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[Nicholas Bailey]

Anyone seen this.  New Dell Windows 7 PC running Easy Worship. The video cards hdmi connector runs the local monitor. The dvi-i connects to a kramer vp400 splitter VGA that drives two projectors, a lcd monitor, and a scan converter sending video to the television ministry.

When they play videos through Easy Worship the projectors go black and lose signal for a second then regain sign every now and then.  It may do it several times a Sunday or may work great for weeks.

They have the computer on a good UPS, and Dell tech has checked all internal settings and drivers. The computer will not fail in another room driving a single vga monitor.

I have never seen a PC do this.

I look forward to any suggestions.

[TonyWilliams]

Does the blackout happen only in EasyWorship, or when anything from the computer is on the projector? What is the cable lengths? It sounds to me like the sync is getting lost somewhere.


- Tony Williams

[Nicholas Bailey]

It will drop the video using other programs like windows media player playing videos dragged onto the extended desktop.   It always come right back.  It will just flash to black then back.  The vgas cables to the projectors are I would guess 100 to 125 feet, but they are a low grade molded cable.  Before the new PC was installed, the system was a old PC being feed to a kramer scaler (think it was a 719 maybe) to the projectors.

I cannot explain why it comes back on so fast.  It definately could be the cable though.

[Milt Hathaway]

Is it possible that--being a new PC--you have a system-wide resolution set (in Display control panel) for the external monitor, and EasyWorship is forcing a different external monitor resolution when it comes up? I've seen this before with some apps.

[Gustaf Kempe]

Some pc:s have a lower voltage on the vga port (3 Volts) some have better (5 Volts). Running a 100ft cable on a pc with 3 Volt outs on the vga (which I know a lot of Dells have) is probably your problem. Take a short cable to your vga-split and then 2 longer cables for the projectors. The split will probably provide a stronger signal.

[Nicholas Bailey]

It is wired with a 6 foot cable from the pc to the kramer vp400 distro amp. The projectors connect to the vp400.

[Brad Weber]

Perhaps the EDID from the local monitor or one of the other connected devices is setting the video output settings to something that the projectors do not fully support.

Another possibility is that I believe the VP-400K is pretty much a simple Distribution Amplifier rather than a line driver, in other words it splits the signal and compensates for the associated losses from the split but is not necessarily amplifying the signal to drive long runs.  Even if it worked in the past that could still be relevant because if the new computer is outputting a higher resolution signal then the resulting greater signal bandwidth may experience greater cable losses.

The first thing I would try is to manually set the computer to output the native resolution of the projectors and probably with a 60Hz refresh rate.

[Nicholas Bailey]

I am troubleshooting this through calls and email.  The PC is set to the native of the projector.  I am thinking that it maybe a edid issue caused by the LCD and the projectors not being the same native resolution.  I have asked them to disconnect the lcd that is output 3 of the vp400 and see if it will drop signal.

Thanks for the replys.

Nick

[Nicholas Bailey]

I just recieved a email back from them.  I had them try different combinations of what was connected to the Disto amp and see if they could come up with a combo that did work and a combo that did not work.  The report I got it would always fail if a projector is connected to output 1, but if that port was not used it would not fail.  Apparently output 1 is the one that it sends edid info back to the pc.  From their testing Windows 7 must make many many check for edid, maybe even each time a video is played.  My thoughts is that 100 cable causes it to recieve the edid some of the time, but not all the time.  That distro does have a id bit switch on it to turn that feature off.  I did not think about edid because the projector was showing up in the display settings.

Just something to be aware.