Possible??

[mediamatt]

Hi,

Thinking of building a new pc with a view to putting it in the front room and use it as a htpc and connect it to my 50" plasma. Also i want to run a monitor cable from the htpc to a second monitor of about 24". Am i right in thinking i could have 1 user on but doing 2 seperate things using 2 seperate displays? Such as the kids could be watching something on xbmc on the plasma whilst i browse on the net on the 24"?

Matt

 

[strumpusplunket]

Yes, this can be done, and I actually do this sometimes on my main PC, which has a second connection leading to the LCD TV in our bedroom.

The only issue is that there can only be one active window/app at the one time that input devices can control. I.E. if I am browsing the net (so the net is the active window on the PC) and the kids try to select another program with the remote, the up/down controls on the remote move my webpages and not the program/film selection on the TV.

Contrariwise, if Media Portal (which I use as my media front-end) is the active window I can't click on my screen without making the browser the active window again (and depriving whoever's using MP of the ability to select/play/pause/etc.). So I have to wait until they've started a program playing before I go back to clicking in the browser - and then give them active control when the program ends for selecting the next one (and they can't pause/stop whilst I have control of the active window).

I don't *think* there's a way around this, as afaik it's not possible to have two active windows (?).

Although I don't find this situation completely unworkable since most episodes last 30 minutes or so, so I can pretty much use the net whilst they watch except for having to give them control of the active window for a minute every half hour.