laptop to 4 monitors - possible?

[demonikal]

Can I run my laptop to four flat screen LCD monitors?

I thought it was only possible to run a computer to more than one monitor if it had more than one video port on the graphics card or more than graphics card going into the monitor.

I don't know how laptops work with this kind of thing.

 

[johnb35]

no, 2 screens only. The laptop screen and an external screen.

 

[demonikal]

no, 2 screens only. The laptop screen and an external screen.

Okay, thanks for the answer.

 

[SpringWater]

Unless you get an external usb video card which is like $50.

 

[demonikal]

Unless you get an external usb video card which is like $50.

How many monitors can one of these external usb video cards support? Does it depend on how much you pay? Thanks :good:

 

[PohTayToez]

Most would only support one monitor, although I'm sure there are those that support more (and would be more costly). And you would be able to use more than one USB card at once too.

USB video cards are notoriously bad though, USB isn't well suited for this sort of thing. If you're trying to use it to play video or something more GPU intensive you might run into problems.

 

[demonikal]

Most would only support one monitor, although I'm sure there are those that support more (and would be more costly). And you would be able to use more than one USB card at once too.

USB video cards are notoriously bad though, USB isn't well suited for this sort of thing. If you're trying to use it to play video or something more GPU intensive you might run into problems.

Hey PohTayToez. Thanks for the answer. Actually, it will be me and a friend doing security for a haunted house this year for Halloween. He did it last year and this year I will be helping him. There is going to be two 46" HDTVs and several smaller monitors. It's not a profit thing - it's all volunteer. He already knows how to set up the security cameras in the different rooms of the haunted house because he did a little of that last year. But it will be a bigger deal this year with more security cameras, so we needed more monitors/TVs.

We just need to figure out how to get those security cameras to feed video from the computer to several different screens. If USB is really really bad, then I guess I can always build a sorta cheap barebone pc kit for the whole project. Otherwise, we'd like to make do with what we have (one laptop of mine).