[mythtv-users] ntsc video out

[Dave Caplinger]

On Sun, 2003-05-04 at 11:42, Craig Longman wrote:
> has anyone found any useful resources for getting the compositve out to 
> work under X?  i bought an nvidia card to output mythtv to my tv, but 
> i'm having a heck of a time figuring out how to make it work, and even a 
> harder time finding any documentation for this

I have a GeForce2 MX with S-Video out; I run the MythTV box with TV-out
only (no VGA monitor attached at all).  Text mode works fine on boot-up
of the system, and here are some relevant portions of my
/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file:  (note that I'm using the binary linux
drivers from nvidia.com)


Section "Device"
        Identifier      "NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX"
        Driver          "nvidia"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "TV"
        HorizSync       30-50
        VertRefresh     60
EndSection
Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Default Screen"
        Device          "NVIDIA GeForce 2 MX"
        Monitor         "TV"
        Option "TVStandard"     "NTSC-M"
        Option "TVOutFormat"    "SVIDEO"
        DefaultDepth    16
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth           16
                Modes           "800x600" "640x480"
        EndSubSection
EndSection


I run in 800x600 because when I use nvtv to overscan ("Large") it seems
to work just about right.  (For whatever reason, I can't create custom
overscan amounts for my card with nvtv.)  Here's part of my mythfrontend
startup script if you're interested as well:


#!/bin/sh
QT_XFT=1
export QT_XFT
nvtv -t -S NTSC -r 800,600 -s Large --set flicker:75 --set sharpness:100
--set Brightness#:20 --set Contrast#:-30 --set saturation#:30 --set
chromabandwidth:100 --set lumabandwidth:100
xset -dpms s off
irxevent &
nice -n -10 mythfrontend
pkill irxevent
nvtv -t -S NTSC -r 800,600 -s Small --set flicker:75 --set sharpness:100
--set Brightness#:20 --set Contrast#:-30 --set saturation#:30 --set
chromabandwidth:100 --set lumabandwidth:100


(watch those line breaks on the nvtv commands)

I don't (yet) have X and mythfrontend starting automatically when the
system boots, so after starting mythbackend nice'd to -15 in one term
window, I run the above script in another so I can keep track of error
output, etc.  The only issue I have at this point with X11 support on my
TV is that whenever I exit X my text-mode video is scrambled.  I have no
idea how to fix that (and haven't been all that concerned about it yet)
since a reboot clears it all up.

Hope some of this is helpful to you!

-- 
Dave Caplinger <dent at cox.net>