[mythtv-users] DVI Output During Boot

Richard Woelk richardwoelk at yahoo.ca
Sat Feb 2 05:08:29 UTC 2008


Ginsu Squirrel wrote:
> I have my myth box connected to my TV with a DVI to HDMI cable.  I get 
> no output on the TV until the X server has started (no post, no grub, no 
> kernel messages).  I have 3 nvidia cards and one ati card.  One nvidia 
> card, an 8400GS PCI-Express, doesn't have this problem but the other 
> cards, an nvidia 5200, an nvidia 5500, and an ATI 9600 do.  Has anyone 
> seen this and is there a way to get output during boot?
>
> Thanks.
>   
This was the problem on my old tv, a 26" Toshiba CRT HDTV and a Geforce 
5200 AGP.
The tv would always show "invalid mode" until X started running

For a while, I had my desktop motherboard and a PCIe Geforce 6200 hooked 
up. This worked OK in bios and boot screens.
It seems the Toshiba was very picky about what signals it got, and the 
older cards can't read the EDID data properly on boot.
I have read, that a lot of TVs don't output this data properly, as it is 
not needed for most set top devices.

as a work-around, I had an s-video cable hooked to another input on my 
tv, for the few times when I needed to do something in bios. My mythtv 
frontend is also my Internet router, so it rarely gets rebooted.

My new tv, a 1080p Samsung, can show the bios & boot screens from my 
Geforce 5200 just fine, and it calls the signal 1280x720. It is less 
picky at input resolutions, and it also sends proper EDID information.

HTH
- Richard





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