Have you ever wanted to use multiple video projectors for more of an environmental design and wondered how you'd easily manage the images for those projectors? Or simply wish you could treat multiple projectors or displays as one large display? I did recently, wanting to treat two video projectors (normally projecting the same video feed) at the left and right edges of a stage as one wide screen in order to use it for scenic projection for a theatrical production. And with the recommendation of another local church, we took a look at the Matrox DualHead2Go adapter.
The DualHead2Go is a fairly simple device that connects between one VGA output of your computer and your video displays or projectors. It takes those multiple output devices, and presents them as one extra-wide display device to the computer. For example, we connected two projectors running at 1024x768 to the outputs of the DualHead2Go, and the computer saw them as one display, 2048x768 in size.
This means that any media software (such as PowerPoint, Media Shout, etc. …) can now easily work with both projectors as one unit. To create graphics for it, you simple create images or videos that are the full 2048x768 in size, and the Matrox unit divides them in half, sending the correct half to each projector.
The output devices must be running in the same resolution—two different resolutions are not supported.
For our environment, we used the DualHead2Go alongside a VGA-to-CAT5 extender solution. For this to work properly, the extender needs to communicate the EDID (extended display identification data—information sent by a digital display system like a projector that contains information, such as supported display resolutions) information from the projector back to the DualHead2Go. At first the setup software didn't “see” the projectors, but with a little fiddling, we successfully got it set up. It worked flawlessly, and it was so much easier to handle the two screens as one unit. The alternative would have been attempting to control and coordinate those two displays separately through two computers, as most available presentation software only expects a single display for the presentation. For environmental projection, this is a cool system.
If you need or desire to treat multiple screens as one display unit, the Matrox DualHead2Go is well worth a look. The “Digital” edition, which we evaluated for this review, has DVI outputs and an MSRP of $229. An “Analog” edition (with 15-pin VGA output connectors) lists for $169; and the “Display Port” edition lists for $239.
And if you want to treat three displays/projectors as one display, Matrox also has a TripleHead2Go product available.
