Vista - Samsung DLP via VGA as second monitor?

I apologize for my newbie-ness, but I have what I think is a simple question, and I haven't had any luck finding info.

I'm going to be purchasing a HP A6554F machine with a PCI-Ex16 slot running Vista Ultimate 64 bit. What I want is this: I have a Samsung DLP HDTV that I want to use as a second monitor for the purposes of viewing video. The VGA specs from the manual are as follows:

Mode: VESA
Resolution: 1920x1200RB
Vertical Hz: 59.885
Horizontal Hz: 74.556
Vertical polarity: P
Horizontal polarity: N

I have a dinky 17" LCD (VGA only) that I want to continue using as a normal PC monitor; it's 1280x1024. I am not a gamer, there will be no games played on this machine (other than Minesweeper or Solitaire ). I just want to do my browing, Excel, Visual Studio etc. on my 17" and watch video on the Samsung. Doing both at the same time would be great, though I could probably live with single tasking if I had to.

So, is this something a "normal" dual monitor capable card can do with Vista? Again, I apologize for this being such a basic question, but my knowledge in this area is very weak.

Thanks in advance,

Brad

Hi Brad and welcome to the forums

You should first check to see whether or not your graphics card is capable of supporting this monitor at its native resolution. If it does, there should be no problem in connecting this to your PC providing you have a suitable cable and, if necessary, an adapter. Make sure that your system is configured to use your 17" LCD as the primary display (check the graphics card manual for details on which is the primary port on the card). Set both ports to output data to their relative monitors at the native resolution for the monitor attached to that port. The colour depth can be set to 32-bit for both monitors and, since you are using solid-state (as opposed to CRT) monitors, you can leave the vertical refresh rate at 60Hz.