How to get two monitors and a TV running off a Mac Pro

[RyanDean]

Hi All,

We have the latest Mac Pro in the office and we're trying to run two monitors from it as well as a TV (for client playback).

The TV has HDMI in as well as VGA in.

The Mac Pro has two mini-displayports out and a DVI out. So there are three separate outputs on the Mac Pro for visuals.

The computer has no problem outputting two feeds but it will not output a third feed. Having done some preliminary research it appears that we needed an active adapter to get the third TV running. We duly bought one of these only to find that hasn't fixed the problem.

Does anyone know the best setup to achieve the two editing monitors as well as the third viewing television. Does an DVI to HDMI active adapter exist in the world? Does anyone know where I might be able to buy one?

Any help anyone can offer would be much appreciated, I'm going out of my mind!

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[George Tsai]

Theres a ton of options depending on your budget and what you'd like to achieve. There are DVI to HDMI adapters, and you can throw in there an active DVI or HDMI splitter and that'll get you cloned screen. Or get something like the Matrox triplehead2go (http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/displayport/) and that will extend your desktop size to your TV. Or you can do what I prefer, which is throw another graphics card in there, or two, depending on how many monitors you want to extend

 

[RyanDean]

Will a splitter work if a monitor is displaying 1920x1200 and the TV can display a maximum of 1920x1080?

 

[George Tsai]

Most cases you will have to use the resolution that fits both, whichin your case it will be 1920x1080 and you wiill get black bars on the higher resolution monitor.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The video card is only going to support two displays can be active at a time.

Best thing to do is to run dual displays off the video card's mini displayport connectors. Then run a client / playback monitor out of a separate monitoring and capture card. If you don't mind one of the outputs being the same, as in having the client monitor and your secondary display showing the same thing, you can use a DVI splitter as you guys have mentioned. However, you will have to run a common resolution between the two and TV's and monitors don't always play nice that way. Try it, it might work.

 

[Bryant Swanstrom]

I got three to work off the built in video card by using 2x of the active adapters for my 27" NEC and my 20" Apple Cinema Display and one DVI to HDMI adapter. At that point though you can buy another video card...

 

[RyanDean]

I'm finding it so incredibly frustrating! The Mac Pro is made in such a way that running three screens from it is also impossible.

I've had an idea, what if we bought an Apple TV and ran the screen share thing, would that get us the desired effect?

Ryan

 

[Marc Wielage]

I would get a video display card that supported HD-SDI, then run that to one monitor and loop the HD-SDI out to a second monitor. Done. Loop through again if you want a third monitor.

HDMI is problematic.

 

[RyanDean]

We aren't able to put another card into our Mac Pro as we have a graphics acard and RED Rocket in there. Is there a graphics card we could buy to replace the one that came with our Mac Pro that is natively powerful enough to run three screens directly from it?