How to watch a movie on 6 computer screens?

[Bradster]

Is there some sort of software package out there or something, some cheap solution to allow me to watch a movie across 6 screens? When I say display I mean spread the picture across all of them, not the entire picture on each monitor.

I’ve seen hardware with my research to do it; I found computers with a lot of display cards in it. But that’s not what I’m looking for.

I ask because I’m replacing my CRT monitors and will have a nice wall of LCD monitors. Would be nice to be able to utilize them all to watch a movie.

[Bradster]

Something important I forgot to note these monitors are all hooked up to a machine. So make that 6 Monitors and 6 machines.

There must be some way to "broadcast" a movie across the network and scale it across all the monitors. Question is how :shock:

[Bradster]

Once I get my new machine I plan to convert my one system to Linux, to learn it. Perhaps that program might work out great if I can learn how to use it.

The other link, looks pretty hard but it something for me to play with, if I ever do get this working I’ll let you guys know.

Any other software anyone knows of to play with?

[Bradster]

Found something Windows based that might just do the trick!

http://www.maxivista.com/

I'll see what it can do afterwork

[Xzin]

VLC can do this if you cleverly setup broadcasting and define rendering areas. Might also need to set sync or delays. There is also a videowall feature. Oh, and VLC is free and multiplatform.

Or you could do it on 1 machine.

What uhhh resolutions are you running there? Even full HD is only 2 megapixels or so. (720p is only 1 MP).

A 17" monitor at 1280 x 1024 is 1.3 MP or so. It would be watchable but why? Bezels alone would be a huge distraction.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Note that no Windows software tool currently available will clone DirectX hardware-accelerated surfaces onto a non-native device context. Not one that I know of, at any rate. The multihead solutions are the only ones I'm aware of that do what you're talking about.

On the other hand, with fast enough systems and considering you would really only need 1/6th the bandwidth (something like 640x600 for HD) you might just have the bandwidth to do it with a good quality gigabit switch and some sort of software render-multiplexer, if such an animal exists.

If it helps, this article has the data rates for various formats, which will give you some idea for how whatever implementation you choose will have to divy up the data. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/UnderstandingHDFormats.aspx

I would guess that this could be fairly easily done with a distributed media player, though I shiver at the thought of trying to keep those things in sync. Hard enough to do that with 'em all on the same box. :D

[Xzin]

I ask because I’m replacing my CRT monitors

Hah! I knew you would give in!

[Bradster]

Pretty interesting directions I have now to try. I have all week to fool with it while I wait for my new machine.

I can't give you a picture as I have not received my new monitors yet but heres what were looking at

6 monitor wall 17"'s on the outside 22" wide screens in the middle.

I watch a lot of compressed Divx (Torrent downloads) that are movies compressed to 500m-1g so a lot quality has already been lost.

And yes Xzin I gave in. :lol:

Thanks guys i'll let you know how I make out. Possible pictures later (end of the week I expect them )