April 09 iMac 24 with LED Cinema Display: Turning one of them off

[rsdotscot]

Hi folks,

As you can tell by the thread title I've got one of the latest model iMacs and I'm running an LED Cinema Display as a second monitor. When it gets to the late hours I like to watch some movies on the Mac so I figured the Cinema Display would be a nice addition to do the job.

Now here's my issue: if it's late and I'm watching movies I tend to not have any lights on, but having one of the displays on means having both of them on, what I'm wondering is if it's possible to sleep one display while allowing the other to stay active so I can watch the movie without the light from the other one distracting me.

Any ideas?


Cheers,
Robert

 

[paulbeattie87]

I searched and searched, the searched some more… The end result was it cant be done.

I'm not sure if people recommended tools which made the iMac screen very dim or not but as for turning it off completely to watch a movie ala MacBook Pro it can't be done. Some people suggested setting a hotcorner to sleep display but that sleeps the second display as well.

 

[Apocrathia]

I have a similar problem with my setup. I have the same iMac, but hooked into my TV that is mounted above my desk. I'd like to leave the TV hooked up all the time, but there is no way to simply disable the secondary screen and turn the tv off without having my mouse go into the second screen, thus getting lost quite easily. What I have to do, is just keep my TV unplugged and plug it in when I need it. I just keep the cord behind my iMac and leave it unplugged until I need it.
Your situation would pretty much be the inverse of my own. My only recommendation would be to just unplug your ACD when you want to "turn it off", since more often than not, you'll be using both monitors, it's really not that hard just to reach behind the monitor to turn it off.

On a side note: how well does the 24" ACD line up with the iMac? It seems like it might be a little lower. Any way to fix that???

 

[rsdotscot]

It's probably about a 2 inch difference in height, not enough for me to bother standing the ACD on top of anything to try matching them up.

The problem I have with your suggestion (thanks for taking the time to reply though!) is that with the ACD hooked up all the audio is routed through it, and it's at the angle (ie. straight on) I'd like to watch movies from, so it's the iMac display I want to dim. Ach well, back to the drawing board!


Cheers,
Robert

 

[jaw04005]

So I take it the 24" ACD doesn't have a power off switch like the old ACDs?

 

[gibbz]

What are you watching the movies through?

If you use QuickTime 7, you can set to have black as the background color when full screen, and even which screen goes full screen. This will let the movie play in one display, and the screen of the other to go black. See attached image.

 

[rsdotscot]

So I take it the 24" ACD doesn't have a power off switch like the old ACDs?

Nope.

What are you watching the movies through?

If you use QuickTime 7, you can set to have black as the background color when full screen, and even which screen goes full screen. This will let the movie play in one display, and the screen of the other to go black. See attached image.

Sadly most of the movies (or even TV shows) I'm watching are via online streaming like BBC iPlayer, Channel 4 OD and Sky Player.

It seems the closest I can get is to open Photoshop on the other display, open a new document and fill it in black before going fullscreen (F key) with that (completely blacks out the screen when PS is the active application) and then going back to the browser and setting the Flash player containing what I want to watch to fullscreen. Doing it this way seems to leave only the menu bar visible (at most) depending on which site I'm viewing.

If I use VLC it completely blacks out the other screen.


Cheers,
Robert