Quote:
the fact that you're mirroring is most of the issue
OK, I have to mention that I used the Screen Spanning Doctor (
http://macparts.de/ibook) to enable Dual Head (spanning) mode. It is not a system hack, nor it is system-dependent, rather it is a utility that changes one variable in the OpenFirmware from "false" to "true" (this explanation is simplified).
Apple has disabled spanning on consumer macs on its own will, even though the graphics cards are capable of it (they are in no way crippled). It is just a marketing move to differentiate between imac/ibook as consumer line and powerbook/powermac as pro line - nothing to do with hardware capabilities.
So I use my iMac G5 in dual-head mode. Internal display at native res (17" LCD) and TV at 1024x768 (not much readable, but best for video in my case, don't know why).
What I'm trying to say is that I have tried things I described above also in Dual-head mode with the same result (even with different DVD player apps). When DVD is playing, the computer doesn't go to sleep (what's logical). Yet there is a difference between computer sleep and display sleep; display can sleep without computer being asleep (but not vice versa, obviously).
In any case I agree that playing DVD short curcuits the ability of the computer to sleep, but it is illogical that it also prevents display from sleeping (which could sleep independently, especially when in dual-head mode).
Even if I couldn't put the whole display to sleep, I would be completely satisfied with just the backlighting off - i.e. the display would be on, you could read from it under a certain angle where the light reflects the best, but the backlight would be off.
Independent display sleep would be amazing, but I seem to get unlucky in both cases.
Anyways, thanks for the help. In case you come around something that could help, don't forget to post here....
PS: stand-alone LCD displays have a power button - case solved. But the built-in ones like the iMac's don't