[mythtv-users] Video problem

Marc Chamberlin marc at marcchamberlin.com
Tue Feb 5 20:07:55 UTC 2008


Brad DerManouelian wrote:
> On Feb 4, 2008, at 10:46 PM, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
>
>   
>> I am running MythTV using an Hauppauge PVR350 card, ATI Radeon x1900
>> video card, and a Westinghouse LVM42 monitor. The monitor runs at  
>> 1920 x
>> 1080 interlaced with a 30hz refresh rate. The video is experiencing  
>> some
>> sort of a interference problem that causes horizontal line and bars of
>> various widths to flash on the screen while watching a tv program.  
>> These
>> lines and bars occur at random places, with random colors and patterns
>> within them. The rate is around 2 or 3 a second and single or multiple
>> bars will appear at the same time. The video is watchable but this
>> flashing is rather annoying and detracts from the image quality. This
>> does not occur except while watching tv or dvds.
>>
>> Anyone got any ideas on what may be causing this and or how I can go
>> about diagnosing the problem to find a solution?
>>
>>   Thanks in advance...   Marc Chamberlin  newbie MythTV convert...
>>     
>
> Which input are you using? I had this problem when I was running on  
> DVI2 which is 1080i only but when I switched to DVI1 (1080p) it went  
> away. I also upgraded my cable from a single link DVI o a dual link  
> DVI cable at the same time so I'm not sure which fixed it.
>
>
>   
Thanks Brad for your thoughts! Oh boy your questions got me to thinking 
and I decided to double check things as I never considered that there 
might be a difference between input connectors on the monitor (or output 
connectors on the ATI card...)

I am running the Westinghouse monitor on its DVI1 input and according to 
Westinghouse's manual there is no difference in what either the DVI1 or 
DVI2 input connects will support, it claims they both support 1080i or 
1080p.

As far as the ATI card is concerned, ATI's documentation is atrocious 
and I really have no idea as to whether there is a difference between 
the two connectors supplied on the back of the card. All I can tell you 
is I connected it to the upper connector (closest one to the screw that 
connects the card to the chassis) and I connected a small VGA monitor to 
the lower one using an DVI to VGA adapter.  (I will try swapping these 
to see if that makes any difference later....)

I can tell you a bit more, my system is a dual boot system and I am also 
running this under Windows XP. When I run Hauppauge's WinTV2000 I do not 
get these flashing lines and bars on the TV image. 

I can also tell you that when I was initially setting up this system I 
could never get either WinXP or SuSE Linux to generate a usable display 
in the 1920 x 1080 resolution at a 60 hz refresh rate. At that refresh 
rate the display would be garbage looking like nothing but red diagonal 
lines. Setting the refresh rate to 30 hz produced a nice display and I 
was told by a friend that this means I am running the display in 
interlaced mode, hence my reporting it as 1920x1080i. Also, that is what 
I set it up on SuSE Linux with the aticonfig tool and in the xorg.conf 
file. But again, because I don't have any good documentation from ATI on 
what all this stuff means I am quite lost when it comes to understanding 
it all. (I will also mention that after my experience with ATI/AMD and 
setting up this card under Linux I WON'T ever touch an ATI card again 
since both their support for Linux and documentation is really bad IMHO!)

Anywise I hope this will be enough additional information for you or 
someone else to help me resolve this issue of the flashing bars and 
lines when I am using MythTV.

   Marc Chamberlin - who is still weirded out with colorful bars and 
lines on his TV images....



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