[mythtv-users] Matrox G400 TV-Out (sorry large post)

[Dylan D]

I don't know about the g400's but with the g550's it had a dvi head not a
scart,
And the tv encoder is only on the RGB head not both.
Don't know how realivant that is to g400's though.
Also from what i gather Directfb support in myth isnt supported by anyone
currently, And the current code is very buggy( most of it is just ripped
from mplayer) im still having issues getting it to function properly on my
g550.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen Longhurst" <steve at longsteve.com>
To: <mythtv-users at mythtv.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 8:45 PM
Subject: [mythtv-users] Matrox G400 TV-Out (sorry large post)


> Hi all,
>
> Apologies for the rather long post, but if anyone has the time to
> offer any advice I'd appreciate it.
>
> It looks to me like getting tv output on the Matrox cards is one of
> the harder things one needs to do when setting up mythtv.  I've been
> wrestling for a couple of weeks now to get the TV Out setup using my
> Matrox G400, with both successes and failures.
>
> Since the G400 offers a proper RGB scart connection (with a simple to
> make cable), I'd have thought it would be top of lots of peoples
> things to get working properly lists. Can anyone (and I'm begging
> here) offer a set of instructions to getting a good mythtv setup with
> tv output on a Matrox G400 card, pretty please?
>
> Here's what I've successfully achieved so far:
>
> 1) MPlayer tv out using "mplayer -vo dfbmga:nospci -fs something.mpg"
>
> This is fantastic, perfect picture, full screen, no tweaking or
> settings needed changing at all to get videos to play fullscreen on my
> TV.  When this worked, my spirits were lifted to think how good things
> could be.
>
> 2) DirectFB frame buffer on the TV (console)
>
> I've managed to get console output on the TV too using the DirectFB
> stuff.  This took a bit of fiddling, including using the
> matroxtv scripts from the mplayer source package.  These turn out of
> be very helpful (check the mplayer source package in the TVout
> directory).
>
> 3) Almost clone display of X windows on the TV.
>
> This isn't so good yet.  I can get something on the screen, but the
> picture is the wrong size and position, I loose quite a bit top and
> bottom, and the sides are all wrong too.  I've tried playing with
> fbset, but haven't got a good picture yet.  I can however play
> something with mythtv on the tv like this, so there's promise here.
>
> Question : Is there some way I can get the settings for fbset to get
> the X screen correct?  I imagine something in mplayer knows how to set
> things correctly, or something in the matroxtv script maybe?  Every
> time I attempt to fbset one of the geometry settings, the whole screen
> goes nuts, and it's typing blind to try and get it back, or reset when
> that fails.
>
> I'm probably going to continue trying to get the picture correct using
> X for a while.  Having attempted to go down the QT/Embedded frambuffer
> route with mythtv, I don't think that's going to get me anywhere soon.
>
> Here's what hasn't worked yet:
>
> 1) Getting the X TV display properly configured.  I've seen various
> examples of fbset commands, and even modelines for the XF86Config, but
> nothing I try seems to work.  Can anyone offer advice here, for a PAL
> TV setup?
>
> 2) A QT/Embedded framebuffer version of mythtv.
>
> By the Lord Harry, this is a PITA too!  First of all, the QT/Embedded
> build/install instructions seem to be inconsistent and unhelpful.  I
> downloaded 3.3.1 and tried to build it, but there seem to be a raft of
> gotchas.  I finally ended up with the thing built properly (I think)
> with the correct set of flags like -thread and removing the -no-rtti
> option and stuff.  I then tried compiling mythtv but it seemed to
> insist on looking for the qt-mt library, when all that's built in the
> qte libs directory is libqte-mt?  Symlinking libqt-mt to the qte one
> seemed to do the trick and mythtv (cvs) will compile.  Although there
> were some compile errors with screensaver-x11.cpp, so I switched it to
> screensaver-null.cpp for now.
>
> Now, when I try and run mythfrontend -qws, on my monitor, I do
> actually get the frontend on the screen, although it's not centered
> properly and is in a horrible 8bit colour mode.  When I set up the
> framebuffer modules for the tv out, and set the QWS_DISPLAY=:/dev/fb0
> (or indeed /dev/fb1), I do get something on the TV.  However, it's
> simply a large screen rectangle on the display, about where the main
> mythfrontend icons would be.  If I hit escape, I get another screen
> box which looks like it should be the "are you sure you want to quit"
> message and a yes/no selection.  I select yes and exit back to the
> prompt with the console a bit screwey, but flipping virtual consoles
> fixes this.
>
> When I then read a bit more, and tried export
> QWS_DISPLAY=matrox:/dev/fb0, I got QT/E complaining that the matrox
> driver was not found.  After a bit of digging it seemed this wasn't
> compiled before, so I managed to build it and then mythfrontend would
> start again as before, but still only green rectangles on the TV :-(
>
> So there you go! I'd got so far with setting up my new machine;
> PVR-350 working, PVR-250 working, Nebula DigiTV working, lm-sensors
> working, BIOS alarm wakeup using APCI, mythtv working fairly well on
> my main monitor.  Only to have the most important part scuppered, the
> TV output!
>
> Finally, although I really want to get the Matrox working for me for
> it's RGB scart potential, I've also got an NVidia 440 with TV-Out, and
> the tv-out from the PVR-350 as fall backs.  Does anyone think these
> are worth trying?  For an easy life, I'd settle for S-Video.
>
> Thanks very much for your time,
>
>        Steve
>
> -- 
> Stephen Longhurst
> steve at longsteve.com
>
>


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