[mythtv-users] Migrating from VGA to HDMI

Rich West Rich.West at wesmo.com
Tue Apr 24 05:05:03 UTC 2007


Phill Edwards wrote:
> I bought a 50" Panasonic TH-50PX600A plasma TV a few months ago and
> have had it connected via VGA. The picture has been good but I
> couldn't get X to fill the screen - it leaves quite a large blank
> border on the right and bottom sides, and sometimes these blank areas
> fill with "snow" which doesn't look good and I fear may cause burn-in
> on the plasma screen.
>
> So I recently bought a cable to connect my nVidia card's DVI-D output
> to the HDMI input on my TV. Initially the picture seemed what I can
> only describe as "lairy" - over-vibrant, over-colourful and just
> didn't look as good as with VGA. But it does fill the screen and I
> found that the difference was due to different colour settings on the
> TV for different inputs - doh! So if anyone else has this model TV I
> can recommend HDMI over VGA.
>
> I have some questions, though...
>
> 1) The manual says these inputs are acceptable on HDMI:
> 480i (60Hz)
> 480p (60Hz)
> 576i (50Hz)
> 576p (50Hz)
> 720p (60Hz)
> 720p (50Hz)
> 1080i (60Hz)
> 1080i (50Hz)
> What do people recommend I use as TVStandard in xorg.conf? I used to
> use PAL-B. Will picture quality be better if I use something like
> HD1080i or HD720p? I thought (possibly naively!) that if my resolution
> is 1280x720 then using 720p would somehow be a good "match" - is there
> any sense in that or not? To be honest, I haven't found a lot of
> difference no matter which TVStandard setting I use.
>
> 2) Since using DVI --> HDMI I have found that console windows (when
> you press Shift-Alt-F1) are too big for the screen so that the top,
> bottom and sides seem to be cut off from view. This is a bit of a pain
> as I use the console quite a lot for fiddling around with stuff. Is
> there anything I can do to correct this?

I have essentially the same set as yours.  And, yes, you need to adjust 
the color settings on the tv. :)

Personally, I just use the Mode "1280x720_60", which is a built-in 
nvidia modeline for 720p.  The graphics card then pushes out 720p, and 
the tv knows what to do with it.
 From my xorg.conf:
Section "Monitor"
        HorizSync    30.0 - 70.0
        VertRefresh  59.0 - 85.0
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Panasonic"
        ModelName    "Plasma"
EndSection
Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        VendorName  "XFX"
        BoardName   "XFX nVidia GeForce 6200"
        Option      "RenderAccel" "1"
        Option      "NvAGP" "2"
        Option      "NoLogo" "true"
        Option      "UseEvents" "True"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Videocard0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth     24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth   24
                Modes   "1920x1080_60" " "1280x720_60"  "720x480_60"
                #       1080p           720p            480p
        EndSubSection
        Option "NoWidthAlignmentCheck" "True"
EndSection


As far as the console being a little too big, unfortunately that is an 
aspect of the built-in overscan that comes with displaying in the "tv" 
modes.

-Rich


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list