[mythtv] G400 and TV Out (again)

[Ray]

On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 03:26:20PM -0700, Bernard Johnson wrote:
> I'm curious... are you guys talking about the Millenium G400 or the Marvel
> G400-TV?  I'm assuming the  Millenium?  I have a Marvel G400-TV and it seems
> to have similar problems.

The OP has AFAIK a Millenium G400 DH, I have a Marvel G200TV.
> 
> I've gotten X working dual head (head 1: 1024x768 w/ Gnome Desktop, head 2:
> 640x480 attached to 0:.1).  I can play movies using mplayer using :0.1, but
> I get no scaling support or hardware accelaration.

Since my G200 isn't a DH card my only choices are:

1. Pipe everything through the TV 

2. Mirror the desktop on the TV 

3. Have my desktop on the monitor but Pipe video through the Maven (TV-Out)
chip via the Zoran (compression) chip but AFAIK that only works for mjpeg
compressed video and (so far) can't be done while capturing.

I'm currently doing #2 (with some minor issues with using the correct
modeline).  Scaling works just the same while mirroring my desktop to the tv
as it does when just using my monitor.

I got it this way by:

1.  Reading the heck out of the mjpeg-users mailing list.
2.  Compiling Matrox FB support into the kernel.
3.  Setting up X to use said FB
4.  Using matroxset (part of the mplayer package) to turn on mirroring.

There are some minor issues and I'm still considering a scan converter
however it does work and everything I've read suggests that this all works
better with the G400 series cards.  Certainly almost all of the developers
working on Matrox FB support seem to have G400 series cards so I'd expect
them to work better.  None of this makes any use of the Powerdesk utils.

> At this poing I've pretty much given up on the Marvel to do anything useful
> for me (installed a WinTV and bought a VGA->NTSC convertor).

Have you tried Myth with the hardware mjpeg support and if so what do you
think of the capture quality compared to your WinTV card?  

>  Although, I
> would be willing to switch the accel/scaling support to head2 if that is
> possible.  I haven't made any attempts to use the framebuffer directly for
> video (although I understand *that* is well supported), because if I can't
> display myth to the 2nd head, it's not very useful for me.

I may be misunderstanding something but I think you'd have to have your TV
hooked to head 1 to get accel support on it.  
 
-- 
Ray