I just received my new Dell W2606C monitor and so far am pretty happy with it. One thing so far that has me worried, when I go to play a DVD for example.

The picture on the 26" is a little choppy. Kind of like having slower FPS in a game. Nothing unbearable, but just not as good as when I view the DVD on the laptops monitor. Are there some settings I need to tweak?

Also, when I go to play Oblivion (for example) it works great on both my laptops monitor AND on the 26" at the same time. But if I go to play a DVD, it plays fine on my laptop's monitor, but only shows the frame and a black picture on the 26". Unless of course I set the 26" as the primary monitor, then the opposite happens. I can see the picture on the 26" but not on my laptop's monitor. Odd? Why is it fine on BOTH for games but not DVDs?

Laptop's graphics card is a geforce GO 7800GTX 256mb. I am using the DVI-I output (single link) to the 26" and running them both at 1280 x 1024 (even though my laptop can support up to 1680×1050)

Thanks in advance!

So can you play DVDs on the external monitor or not? Are the images on the monitors mirrored (the same) or different?

if your monitor is an LCD, you'll need to run it at its native resolution when watching movies as the screen changes too often. Otherwise it has to work extra hard to keep up.

@Nodsu: yes, I can play DVDs on the 26". Just the performance is kind of choppy. I have them mirrored.

I have some interactive DVDs that I am hoping to play for clients once and a while. So I need to be looking at my notebook's screen while the clients are looking at the 26".

But the problem is, (even though I have them mirrored), I can not see DVDs on both screens. Whichever is set as the "primary monitor" shows the dvd, the other just shows a black screen inside the player. If I switch the other monitor to "primary" the same thing happens, the secondary monitor doesn't show the DVD. It just shows blackness inside the movie player.

@Tedster: I will turn down the resolution further, and see if that doesn't fix up the performance for me. It is an LCD HDTV, with a native resolution of 1366 x768 @60Hz.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/lcd_w2607c?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Thanks to both of you for the input.

Try turning off video overlays in the media player settings to get video on both screens. Looks like the vid card is able to do overlay on only one output. The performance may become even worse though.

Nope. No love. Turned off video overlays on two different players (Windows Media Player and WinDVD). Can only play a DVD on one monitor at a time. Grrrrr.

Hmm.. Maybe try a player that is not written by someone sucking up to the entertainment industry? Something like BSPlayer or VLC?

Is the display mirrored by some special software or is it something that the graphics card does by itself?

I'll do a search for the player you mention and give it a try.

I have the display mirrored using the XP settings for the 7800GTX card properties. There is the "display wizard" and the "TV wizard" that sets it all up. I have done it manually as well, and selected the "mirror" option. Actually, I think they call it "clone" in the windows settings.