Watching Via TV card and Media Player Videos at the Same Time

[Whizbang]

I just discovered this neat trick.  I installed a USB video "card" some time ago while it was attached to the upper USB jack on the front of the computer.  It has always been a bit quirky on that port, but it is the only connection that will now load the card's panel controls.  Once I have it tuned in right, though, that is no problem.  The drivers installed over the standard Microsoft drivers and greatly enhanced the quality to near perfection.

The quirk is that it generally will not reload if I unmount from the controls icon on the taskbar and then remove the card and put it back in later in the same port connection before a reboot.  The onboard sound will return without any problem though.  I decided to use the lower port and found that the controls program will not load, seems to be port specific, but the drivers do, and the USB card works perfectly---->along with the regular onboard sound chip.  That is the neat part.  I can watch and listen to videos with the earphones connected to the one USB port while my wife watches the evening news on the TV card display, just by resizing the two displays on the screen.  The USB card can be pulled at any time from the lower port without unmounting with no problem.  In fact, the taskbar does not even show the presence of a USB device.

Probably one thing that allows this is that the TV card audio cannot be controlled by the onscreen Hauppage display on this Biostar 939 X2 6100 mainboard.  I must use the windows controls.  Another oddity is that I must set the volume on the TV screen before I attach the USB card because the XP sound controls are decoupled and redirected to the USB card.  Confused?  I will let Ace figure it all out and report back.   8)