Monitor is off but still detected by computer

I currently have a Seiki (SE32HS01; provided by my Advanced display options) TV (monitor) hooked up to one of my NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060 6GB HDMI output. I use it mainly to watch videos if I'm laying in bed so I don't really have it on as much as I do my main monitor (Acer XF270H B; also provided by display options; if you need more detail I can look at the manuals).

I notice though that when it's off and I'm using my computer that it it still holds some of my pages open and I can drag stuff in and out of it. It's as if it was on, but it's off.

Now I would normally just attribute that to the lack of technology on the TV but whenever I do turn the TV on, my computer reinitialized the connection as if it was disconnected and reconnected.

This means that there has to be a way that my computer can know that the TV is off right?

It might require a third party extension, but I would like for my computer to recognize the off screen and return back to a single screen computer when the TV is off and return to the double screen when it is on.

Does anyone know of a windows setting or third party extension I can use to do this?

Solution 1:

The video card is responsible for generating,maintaining, and notifying windows how many displays are attached.

NVIDIA has a display detect function built-in to its windows control panel. I suggest turning the TV off, and then clicking detect to see if the second screen is de-activated.

VGA and DVI-D have no way of passing the ON or OFF signal back to the video card.

HDMI has CEC built into it which allows not just the ON/OFF command, but a variety of commands.

Displayport has a similar option but I forgot what its called.

If video cards exposed the option, you could use HDMI and CEC to turn the monitor off from the computer.

For example, I can use my TV remote to turn ON my blu-ray player, and control it via the TV's remote because of the CEC function. In addition, if I place a DVD/BLURAY disc in, and the TV is OFF, it automatically turns ON with the contents of the disc displayed. From some unknown reason each manufacturer has a different name for CEC in the marketing materials.

When a display is plugged in it exchanges EDID formatted information to let the other device know what it can handle in terms of resolutions and frequencies and a small amount of trivial data. EDID has been supported since VGA.

Solution 2:

As an alternative, it may be useful to you to switch between Mirrored and Extended modes using Windows key+P when the TV is turned off and on. As mentioned in another answer, the TV may appear to be "on" to the video card when the screen itself is off.