TV Out

Forum: Multimedia
Topic: TV Out
started by: fluppet

Posted by fluppet on July 15 2007,06:25

I'm sorry if this has been covered before, or if I should be able to work it out on my own.

How can I get TV Out on my old ('99) laptop to work?

I'm running DSL live from USB. I haven't really tried much, as I don't know where to begin.

I tried loading the XFree86 MyDSL extension several times, but each time my laptop frooze while it was reloading X (sometimes before it loaded any icons, sometimes after loading a few icons).

Thanks

Posted by Juanito on July 15 2007,06:58

I'm pretty sure you will need to get either XFree86 or Xorg working in order to get TV out - Google shows a number of xorg.conf file examples for TV out.

Maybe the first place to start would be to look at the XFree86 log (I cannot remember it's exact name) in /var/log to see if it gives any clues as to why your laptop freezes with XFree.

Posted by curaga on July 15 2007,06:58

do you mean the normal reloading after any extension?
or did you try to use Xfree without a config file?

Give also your laptop's model and graphic chip info

Posted by fluppet on July 17 2007,17:58

Juanito - I will check. I presumed that as I am running it off a USB it would not be possible to access the logs once the computer freezes (and I have to use the power button to turn it off).

curaga - I haven't had problems with other extensions (although I haven't tried that many). When I try to load XFree86.dsl I have the problem. I had the most success if I quit the window manager and then do mydsl-load and the other changes that are necessary for this extension (copying the modified .xserverrc to /home/dsl and XF86Config-4_vesa to /etc/X11/XF86Config-4). Then startx which begins to load the window manager again, very slowly, taking a minute or more for each icon to load (if any load at all) and then eventually freezes completely. It's a Gateway Solo 9100 with an ATI graphics chip.

Posted by curaga on July 17 2007,18:47

You need to edit XF86Config-4, those are just examples, not guarantee to work... For normal usage.

-- You cannot get tv-out! Not with DSL that is. Ati's Linux drivers suck. They have really bad performance, crash often, and lack features just like tv-out..

If you want tv-out for watching video, your best bet is Geexbox 1.1. As it uses Vesa Bios by default, which forces tv-out on even on ati cards.. Not guaranteed to work, but like I said, it's the best bet.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 18 2007,00:39

Quote (curaga @ July 17 2007,14:47)

curaga: Please stop making unfounded conclusions. Anyways, you contradicted yourself next by suggesting geexbox... ?

fluppet: It probably depends on what video chipset that is... I haven't found your laptop specs online (only different versions of the 9100). It might help if you paste out a `lspci -v` or your stats.txt from System Stats?

Posted by curaga on July 18 2007,08:02

Okay. I'll found my conclusions.

I have Ati Rage, Ati Mach64 and Ati Radeon 9250. Only radeon has tv-out.
With the open source drivers performance is ok, but the advanced features such as fast 3d or video accel aren't in the driver. Then the official Ati driver; it only supported the radeon. Not to mention no tv-out; even the normal crt screen looked overlighted, nothing could be seen 'til I tuned the screen brightness to near zero.. The only setting in Ati Panel was gamma, I tried it to fix that overillumination, but that in turn made colors look wrong. Glxgears segfaulted with the official driver.

Do I need to tell more?

And I got a working tv-out with Geexbox..

I don't think I contradicted myself, as Geexbox doesn't use official Ati drivers. I'm not sure if the Mplayer extension has vesa and cvidix drivers included; if it has, video playing through tv-out may be possible in DSL too...
But even if so, it will be harder to set up than with geexbox..

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 18 2007,13:18

I did mean in terms of tv-out, as the thread's subject is about. I just pointed out your absolute negative in its possibility. Note about your radeon using fglrx: I think older versions worked better with the r2xx... would also have tv-out. (r2xx has deprecated in official support)

Posted by curaga on July 18 2007,13:32

I used the last version supporting 9250. It still was for an older kernel & older X, which probably caused some of my crashes..

Posted by fluppet on July 18 2007,13:57

It's an ATI 3D Rage LT Pro AGP-133