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I was "gifted" a 19-inch HD flatscreen TV, I think it's usable as a 2nd monitor. How can I tell if my Nvidia card is dual-screen capable? And which type cable is best? There's what looks-like an output plug on the back of my HP monitor to daisy-chain them.

(Signed) Technical Idiot

Best bet is to see if your video card has an available HDMI output to connect to the TV. If not next best option would be a DVI connection, and last option would be an VGA15. The last 2 options are not too common on TV's. You also could probably do a HDMI to DVI connection with an adapter if you only have one port on one device and one port of the other type on the other device.

Even if the monitor is actually capable of video signal passthru output (not too common on monitors), I don't think the monitor could be daisy chained to the TV for sending a second separate video signal as you can't configure Nvidia drivers for such a connection. The output is probably for sending the HDMI passthru signal to an external audio/video processor like a home theater receiver.

If you need more help shoot us a pic of the backs of the comp and the TV and monitor and can give you your best options.

Hi Ted,

Is the TV a 720P or a 1080P? If it is the latter, then it will make a decent monitor, but if it is the former, it will be of limited use.

It's a 1080 HD.

It looks like my graphics card as one HDMI and one DVI port. My HP monitor has both inputs. Maybe I'll switch the HDMI to the TV, and the DVI to the HP monitor, and see if it works. I'm probably going to have the tower-box cracked-open this Spring anyway to replace a cooling fan (and vac-out the cat fur), I was thinking about upgrading the vid-card anyway. Most "better" Nvidia cars have dual HDMI ports...

What I really want to try is that huge touchscreen 27" Dell Canvas. I printed out the Manuals to get a better idea of how it works. Unfortunately I haven't found any cogent reviews of the Canvas from Datacad or Sketchup Pro users yet...

The DVI and HDMI use the same digital video signal basically, so the quality should be the same all other things equal. Putting the HDMI to the TV "should" allow you to send audio to the TV over the HDMI as your windows default audio output if you want to toss a video to the TV if the video card was made in the last decade or so.