Video on Laptops with Multiple Displays
I can still remember my first trouble shooting call at Cetacean Networks. One of the engineers was distraught because he had a secondary monitor hooked up to his Dell Latitude laptop and could not get video to show on the secondary display. The easy answer was just to watch it on the laptop screen, but I am thankful that we did not settle for that solution. This problem has come up many times over the last few years, especially as I have added projectors to classrooms and teachers have used them to display video clips for the class.
The problem occurs because laptops often have limited video memory. Because of this the laptop will play video on its primary monitor but not on the secondary monitor. When displays are setup in extended mode (not mirrored) video will often play on the primary display but not the secondary. This problem does not occur when the displays are mirrored.
The solution to the problem is to switch the primary and secondary monitors using the graphics properties. How this is done can vary by manufacturer but can generally be found by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Graphics Properties. Look for the options for primary and secondary display and set the display that you’d like to show your video on to primary.
If you’ve found other solutions to this problem let us know in the comments.
video, Windows