Use of VGA and DVI/HDMI at the same time

[jatkins]

If I connect my Media Centre PC to my plasma TV I get a great PC picture when viewing by VGA at 1024 x 768 for things like browsing the web. When viewing TV, DVD's etc from the PC the picture is quite poor by VGA (not a surprise) but very good when viewing via DVI/HDMI. Text such as web browsing, Windows Explorer etc is almost unreadable when viewing by DVI/HDMI.

Unfortunately on the PC (an Elonex Artisan MCE) I seem to have to reboot and unplug a cable if I want to swap from VGA to DVI/HDMI). If the VGA cable is plugged in, the picture is always via VGA and cannot be swapped to the DVI/HDMI and vice versa.

Does anyone know a way I can use Windows to switch the output between VGA and DVI/HDMI? I'm using Windows 7 but had the same problem with Vista.

Thanks,
John.

 

[Serathu]

You might be able to do it if your graphics card has dual monitor support, which not all necessarily have even if they have two outputs.

In most cases you will have to reboot to allow the adapter to set the feed to whatever out is trying to draw a feed.

I wonder why you have trouble reading anything with a DVI/HDMI....tried adjusting your screen resolution?

 

[jatkins]

Thanks for the reply. In fact I've just ordered a new graphics card so I'll do some more tests when that arrives this week.

My TV (a Pioneer PDP-43??? plasma) is a few years old but still gives a fantastic picture from Sky-HD. Unfortunately its VGA interface was always
rather lacking providing only 1024x768.

I seem to remember the native resolution is 1366x768. I'm pretty sure my current card does not support that but hopefully the new one will. If I can get text to look good over HDMI, I don't need the VGA interface at all.

Having said all this, the main use of the PC will be for web access on the TV but it is a waste not to make use of the dual freeview tuner, DVD drive
and Media Centre software which is great in Windows 7.

John.