How-to: Run Windows Vista’s Media Center on a MIMO Monitor

My latest chore: run Windows Media Center on the previously-mentioned MIMO Monitor in order to watch TV while I work.

As simple as that sounds, Windows Media Center has a few pitfalls of its own. I was unable to get any kind of image show up when I dragged the window on to the monitor except in full screen mode.

So what’s the fix?

In Windows Vista, the fix is simple: enable the Windows Aero theme. Why? The theme forces 3D acceleration across multiple monitors at the same time to run the various visual effects like transparency. Since Windows Media Center runs on DirectX’s DirectShow, this allow it to use acceleration on both monitors, enabling video display in windowed mode.

The downside? You still can’t go fullscreen without it capturing your mouse, and running the theme can be harder on your machine. You can, however, resize the window to stretch the entire screen, mimicking the fullscreen function, or look into many of the freely available applications to do the trick for you. If the theme makes your system chug, try and remove the transparency feature seen below.