[mythtv-users] better tv-out cards

Ray Olszewski ray at comarre.com
Thu May 8 11:24:13 EDT 2003


Thanks for this information, Rob. After reading the last reference you 
cite, I learn that:

A. "Xv is supported on the Matrox G400"

B. "only certain nVidia cards and the Matrox G400 support TV-Out under Linux."

The reference does NOT say that the G400 will support xVideo and TV-out AT 
THE SAME TIME. My pointing out that omision is not a quibble; this is the 
exact problem I have here with the G550 I am trying to use. Specifically, 
the G450 and G550 cards with TV out are all dual head. xVideo is available 
only on the first head, and TV out only on the second head. To quote the 
G450/550 page I used to get TV out working:

"For those wanting to play movies on your TV- there is no acceleration of 
any kind available. If you've watched movies in XFree86 using XV, you will 
notice that you can watch your movie at it's original size or in fullscreen 
and it doesn't seem to slow down. This is done using the BES 
(back-end-scaler) on the card. The BES resizes the video in hardware. This 
unfortunately is not available on the second CRTC (only the primary CRTC). 
TV-out only works on the second
CRTC, so no hardware resizing :( XV also makes use of the colour-space 
conversion routines that again, are not available on the second head."

(URL: http://www.bglug.ca/matrox_tvout/g450_tvout_howto.html)

The Matrox link you provide for the G400 does talk about "a separate RGB 
monitor, TV, analog or digital flat panel as your **secondary** display" 
(emphasis added).

If anyone here actually has a G400 running with xVideo support on the 
TV-out head, then please speak up and correct me. As I said before, I'm 
offering this as my best understanding, not as gospel truth. Absent that 
sort of reply, though, I think this response is an example of the problem I 
was discussing earlier ... reading more into a Web page than is actually there.

BTW, the G450 and G550 do also use external 15-pin-to-Composite-out 
adapters. The wiring diagrams for them *seem* to indicate that the 2 
adapters are identical for Composite out but different for sVideo out. So 
it would *seem* that one needs to pay attention to matching the adapter to 
the card.

At 12:37 PM 5/8/2003 -0400, Rob Rogers wrote:
[...]
>How about the G400? IIRC, the 400 had open source drivers released by
>Matrox, and has Xv support, but The 450 and 550 didn't get OS drivers
>because of the addition of Macrovision. The 400 doesn't have a built in
>TV-out Connector, (just a second vga connector) but you can get the
>adapter for less then $10. I can't seem to find the page on their site
>for the 400, but here's what they look like for the 450 (might even be
>the same one)
>http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/upgrades/g450mms_cable.cfm
>
>Matrox page about the g400 and Dual Head:
>http://www.matrox.com/mga/products/mill_g400/applications/dh/home.cfm
>If you decide to get a 400, make sure you get the dual head. The also
>had a single head model of the 400 (but not the 450 or 550 I believe)
>
>"Xv is supported on the Matrox G400"
>http://linuxgamers.net/lsd/hardwaretalk/x42.html
>This page is a bit outdated (refers to XFree 4.1.0) but has info on
>TV-Out and Xvideo support at that time.







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