hdmi out (video)
 

Hi guys, I'm looking into building a little home server, mainly to stream media. I'm looking at a hp microserver, at the moment I don't have a vga monitor. So I have been thinking of a graphics card with hdmi out. Do these automatically send output to hdmi, if a hdmi tv was connected to the card would I get all preboot/bios and console output on the tv? Or would I be better off getting a cheap old monitor?

Once I get X-org installed, as the proliant has on board graphics, and then the installed graphics card would have two outputs, what would the setting in xorg.conf?

Cheers for any help

Things vary. If the hdmi out is the only monitor it moves it up the priorities. That said, some grab it with the bios power up, some need a kernel module, But I have never had hdmi as the only choice. If it is not grabbed quickly, it may have to wait until X starts.

In my experience the HDMI will send video out upon pc startup as long as that is the only connection and the display is on that corresponding input. Typically there is a BiOS setting to program the primary video output device. At the same time I have only used motherboards with HDMI built in and haven't the need for a dedicated video card. I would imagine that whatever output is connected on the pc side and selected on the display side should generally activate on powerup drivers installed or not that is pretty much default.