By cutting edge, I was referring to Windows Vista, not the x850xt....

And I'm sorry, it IS ridiculous that a video card with the power of an x850xt can't do this. There is NO technical reason why it can't. It's not like the GPU is "just too slow" - it all comes down to idiotic design at MS.

Why, exactly can it render 1600x1200 in Oblivion with no trouble, yet can't handle a simple video loop? That has NOTHING to do with how cutting edge the card is.

One of my favorite quotes:

If it can run Oblivion at 3200*1200, then call me throughly impressed. Chances are only a Crossfire X1900+ rig could do that. This is full-motion 24/30p video, and at THAT big a resolution, even Adobe After Effects, a CPU/RAM based software, has issues coding. There probably isn't a frame buffer big enough for 2 screen video support in last-gen (preDX10) cards so they left support out from DS for a while- I presume. It might also be a technical flaw in DirectX Video Acceleration as how the code handles video.

If you really want 2 monitor video just use the VLC Player hack. See how badly it runs and finally disconnect your 2nd doodle.

NGTV: Rendering a video is *nothing* compared to thousands of polygons and shaders. Funny, I can render the Vista desktop in Aero on two screens with no trouble - my point is rendering a desktop *isn't* that much work.

The whole point is that it can't do it NOT because of a lack of horsepower, but because of an idiotic decision by MS to render the ENTIRE wallpaper in a SINGLE texture. This is not necessary in a dual monitor situation, and indeed is a waste of resources. It isn't a horsepower limit that it bumps into doing this, but merely a limit on maximum texture size, that could have EASILY been solved by rendering each desktop seperately. Obviously the DWN already does this - otherwise I wouldn't be able to have an Aero desktop on dual monitors.

Additionally, Stardock has gotten around this issue with dynamic dreams, which are actually more comparable to the Oblivion example, since they are rendered images rather than video loops. With a dynamic dream, I CAN run dual monitors and dreams together. It is merely better programming on Stardock's part. Rendering Desktop Earth is barely even noticeable on my system. There's no reason it couldn't do two screens of video EXCEPT for the decision by MS to use a single texture. Unfortunately, there are currently only TWO dynamic dreams that have been released to the public, and they aren't exactly as easy to create as video loops.

Umm... and WHY would I want to use a VLC player hack???

You should add a coule of computers and get Multiplicity.

Heh... amazing that my $130 Nintendo DS does better dual screen than Windows on a $3,000 computer.

Microsoft has never designed it's multimonitor support for Windows all that well. At least compared to Apple and MacOS (which has supported multi-monitors since the late 80s). I honestly don't think Microsoft takes multimonitor support all that seriously. There is no reason why it should not be possible to display different dynamic content on each seperate monitor you have, be it if you have two, three, four, even seven monitors. As it is, you maximize any window on any monitor, Windows dreamscene will pause. Hmm... I can see why it's still in "beta".

I can create dreamscenes with 3200x1200 and even higher resolutions. Will those run on dual-monitor systems?

No, they won't. Each monitor displays a repeat of the same dream; the dreams are not actually stretched over the entire set of displays - see my post here: Multi Monitor Setups

I have dual monitors, and then I have another pc with duals, it and expensive at all