Connecting a 2nd Display (my LCD TV) to PC

[atrus]

Right well, I have my PC at one end of the room and my LCD TV at the other and set about trying to get the PC to display to both monitor and TV.

I bought a 10m VGA cable, and a Y-Shape VGA Splitter. But problems!

VGA cable works if I change my desktop to 1024x720, turn off PC, connect 10m Cable and turn back on. So can watch Lost on the couch. yay. But thats a bit cumbersome.

Connecting the VGA splitter causes the LCD TV still to display the picture, but the monitor cannot find a stable picture, so just continually turns itself off. I'm guessing this is becuase the 2 displays have different refresh rates/resolutions.

Ok, so my question is, is there a way around this? And, what is the cheapest way to do what I'm trying to do? (some kind of VGA switch box?)

[EvilBoris]

What graphics card have you got?, I know my Nvidia ones has quite extensive options into hooking up 2 displays, it even has specific HDTV settings.

[atrus]

Got the ATI X800 GT, which seems to have some amount of multiple monitor support, but surely it can't output two different resolutions down the same VGA cable? Need some kind of hardware solution?

[EvilBoris]

ah I see, My card has dual outputs and can have a different refresh rate and resolution on each screen. But obviously I need to have 1 cable from PC to moniter and 1 cable from PC to LCD