3 TVs & 1 PC All Connecting Together

[Matty.]

Right this is a real tricky one ive been given the job and kinda confused about it all

In a school they have three tvs around the place all with CAT6 cable running from them back to a PC in an office,

TV 3 has been running for months just displaying notices etc

However we put in the cables for TV 1&2, you can get VGA > CAT6 adapters thats cool for the tv end, but for the PC end what their actually wanting to do is show different messages on tv 1&2 to whats on TV 3

Whats needed to do this?

Probalbly confused the hell out of people now

[HAIRBear]

a dumbed down suggestion lol here goes.

surely the office has various computers...why dont you link tv 3 upto another computer if u want something differant on it? ..or have a missed something there lol

[Matty.]

Nah its one PC they've got purposely for this

They'd like the idea of having the tvs on the network so they can put whatever they want on it though

[HAIRBear]

ahh i knew you would of thought of that if it was a possible solution haha

and in that case....im out lol

[northwick]

You need more than one graphics card in the computer, I'd imagine. The cards you get will have to have drivers that will support several monitors.

[Matty.]

The idea i had was obviously at the PC end there needs to be CAT6 > VGA converter box, if there was a type of box with multiple ports and through software you can select each port and select what screen goes to where etc

[IDGM]

I have a dual head graphics card in my work PC (it just has it) and can use each connected screen for different things, but they make up one 'desktop'. I'd have thought I could enable the on board graphics adapter too and run three screens and run three Powerpoint presentations simultaneously.

[Unheard]

You need an aditional graphics card port for each seprate content / desktop you want on the display. So if you want 1 and 2 the same they can use one graphics port split so they are the same monitor split one being a clone of the other. For tv 3 you need it as a separate desktop meaning it needs to be on a second graphics port so you can have different content running on the first or second desktop depending on what you want as the main desktop.

Virtually all graphics cards now have 2 graphics ports on them either 2x DVI or 1X DVI and a VGA you can go either way with adaptors though. Either VGA to DVI or

DVI to VGA is no problem, I assume the TVs are flat panels and have VGA as your talking about that so essentially will act as a monitor and not a TV.

(you can get USB graphics cards if you really need to but don't expect them to be fantastic)

To take a VGA over CAT6e you need a VGA ehternet extender http://www.pixels.uk.com/products.... You will need a a sender and receiver for each tv/monitor. Or depending

on how far they are apart monitor 1 & 2 signal could be split ones in the pavilion requiring only one sender receiver and one cat6e. you can get multi VGA senders

that will split but they still require a receiver at each end and a 4 way one would be the least you would get most likely costing more than just individual senders

To get the content onto the screens you will need to have some way of viewing both screens side by side as the tool bar will only be on one desktop. You could have

monitors at the computer many VGA to ethernet sender boxes have a vga outpot port on the sender box for local screens. That would be the most simple thing to do.

To do it over the network you would need to be using some form of remote desktop. there are 2 issues i can see with this first most remote desktop programs will log out the real screens and you have to log back in that would still require you to be at the computer if you wanted something back on screen. Multi desktop may also be an issue i have never connected via remote desktop to a computer running multi desktops, I run 2 monitors but have never needed to connect to it since i have had this setup.

gotomypc.com will allow you to remote assist someone and i believe you can be connected to a computer and it will not log the user out or take them to the log on screen they can watch everything you are doing. That would be handy as on exit the screen would still be viable and not require you to log back in at the pc.

You come into more issues if you want 2 videos on screen that need to be played by a media player. You will need 2 separate media players. For example WMP and VLC as you cannot have multi copies of the same program running. Sound is another issue for independant sound you need 2 sound cards and then there is the problem with telling each program what sound card to use. You simply cannot do it on most programs things like Skype are fine as they are setup to have that function but most are not. The way round this would be to use a virtual pc running on the second desktop. you get a USB sound card and port that usb to the virtual pc so it picks it up and uses the sound card like a regular computer would. That also gives you freedom to use what ever program you like so WMP could be playing the contend on each screen as they are essentially now 2 computers.

Of cause you can get nettop computers for peanuts now with good powerfull graphics cards so it begs the question why not have 2 individual computers closer to the screens. If they want to acsess them via the network it would make things a lot more easy as they don't have multi screens to worry about when logging on via remote desktop. for screen 1 & 2 you may still need a vga over Ethernet extenderif the distance between the screens is to far but it will be a shorter run the before and a shorter run will always be better the quality wise. The longer the run the more the quality degrades even on the sender boxes. You can find it ends up having to run at 800x600 or something stupid like that.

There is always a way to achieve what you want but its not always the most logical way or cost effective in the long run. Schools / Colleges always appear to set up IT in an illogical way. They then complain when it is not working how they wanted. If you are setting something up and don't believe it is a good way of doing it yet they insist it is indeed how they want it done then make it very clear where you stand on the situation. My experience with schools is that they love to insist on doing thing one way but blame others when its not working.

Edited September 11, 2009 by Unheard

[Matty.]

Thanks alot Unhead, think ive got a grip on what to do with it all now

Will post back here tomorrow or sunday to confirm what ive gathered up is correct

Thanks