TV-out support finally improved!

[Septor]

After getting a tip about TV support in 8.27 I checked it out. People using TV will be glad to know that overscan and TV adjustment are now working again. The TV settings can be changed on-the-fly (i.e. no X restart requried) via the "aticonfig" program.

New in aticonfig:

 --tv-overscan={on|off}
       Enable or disable overscan mode for TVout
       Note, not all tv-formats support overscan. Try to
       toggle overscan off before changing tv-format if
       and error occurs.
 --tv-info
         Print out the current tv geometry, tv format, and if the
         tv is physically connected.
 --tv-geometry=WIDTHxHEIGHT{+|-}X{+|-}Y
              =WIDTHxHEIGHT
         Change the size and position of the TVout display.
         WIDTH and HEIGHT are in percentage units. Please note
         that the valid range for WIDTH and HEIGHT depends on
         the tv-format selected. However, as a rule of thumb
         WIDTH and HEIGHT are valid in the range [1,100]
         X and Y are pixels offsets from centre
         of the screen. X and Y are have variable ranges dependant
         on ASIC. Use tv-info to get valid X and Y ranges
         If tv-geometry is invoked with just width and height
         then X and Y are assumed to be 0
         See example 5 below for a sample usage.

Works very well, but here are some issues I should mention:
1) you must specify --tv-geometry=WxH+X+Y , you can't leave out X or Y.
2) with --tv-overscan=on the TV adjustments don't seem to have affect
3) use --tv-info to determine your X,Y limits

Enjoy!

[BeatJunkie]

I've been waiting for this for about a year now. Thanks for pointing it out!

[raptorjr]

This is really good news. This thing has driven me crazy since i bought my Radeon 9200 for my HTPC. Have looked for a Nvidia card for some time because i want the picture to fill up my tv-screen.
However, does anyone know if the problem in this thread has been solved also?
http://rage3d.com/board/showthread.p...ghlight=xvideo

Wouldn't do me much good if i get overscan but the tv-recordings or movies i play only show the top half of the picture. Then i still have to use the 8.20 version.

[mlavalle]

Originally Posted by Septor

After getting a tip about TV support in 8.27 I checked it out. People using TV will be glad to know that overscan and TV adjustment are now working again. The TV settings can be changed on-the-fly (i.e. no X restart requried) via the "aticonfig" program.

I tried this again, and still am not able to quite get it working. If I hook it up to my television, using the DVI converter to component video, the image does display at 1024x768. I manually set a wide-screen resolution, but it seems that the image is bigger than the television (ie some space is cut off on each border). This means I can't see my Gnome menus because it cuts off the screen.

I tried running ati-config --tv-info but it reports there is no television connected. I used the commands to tell it to force detection of a television, but it doesn't change anything. I also tried using --tv-geometry to "zoom out" so I could see the screen, but I guess because it doesn't think there is a television connected it won't make any adjustments.

I'm oh-so-close!

[Septor]

I don't think that DVI-Composite converter is the same as normal TVout, and if it works at all might be new to the driver. Check your Xorg.0.log to see what it is detecting your TV as... maybe that will have some clues to how you could adjust it.

[mlavalle]

It reports that it is detected as "cv", and I'm not entirely sure wha that is! As best I can tell, it still thinks I have my 4:3 LCD on it instead of the television.

[thebitpit]

This is a guess, but I think it means "component video". I have a Radeon X800 XL connected to my HDTV monitor's 3 component video inputs. It also reports "cv".

Here's the real rub. Under Windows 2000 I can get full 1920x1080i resolution with my X800 XL card. Under Linux with any of the ATI fglrx drivers I have tried, I can get only 720x480 resolution and below. The HDTV monitor accepts either resolution. The stretch/zoom function (4 modes in standard, 2 modes in HDTV) is different for the two resolutions allowing me to determine which resolution is supplied. How do I make the driver accept
mode lines greater than standard TV?

The latest driver tried is Xorg version 8.30.3. It no longer silently ignores my 1920x1080i mode lines. Now it reports:

(EE) fglrx(1): === [swlDalHelperAddCustomizeMode] === CWDDEDI_DisplayGetSetModeTimingOverride failed: 2