Can I do that with my remote?

Also, think about some HTPC cases, where you have a usually small touch front-LCD to operate it. You dont want the movies playing on that....
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#7
You also don't want xbmc on that. Last time I checked, 10 foot interfaces designed for remotes don't scale down to 5" touch screens too well.

Dual monitor support is outside the scope of xbmc. Would it fix your problem if you put your notebook in Clone Monitor mode and simply had xbmc on both screens?
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#8
Question 
garbear Wrote:You also don't want xbmc on that. Last time I checked, 10 foot interfaces designed for remotes don't scale down to 5" touch screens too well.
Isn't that a matter of skin?

garbear Wrote:Dual monitor support is outside the scope of xbmc.
Why is that? What a surprise! Is there any other MC able to do that? It seems a pro killer feature to me.

garbear Wrote:Would it fix your problem if you put your notebook in Clone Monitor mode and simply had xbmc on both screens?
Partly, because when watching a moovie I'd have two playing screens....
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#9
I spend the last 3 days searching for information on exactly this feature. Wink

My motivation behind the search was: I got a beamer that I would want to use for livetv and video output only. But I don't want to switch it on, when someone wants to select another music to listen to.
So my thought was to buy a MiMo 7" USB touchscreen to place on top of the htpc and use that as a "internal remote control" - sure using the website was my first thought, too, but the xbmc interface is a much nicer eye candy than the webinterface (at least with the default skin).

Guess I need to work around this by searching for a webinterface that suits my design-needs ... or create one myself.

BUT ... perhaps ... some day ... someone with real coding skills (compared to mine) might want to look into this?



EDIT: will have a look into http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=102772 as was suggested by joethefox in the next post. Thanks for the hint.
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#10
ZyanKLee Wrote:Guess I need to work around this by searching for a webinterface that suits my design-needs ... or create one myself.

BUT ... perhaps ... some day ... someone with real coding skills (compared to mine) might want to look into this?

This satisfies your taste? .: Xbmc Web Control :. skin based on Confluence theme

It's still in beta stage, but look promising.
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#11
Hello,

sorry for posting in such an old thread. I am really interested into displaying the playback output onto the second screen while keeping xbmc on the first one as control interface. So i am asking if there was any progress made on this in the last 3 years?

Is it even possible to implement it into xbmc without messing with a big code rewrite?

Thanks for your efford,
axe312
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#12
no work has been done in this direction AFAIK. It's an edge case usage, and one could simply clone the screens or use one of the various tablet/smartphone remotes to remote control it without screen
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#13
+1 This would be a cool feature
Now can be partially achieved with a web interface
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#14
Hi.

What I'd like is something similar. I have a computer and a video card with one HDMI and one DVI outputs. I'd like Kodi to be displayed on the DVI head while showing some kind of a controlling interface on the HDMI head, which is in fact a 7" touch screen. There is no keyboard nor mouse attached, not even an infrared/wireless remote.

I'd like in fact both monitors to be independent and use the HDMI touch screen as a controlling interface (with touch gestures and a virtual keyboard such as onboard or Florence) for Kodi. What I certainly want to avoid is Kodi to switch to the touch screen when the DVI monitor is turned off. Can it be done? If yes, can I have some hints?

I'll be running Kodi on a computer either with Gentoo Linux (my favourite distro since 2004), OpenELEC or Debian, my definitive choice is not yet made.

Thanks in advance for any hint or suggestion.
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#15
Make sure to not blank out second screens in Kodi's settings and then just use the smaller screen for a web browser interface to control Kodi. Use something like the Chorus web interface add-on.
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