The One "Feature" of Windows Media Player That Just Has to Go...

[Jason Dunn]

Excuse me while I rant. There's one "feature" in Windows Media Player that absolutely, positively sucks and creates the most nightmarish consumer scenarios imaginable. The "feature" in question? The copyright protection scheme inflicted upon consumers when they try to play video files through a secondary video source. I believe this was implemented to protect the all-important movie studios, <i>but there has to be a better way</i>. I have two good examples of how this causes frustration.<br /><br />The first is when I was setting up a computer a couple of years ago at the church I attend. It had a dual-VGA out Matrox video card, and I envisioned being able to play DVDs on our huge wall screens from the PC. It was set up in such a fashion that the primary monitor was the local display, and the secondary monitor was the signal that was routed through the black box that sent the signal up to the projector. Imagine my surprise, and outright anger, when I realized that Windows Media Player 9 would only display a black box on the secondary monitor. DVDs? Forget about it. I think there are software DVD players on the market that will display on a secondary monitor source, but we ended up just purchasing a stand-alone DVD player and bypassing the computer entirely because it was so troublesome.<!><br /><br /><span><b>Oh The Agony...</b></span><br />The second scenario is more recent, and has more sting. I spent five hours helping a friend of my wife's with a school project - ripping short clips from DVDs, encoding them to Windows Media Video files (WMV), and embedding the clips inside a PowerPoint presentation. It was a painstaking process (the software I was using to rip had inaccurate time markers, so we had to "rip wide" and do another post-edit pass), but once I was finished it worked perfectly: we had large 640 x 480 video clips embedded in the PowerPoint, and as soon as the slide loaded they'd start to play. Beautiful! <br /><br />I wasn't there when she started her presentation, but it was on a laptop connected to a project, and both the laptop and projector screen were active at the same time. Guess what happened? The video would only play on the laptop screen, and showed up black on the video projector screen. :?: If was there, I would have tried to toggle the laptop into a projector-only mode, but I'm not sure that would have worked. Can you imagine the frustration level she must have experienced in seeing the video on the laptop screen, but nothing on the projector screen? What possible explanation can there be for creating such a broken scenario?<br /><br /><span><b>So what's the deal here?</b></span><br />Is this a copyright punishment "feature" like I think it is, or is this a technical limitation? I haven't tried these scenarios with Windows Media Player 10 beta, but I have a hunch nothing has changed. But boy, does it ever need to change - things like this should just work. What you see on one screen you should see on the other screen, no exceptions.<br /><br /><b>UPDATE:</b> I'm not one of those people who's afraid to admit when he was wrong, because I believe you can learn from every mistake. And oh boy, was I ever wrong on this one. 8O It turns out that the limitations I'm ranting about are related to the video drivers being unable to drive multiple instances of the overlaid video. My apologies to Microsoft for assuming it was their problem - guess I should have done some more research before ranting. Now about those goofy video drivers that need improvement... :twisted:

[Doug Johnson]

Most of this has to do with the 'overlay' feature of the video card / driver. The overlay for video playback can only appear on one monitor at a time, and the playing application, and the driver, have to be multi-monitor aware to work properly, and as the video window is moved from one monitor to another, the playing application must change which monitor the overlay is sent to. Windows Media Player actually does this. You may have been running into a limitation of the video driver, or possibly the 3rd-party DVD component installed into WMP.

I don't believe its a copyright issue. The only restrictions I am aware of are that software DVD players aren't supposed to output DVD video to devices that don't support Macrovision copy protection, but on unprotected content (such as a WMV file), this doesn't apply. I also believe (personal belief here, no real facts to back it up), that VGA display devices can't support macrovision, so this restriction only applies to S-Video, Composite, and Component Video connections, not VGA, xVGA or DVI.

I personally have used Windows Media Player to output video to second, third, fourth, or even fifth monitors without any problems.

If nothing else, you can always disable hardware acceleration under Display Properties / Settings / Advanced / Troubleshoot. Just move the Hardware Acceleration slider all the way to the left.

Here's a screenshot showing a DVD playing on a 2nd monitor in Windows Media Player:
http://www.thebaseonline.com/DVDon2ndWindow.png

[Jason Dunn]

Doug,

Thanks for the background - that would explain some of the inconsistancies in what I've seen. I used my P5010D to output some WMV files and they were displaying on both the laptop screen and the projected image...

Ok, now I feel like an idiot. :oops: :lol:

[Mojo Jojo]

You can also just turn off the overlays in windows player and leave the video acceleration on for the rest of the OS.

Open WMP/Tools/Options/Performance then click the advanced button under video acceleration. On this screen you can remove overlays.

[Kacey Green]

yes, I've had this work perfectly on multi-mon pc's all the way up from win 98 to XP SP1 all running WMP 9, nary a problem, my own pc isn't yet multi monitor, but I occaisonally move it out to the living room to watch whatever, sometimes even DVDs W?BIC (we have a DVD player in the living room)

[TomB]

Jason, I hate Microsoft's DRM too. However, it sounds like you are going beyond what is fair use, at least in the USA. Take a look at any DVD you own and want to project in public whether for free of fee. It clearly says it is for home use only. Yes you can show that DVD or DVD clip in a public place but that assumes you have paid for a license to do so. They are cheap and there are special low cost arrangements for churches and schools, but basically speaking you can't exhibit another person's work without their permission. That would be like ME publishing the "Best Of Jason Dunn" to send to the wired members of my Church.

"But I see free stuff all over the place." No you don't. The background music at McDonald's is paid for. The free movies in the park are paid for. The song sang at the ballpark by the local church group is paid for. If there were no payments for creative works, artists and their publishers would starve because that is how they earn their living.