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Movie Watching- How are the Nvidia drivers for this?

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  • Movie Watching- How are the Nvidia drivers for this?

    I am going to transfer my Home Theater PC from Windows XP to Linux. I have a 7600GT Nvidia card. How are the drivers/control panel for watching movies on TV out? Right now I only have standard definition movies that I watch off my hard drive through the TV out to my standard definition CRT TV. Will I loose anything by switching to the Linux Nvidia drivers for watching movies?

  • #2
    Nope, the 7600 is fine for TV out in linux. NVControl panel has pretty much the same functionality in linux as it does in windows.

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    • #3
      That's great to hear! There is one thing I am terrified of though. I use a standard definition tv. In Windows XP, I have to use one of the very first drivers released for my 7600Gt. If I use any driver after that, there is a bug where any movie that is 16:9 played on a standard TV will be stretched. This link explains it all: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s...c=17158&st=260

      There is no way around this problem. Nivida never bothered to fix this bug because I guess there are not enough people using SD tv's.

      What I am scared of is that this problem will also exist in the latest Linux Nvidia driver. I know because of kernel updates and configs there's no way an older linux nvidia driver would work. So, I am scared that this problem will exist in the Linux Nvidia drivers as well and I'll be stuck with it. Do you know off hand if this problem exists in the Linux drivers(seems to be only for SD Tvs)?

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      • #4
        Well, even if this bug existed in the linux drivers, it would be no problem. At least for SD-Videos the open source nv driver should be good enough

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        • #5
          The nv driver doesn't support svideo tvout though... does it? If it did (and also didn't lock up X on log out all the time) I might actually use it.

          When I was rocking an AGP 6600gt, I had mostly functional tvout(picture was not centered at all and no options for position) with Nvidia's driver. There's an xorg.conf option (and one for nvidia-settings) for adjusting the level of over/underscan. I suspect these options will work fine on a 7xxx series card, but on my new 8600gt (and other netizen's 8xxx series cards) these options have zero effect. The only explanation I've found on nvnews basically says "that's the way the tv-encoder works, we're never doing anything about this, it's not our problem." Oh yeah and the reason I care about having this option is because WAY too much of the picture is off the edges of my TV (the default with my old card was the picture didn't come close to the edges).

          ATI's driver has tvout size and position controls, just like anyone with SENSE knows should be included.

          So to actually answer your question - probably any tvout position controls you have in windows (they were there for me with my 6600gt, but not my 8600gt) won't be present on Linux, but the overscan/size settings should be available, and generally tvout works well apart from the caveat(s) I've mentioned.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by dman777 View Post
            That's great to hear! There is one thing I am terrified of though. I use a standard definition tv. In Windows XP, I have to use one of the very first drivers released for my 7600Gt. If I use any driver after that, there is a bug where any movie that is 16:9 played on a standard TV will be stretched. This link explains it all: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s...c=17158&st=260

            There is no way around this problem. Nivida never bothered to fix this bug because I guess there are not enough people using SD tv's.

            What I am scared of is that this problem will also exist in the latest Linux Nvidia driver. I know because of kernel updates and configs there's no way an older linux nvidia driver would work. So, I am scared that this problem will exist in the Linux Nvidia drivers as well and I'll be stuck with it. Do you know off hand if this problem exists in the Linux drivers(seems to be only for SD Tvs)?
            I have not encountered this at all in linux with a standard 4:3 TV (in window or linux) if it did happen in linux though it's as simple as telling the player to force adjust the aspect ratio to the correct ratio. Almost every linux player has this capability.

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            • #7
              I believe MPlayer (the most popular player on linux) has that setting, and so does VLC

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              • #8
                Originally posted by DeepDayze View Post
                I believe MPlayer (the most popular player on linux) has that setting, and so does VLC
                So do most xine-lib based players which pretty much means almost all players carry that functionality in linux.

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                • #9
                  Similar question, how will an 8600 gt be for watching movies on Linux (Just using a typical 1680x1050 lcd panel)?

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by sloggerKhan View Post
                    Similar question, how will an 8600 gt be for watching movies on Linux (Just using a typical 1680x1050 lcd panel)?
                    you mean how about hardware acceleration for H264 playback support under linux on 8600GT?

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