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TV Out with Radeon 9200 and the OS radeon driver, possible?

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  • TV Out with Radeon 9200 and the OS radeon driver, possible?

    Hi,

    I have a friend who is trying to build a MythTV box.
    He has been given a gimped PC and they have removed the AGP slot, so it's PCI cards only.

    He needs PAL TV out and budget it extremely limited.

    We've seen some Radeon 9200s with S-Video coming out of HK and we need to know whether the driver (open source radeon) supports TV-Out.

    According to this page, in August 2007, it is supported but NTSC only and requires some command line & xorg.conf hacking.

    3 questions:

    1) Can somebody please confirm this is true?
    2) Does anybody know if support for PAL has materialised?
    3) Does anybody know if there is an easier way to set this up (does the multi monitor GUI section of GNOME work with this yet?)

    Thanks,

    J1M.

  • #2
    Forgot to add the link to the page I was talking about!

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    • #3


      From DEC 2007

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      • #4
        Should work fine. However, pre-r5xx cards are limited to 800x600 on tv-out.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by agd5f View Post
          Should work fine. However, pre-r5xx cards are limited to 800x600 on tv-out.
          So that would limit the resolution to little better than standard TV quality and not HD for the older cards. If the OP wants HD TV-out quality he should go for a newer card.

          The older cards predate HD anyway so that's the case here

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          • #6
            The signal going to the analog TV is native TV timing (PAL or NTSC). The 800x600 "mode" is scaled down to the native TV timing. The same is true on newer cards, only they offer other "modes" scaled down to native tv timing. If you want anything better, you'll need to use HDMI/VGA/DVI.

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            • #7
              In other words....
              PAL is 720x576 no matter how you look at it, but configuring your MODE to anything above 800x600 will output garbled nonsense or nothing at all.

              This basically only affects anyone who has a second monitor connected in CLONE mode attempting to clone a >800x600 with PAL.

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              • #8
                Hurray! People who actually know stuff!

                It is indeed for SD DVB-T on a PAL CRT.

                Thanks everybody.

                J1M.

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                • #9
                  Hi,

                  Another option is soldering a vga to scart cable.

                  A 9200 Radeon can produce a perfect pal interlaced RGB signal through its Dsub-vga.

                  This will give the best quality.

                  This scheme worked perfectly with my 9500 (best card I've ever had) and a Sony widescreen CRT.

                  http://www.nada.kth.se/~feldt/vgascart/lodning.html

                  An example of a custom xorg.conf :

                  http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/RGB_Scart

                  Greetings,
                  Steven

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                  • #10
                    Just for the heck of it I recently popped my old Radeon 9600 which I ditched when I switched to Linux a few years ago. This because Ati and Linux weren't exactly friends. Especially TV out was difficult to set up, if not impossible.

                    Anyway, w/ the all new and improved open source Xorg drivers (ati/radeon/r128/mach64) I thoufg I'd give it a try again. And lo and behold, it seemed to work pretty nice for a while. 3D support is great. TV out and overscanning (to get the TV screen completely filled).

                    I use XBMC for my mediacenter. Unfortunately that program does not use xv to draw it's video. What it does use? I don't know (yet) but it results in tearing of video.

                    Anyway, this is how I enable TV out on one screen (overlay!) and overscan. Wanna know what the commands mean? Just ask.
                    Code:
                    xrandr --output S-video --set load_detection 1
                    xrandr --output VGA-0 --off
                    xrandr --output S-video --mode 800x600
                    xrandr --output S-video --set tv_horizontal_size 2
                    xrandr --output S-video --set tv_horizontal_position -5
                    xrandr --output S-video --set tv_vertical_position -3
                    In short: if you're lucky Myth TV supports xv for its video output. Otherwise: everybody in this 'opensource ati/amd linux' subforum keeps on stressing that for proper TV out one had better bought a second hand Nvidia card for a few dollars on eBay. But for me it's some sort of Don Quichote crusade: I won't rest (read: stop testing) until the Linux community can accept Ati/AMD cards as a worthy piece of hardware, fit for everything you'd like to do with your Linux box. Because I want to be able to recommend everybody I know to try Linux one time. No matter what hardware they own

                    Having said that: the radeon open source driver is really really really really really really good! Some say it's even better than the closed one because old Ati's (like mine) DO work w/ the open one.

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