[mythtv-users] Matrox G400 Dual/Head TV-Out

[Jeff Williams]

I got my G400 TV-out working using the framebuffer method (official drivers will turn macrovision on and limit you to 640x480, so I've read), but I will say that I honestly don't think it's worth it and am currently in the market for another card myself.  There are a couple problems with TV out on the G400, even if you get it running:

1.  TV out is not bootable, you actually need software to turn it on.  So if you need to reboot your machine for whatever reason, you'll be blind if any problems come up on boot.  TV out won't start until X starts running.  If you have a spare monitor hooked up, that's fine, but who wants to have a spare monitor sitting there just in case you have boot problems?  Also, since both heads are outputting the same image, it's very possible that once you've set the image up right on your TV that your monitor will be out of range, and therefore useless once X is running.

2.  Configuration is a real hassle unless you're an experienced Linux user.  You need to set up scripts to automate things after finally getting it working and even the how-to doesn't say how to automate absolutely everything (in fact, it specifically says the writer wasn't sure how).  And God forbid you don't set up those scripts; you need to manually reconfigure everything every time you boot, which requires typing blindly (you need to disconnect all video output as one of the steps) at least part of the time.

3.  On my setup - and this may not affect everyone - the stretching/moving required to get the TV output centered and overscanned properly results in noticeable banding across the image at any size and color depth.  I've tried everything to get rid of this.  The picture looks fine if I just let the card show what it wants to show by default, but this greatly compresses the image horizontally, giving me large black side borders and too much overscan on the top and bottom.  I can use fbset to fix this but then I get the banding.  This is unacceptable to me as the whole point for me buying this card was the quality/reputation of the TV output.  Again, this may not affect everyone, depending on how the card interacts with your particular TV by default.  You may not need to do many adjustments to get a properly sized picture, so you may not get banding.  (btw, the card does this under both Linux and Windows for me, so I know it's not a driver or framebuffer issue.)

All of these things together have been really frustrating and led to an unsatisfying experience with this card.  I can't recommend even trying to get this thing to work, unless you just like tinkering with stuff and want to take a chance on not having to resize the picture too much.  I will say the TV output quality is very sharp - a bit sharper than my GeForce 4 (from another PC) that I tried, but not enough to make it worth it.  I'll take the better nVidia Linux drivers and bootable TV output any day of the week after this experience.

> Message: 15
> Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 18:26:14 -0400
> From: Graham Siener <Graham_Siener at brown.edu>
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Matrox G400 Dual/Head TV-Out
> To: Myth TV <mythtv-users at snowman.net>
> Message-ID: <BB320EC6.508F%Graham_Siener at brown.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> 
> On 7/9/03 2:44 PM, "hayward at slothmud.org" 
> <hayward at slothmud.org> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Does anyone use the TV-Out on a Matrox G400 Dual Head card 
> for MythTV?
> > Does it work well for this purpose?
> > 
> > I've been getting "No Xv extension" when I try to watch Live TV.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Brian Hayward
> > 
> > 
> I'm also interested.  I haven't sat down to figure it out, 
> but I found some
> seemingly helpful sites:
> 
> http://www.netnode.de/howto/matrox-fb.html
> http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/files/lnx_21.cfm
>