Windows – Temporarily turn off power management / screensaver for watching movies

Use display sleep to save your screen; use the screen saver as a lock.

Let’s say you want to prevent burn-in after 3 minutes and lock the computer after 30 minutes.

1. Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver and set the display sleep time to 3 minutes.
2. Go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver and pick a lightweight screen saver (like Flurry). Set it to start after 30 minutes.
3. Go to System Preferences > Security and make sure “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver” is turned on.

Result:

• After 3 minutes your screen goes blank, preventing burn-in, but the computer is not locked.
• After 30 minutes the screen saver kicks in (although you won’t be able to see it because your screen is blanked) and your computer is locked.

Windows tells every monitor connected to wake up when you start using it, either buy moving the mouse or connecting remotely. Why don't you just turn off the monitors that you don't want to be woken up. If they are still plugged in, windows will still generate the images for them, so if you have an extended desktop, you can still drag programs onto screens you cannot actually see.

You could also try and create a batch file that, when run, changes your screen resolution settings to display only the primary monitor. This would mean you remotely connect in, the monitors turn on, you run the script, the secondary monitors get set to unused and they go back to standby. How you would write this script I do not know.