if you are using the video overlay (the default Xv adapter) it can only be displayed on one head at a time.  Either use textured video (select a textured video adapter port in your video app) or use the XV_CRTC xv attribute to switch which head the overlay is displaying on.  you can use an app like xvattr to change Xv port adapter properties:
xvattr -a XV_CRTC -v 1

Hmm, I was surprised to learn that multiple output were active:

$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200
VGA-0 connected 1600x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 367mm x 275mm
LVDS connected 1600x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

as the lid to my laptop is closed.  I suppose this is a separate bug that the LVDS port is still active?

Thanks for the info about xv.

(In reply to comment #2)
> Hmm, I was surprised to learn that multiple output were active:
> 
> $ xrandr
> Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1600 x 1200, maximum 1600 x 1200
> VGA-0 connected 1600x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 367mm
> x 275mm
> LVDS connected 1600x1200+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x
> 0mm
> S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
> 
> as the lid to my laptop is closed.  I suppose this is a separate bug that the
> LVDS port is still active?


It's not a bug per se.  The problem is two fold: first lots of laptops have broken bioses that do not report lid status properly (lid always shows closed or open) and it seems quite a few people like to boot their laptops with the lid closed and expect LVDS to be connected when they later open the laptop up.  There is an option to enable lid status support for LVDS:
Option "IgnoreLidStatus" "FALSE"
this will attempt to use the acpi lid status information to determine whether to consider the panel is connected or not.