[devanl]

Hello,

I'm trying to use a USB video adapter to display the video output for XBMC. I'm running on to a problem with the one I have (DisplayLink) and I suspect this is because it does not support Direct3D functionality.

Why a USB adapter you ask? I plan to have XBMC running on a Virtual Machine on a central server. This virtual machine will then use gigabit-ethernet-USB bridges to connect to the USB video device in a another room on the LAN. I have the video link working, but no Direct3D support

I suppose there are probably two ways to solve this. First is there a way to run XBMC without using Direct3D? Otherwise can anyone recommend a USB video adapter which does support Direct3D?

Thanks,
Devan

[Nicero]

Hi,

I'm having the same issue. My configuration is the following: my Shuttle barebone is running Windows XP and is connected to it's monitor via USB (Kensington Displaylink DL-195), the Shuttle's DVI video output is connected to my plasma TV via HDMI (with a DVI-HDMI converter).

I setup the Shuttle's monitor as the primary monitor (in this way I have the taskbar and the system tray bar) and the TV as secondary monitor.

I would like to have XBMC playing on the TV while Windows' desktop is still visible and working on the PC monitor.

As you, I noticed that XBMC will not run on the monitor connected via USB. I get the error "CApplication::Create failed", actually due to the fact that the displaylink driver does not support DirectX as explained at Displaylink's web site: http://www.displaylink.com/support/ticket.php?id=259.

This issue happens because I launch XBMC on the monitor connected via USB instead of the monitor connected throught the PC's video output.

At the moment, to work around this issue I installed on top of the Displaylink driver the Ultramon utility that has some handy features as the possibility to execute the applications on a given monitor and to write VBS scripts to do similar but complex tasks.

I tried to use Ultramon commands to execute XBMC on the secondary monitor, but up to know without success. It seems that Ultramon first starts the application on the monitor from which the applications has been clicked and then it moves it to the other monitor. Someone says that XBMC will work via USB video in window mode but not in full screen mode. I tried this too, but it did not work.
Ultramon has an other feature, it may switch a monitor off. At the moment this appears to be a working solution. I setup Ultramon so that when XBMC link is clicked the primary (USB) monitor is switched off. This forces the secondary monitor to become primary and XBMC is executed on the TV. Unfortunately to restore the switched monitor you need to setup again the dual display configuration. To automate this I think is needed a script that I have to work out.
Moreover, I was thinking about an other way to exchange primary monitor with secondary monitor when I want to run XBMC. Ultramon can handle different 'profiles'. A profile is a dual display configuration. One profile could be: monitor A = primary, monitor B = secondary. A second profile would be monitor B = primary, monitor A = secondary.

Let me know your tests.

[devanl]

Thanks for the link. It looks like the first problem may be that I'm running in Windows XP which they are saying they do not support Direct3D within (although I had expected it to be more a function of DriectX than the OS).

I had gone to XP because a lot of people are having trouble with the DisplayLink software working in Windows 7. Maybe Windows Vista will be the "sweet spot"?

Thanks,
Devan

[Nicero]

Following my previous post, I SOLVED the issue installing Windows 7. Now I can see the desktop on the USB connected monitor and meanwhile have XBMC running full screen on the TV connected to my PC video output via DVI-HDMI. I did not use Ultramon or any other multimonitor management software.

For who cares my madiacenter PC is a not recent Shuttle X100 http://us.shuttle.com/X100.aspx to which I changed the processor to an Intel T7200 dual core 2Ghz, 2 Gb RAM. The graphic card is an ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 that up to now does it's job. http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/...specs.aspx .