The Nvidia and PNY literature says that you can do this but the PDF manual isn't all that helpful. With the extraordinary help of a PNY technical support person who will go unnamed to protect the innocent, I was able to get it all working very nicely.

I am running 2 of the 540s in an Asus dual 16x pcie P5N32-SLI Deluxe MB. At this time this is a hard to find board and as far as I have been able to tell the only one on the market that will allow 2 cards to run at full speed simultaneously. You don't have to have 2 cards to do this but you can only run 2 monitors off of one of these cards at any given time. In this configuration I have two 21" VGA monitors and a 13" Sony broadcast monitor.

With one card connect the monitor to the VGA or the DVI connection and the breakout box to the video out port. Initially I could not get this to work with the VGA port but now it does. If you have a second card, connect the second VGA monitor to the VGA port on the card. If you have a third VGA monitor, go ahead and connect it to the DVI port on the second card (but your on your own with the configuration past the first 2 VGAs)

Boot up and right click on the desktop and select "properties" to bring up the video settings. Note that in the image below the third monitor is grayed out. This is not the TV but represents the unused port on the second card. Unless you have a third VGA monitor, leave it alone.

Set your resolution then select "advanced". In the properties page, select the FX540 tab. When you do a pop up menu will appear to the side of the properties page.

Select the "nView display settings" for the first card (which incidentally will not necessarily be labeled as if it is the first card - my first card always comes up with a (2) in the title).

Make sure that "Make this the primary display" is checked.

Set the display mode to "Clone".

Click on the TV to highlight it then go to "device settings>Select TV Format >advanced" and set it for your monitor and output type. A note here: Using the Avid approved 6.7.2.2 driver has resulted in very low Chroma output from the card when outputting through S-video. I had to use composite with a standard def monitor to get the color levels accurate.

Select "Full Screen Video" from the menu on the left.

In the "Full screen video controls" on the lower left, set the dropdown to "Secondary Display". Leave the zoom control alone at this point. When I messed with zoom I was not able to get the video back to the full underscan on the TV without a driver reinstall.

If you have only one card you are done.

If you have 2 cards, select the second card's settings on the left. Set the resolution and refresh rate here.

In my Display Properties I am unable to set the resolution above 1024x768 without going into the "advanced" settings and the Quadro FX540 tab.

The first time you open Avid import color bars and set up the monitor. If you have done this correctly, when you play a clip it should play full screen on the TV or broadcast monitor connected to the first FX540 card.

I have had a couple of quirky things happen while setting up. You may run into some of them but don't panic or give up, they are fixable.

1. I don't know if this is an XP issue or related to the graphics card install - probably XP, but occasionally when I restart the Desktop settings are changed. This includes the appearance and the screen saver that I have to reset to "none" each time. This was resolved with a reinstall using the 84.12 drivers.

2. Some settings changes cause unexpected behavior including resizing to lower resolutions and resetting the refresh rate. Take a deep breath and go back into the Quadro FX540 settings to set the size and refresh rate. Be sure you are changing the settings for the correct card and monitor if you have 2 cards.

3. If Avid works with only one monitor but crashes on startup with a runtime error when more than one monitor is connected, it is probably because the breakout box is connected to the incorrect graphics card, the resolution is not the same on multiple VGA monitors, or the VGA and TV are not set to "Clone" mode.

4. If the video does not play on the TV when played in the timeline, you need to check the "Full Screen Video" settings. If there is more than one card, make sure that they are set for the card that has the TV connected and make sure that the TV is connected to the first card in the system. On the Asus board the primary PCIE slot is the one nearest the processor. If you are unsure on your mother board, take one card out and if you have video on the card still in the system, that is the primary card.

5. Sometimes multiple monitors are out of sequence and moving the mouse from one to the other gets really weird and confusing. In the Windows display properties drag and drop the monitors to the order they should be in. I have also noticed that if the monitors are not aligned in the settings (veritcally) the content can be missaligned. Very strange.

6. Choosing the incorrect settings for the TV could result in a crash. If it happens to you, set the resolution to 800x600, turn off all but one monitor, Uninstall the Nvidia drivers and start over.

7. I have tested this with several driver releases. The drivers that came with the FX540 would not work. The Avid approved 6.7.2.2 drivers and the 84.12 drivers do work.

If your video fails to stretch and fill the TV, I have no idea why. If you find out, let me know. If not, remove and reinstall the drivers as per #6. It only takes a few minutes to reinstall. Just remember to check all of the settings after a reinstall of the drivers. Also, if you are using the Asus board and you choose to remove drivers through Add Remove Programs you will have the option to remove all of Nvidia drivers. That includes Network and motherboard chipset drivers. Only remove the video drivers.