[mythtv-users] TV Out problems using S-Video to Composite Adapter

[David Wood]

That sounds like a big piece of the puzzle, and apparently my first
guess wasn't so good. 

It feels like that rules out the cable and the adapter and probably the
TV. A couple ideas:

1) It's good to try to get a baseline if you can before hacking away at
drivers/XF86 configs/whatever. Can you dual boot windows, or trade the
card into another machine etc, or find some other "fresh" configuration
where you can try out TV out (on a GUI desktop)? Does it look OK? Well,
maybe that's not so easy. But if you can check, go ahead.

2) Now I'm thinking maybe this is an X misconfig. Can you send your
XF86Config-4 and an XF86 log?

3) The card may still have a problem - these older ones were all
different; maybe its TV encoder has a problem with certain
resolutions/depths/etc. or just has a problem in general.

4) If you're really stuck you should "start fresh" with a current kernel
and the newest nvidia drivers. Sometimes, depending on your distro and
your level of linux expertise, if you have parts of older
kernels/drivers laying around confusing things it can be hard to tell,
and hard to remove them all, so for instance, if you're not sure you're
able to clean out and start fresh, but this is a new knoppmyth install
anyway, nuke it and start over? But if you're sure you got the drivers,
kernel and XF86config right, then, can you try out another nvidia card?
Keep in mind, if it's your configs or your "technique" you may have the
same problems with every card, but OTOH these things are ~$30 at the
major websites. 


On Fri, 2004-07-23 at 16:14, Kyle Sexton wrote:
> Ok, I have another piece of the puzzle maybe.  Since my console
> sessions display find on the TV, does that rule out the video card and
> the converter?  What do you think?
> 
> 
> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 13:43:48 -0400 (EDT), David Wood <obsidian at panix.com> wrote:
> > I was going to look it up in the graphics card database maintained by this
> > site:
> > 
> > http://tvtool.info/index_e.htm
> > 
> > But there was no listing for this card from evga.
> > 
> > Some older nvidia cards have 3rd party TV encoder chips, and some of those
> > chips are not so good. If you had a bad card, we could safely say try a
> > new one.
> > 
> > Your problem sounds "analog." In other words, not in the video
> > driver or XFree86. That's just a guess.
> > 
> > If it isn't the driver/xfree86, all you can do is rule out your 1) video
> > card, 2) composite adapter, 3) cables and 4) TV.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Kyle Sexton wrote:
> > 
> > > NVidia GeForce4MX 4000 w/ 128M, made by eVGA I think.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:04:21 -0400 (EDT), David Wood <obsidian at panix.com> wrote:
> > >> You know, it's tempting to guess that your TV or cable is the problem. I'm
> > >> curious though, what specific nvidia card you have?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Kyle Sexton wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> I am having problems with X11 displaying properly to my television and
> > >>> I'm wondering if the culprit could be that I'm converting from S-Video
> > >>> on the card to Composite on my television.  The television itself is
> > >>> an old 24 inch TV.  The output card I'm using is an NVidia GeForce4MX
> > >>> 4000 w/ 128M.  Has anyone had any luck doing this type of conversion?
> > >>> I've tried just about every output option I could find in my
> > >>> XF86Config, including the TVOutFormat as both SVIDEO and COMPOSITE.
> > >>> The display that I do get is in color, and has ghosting lines next to
> > >>> dialog boxes.  That's what I can see when it's not out of sync and
> > >>> jumping everywhere.  So I guess my question is, do I need to either
> > >>> downgrade to a card w/ composite outs, or upgrade to a TV w/ SVideo in
> > >>> to get this to work?  Or are there other troubleshooting steps I need
> > >>> to try?
> > >>>
> > >>> Slightly OT:  Is there a list of terms for problems so that I can
> > >>> describe what I am seeing better?
> > >>>
> > >>> Thanks,
> > >>> Kyle
> > >>>
> > >>> obligatory spec list in case required:
> > >>> AMD 1.4Ghz w/ 256M
> > >>> PVR-250 In (Even though I haven't gotten that far.. :) )
> > >>> NVidia GeForce4MX 4000 w/ 128M
> > >>> CMedia Sound (I think, haven't had any problems w/ this)
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > 
> > 
> > 
> >
> 
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