[mythtv-users] Display weirdness

[DryHeat122]

On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 12:59 AM Stephen Worthington <
stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:

> On Sat, 12 Sep 2020 20:05:05 -0700, you wrote:
>
> [snip]



> >Today a new problem cropped up.  From the program guide I started ESPN HD
> >from the "watch this channel" menu item to watch Lakers v Rockets.  HDPVR2
> >started fine but the picture was shrunk to about half the size of the
> >monitor. Esc and try again, same result.  Rebooted, and same result.  I
> >noticed when it was starting from the program guide it showed the ESPN HD
> >icon, but another tv icon with SD below it.  So  somebody thinks they're
> >getting a SD signal. You can get HD video off component video outputs of
> >the HDPVR2, right?  Here's the kicker.  After watching the game on another
> >system, I went back and tried ESPN again on the Myth box as above. Now I
> >still get the TV/SD idon on startup but the picture is full screen. WTF?!?
>
> There can be a number of things that can cause this, including bugs.
> But the things to look at are how you have the config set up for
> playing video.  There are options that allow the video playback to
> change the video mode separately from the GUI screens - see Setup >
> Appearance > Separate modes for GUI and playback.  If that is set,
> then whenever you are playing video, the content of the video is
> matched against your playback profiles and the settings for the
> matching profile are applied.  This can also cause xrandr commands to
> be sent to the X display to get the display to change mode to a mode
> that matches the video that is being played.  Such mode changes can
> happen if the video being played changes mode in the middle (eg sport
> is 720p, but it changes to 1080i for the ad breaks).  The available
> mode changes are the modes that X lists in its Xorg.0.log file when it
> starts up.  You can get a problem that there are modes available that
> are not actually what you want for your screen.  So if the recording
> is 576p, for example, the matching mode may be only for displaying on
> 1/4 of the screen, when it should be set up to reprocess the frames to
> a 1080 screen size.  I have just been fighting a slightly different
> version of this problem where I do not want any interlaced modes used
> as when there is onscreen GUI overlaying video output, the GUI part of
> the display gets distorted by the interlacing.  The solution I am
> currently trying for this is to tell X not to use the EDID sourced
> modelines (and lots of other modeline sources) and just to use the
> modelines I have specified in my xorg.conf file.  I turned on this
> option:
>
> Section "Screen"
>   Option    "ModeDebug" "true"
> EndSection
>
> so that X logs details of all the modes it sees and edited the output
> of that to create the modelines I wanted, then disabled all the other
> modes.  Along the way, I had some modes from other sources still
> enabled that caused exactly what you are seeing where the video only
> used part of the screen.  After turning off those modes, it now seems
> to be working well, but it has only been a few days so far and I need
> to test it on various video files to be sure.
>
> You can find out what mode your screen currently is in by opening a
> terminal and using xrandr.  I hate xrandr - it is difficult to use and
> does not actually allow you to see the modes in the way they are
> reported in X's logs, but the required information is there.  So when
> you next have this problem, make sure you have the ModeDebug option on
> first, then run "xrandr" and see which mode has the * character by it,
> telling you that is the current mode.  Then match that to the modes
> reported in the X logs, and see if there is a problem.  You may need
> to disable that mode so a better one gets chosen, or you may need to
> use an xorg.conf option to set scaling for that mode so it will fill
> the full screen.  Your TV may also have a menu or remote key that will
> get it to display information about its current screen mode.
>
> BTW You have not said what video card you are using.  I am using an
> Nvidia GT1030, so things may work differently if you are using Intel
> or AMD.
>

Found some time to get back to this issue.   All the problems with screen
sizing were resolved when I updated my Nvidia drivers (video card
is Geforce 8400 GS Rev. 2).  Now the issue is jankey/stuttering video/audio
when watching live TV.   It's odd because if I record these same channels
then play the recording everything is fine.  The only problem is when I'm
trying to watch live.

I am still getting the SD symbol when I "watch this channel" on HD channels
where I encounter the stuttering.  Maybe it's occurring because the system
is trying to down-sample the HD to SD and the processor can't keep up?

I think this advice pertained to the screen size issue, but just in case I
checked setup and  "Separate modes for GUI and playback" is not enabled.  I
also had a look at  Xorg.0.log for modes listed, and there don't seem to be
any except auto-select.  Here is the output of  cat Xorg.0.log | grep mode:

[     7.808] (==) Matched modesetting as autoconfigured driver 2
[     7.828] (II) LoadModule: "modesetting"
[     7.828] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/modesetting_drv.so
[     7.829] (II) Module modesetting: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
[     7.832] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms
[     7.841] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for modesetting
[     8.331] (==) NVIDIA(0): No modes were requested; the default mode
"nvidia-auto-select"
[     8.331] (==) NVIDIA(0):     will be used as the requested mode.
[     8.368] (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
[     8.368] (II) Unloading modesetting
[     8.375] (II) NVIDIA(0): Setting mode "DFP-0:nvidia-auto-select"
[     8.550] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"
[     8.553] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"
[     8.571] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"


Maybe there are no modes because I don't have ModeDebug set as suggested,
but I'm not sure how to do that.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20201017/eb283370/attachment.htm>