Hi.
Believe me when I say that I've searched e.t.c for answers. I've tried and now I'm looking for clarification. (And it's not like I haven't tried - last week I set up a clonezilla drbl server (to backup and restore over PXE).
Anyway.
This question could have been avoided if I'd bought a 1080p TV. But I didn't. So...
I have a Toshiba Regza 32AV615. It only does 1080i. Reading around I believe 720p may be a better resolution for it (I had the XBOX in 720p working fine for a bit).
I have a new asrock 330 and set up with xbmc live cd. The TV tells me that the resolution is 1080i, but when I change the resolution in xbmc (e.g. it is now 1280x720) the TV still says 1080i. Now the strange thing is, is that the resolution is different and the response of the asrock is better at the lower resolution. Is the TV at 720p and just not reporting correctly, or is it still not the correct resolution? I tried editing Xorg, but tbh I'm getting a bit lost?
If I set 720p in xbmc, I get a small picture that doesn't fill the full screen. Should the TV be adjusting down to this?
Hope someone can point me in the right direction.
I can post a log etc if needed. TBH I can imagine this is easily answered by somebody who understands the melding of the different technologies.
Can you go to Settings > Appearance > Screen Tab > Video Calibration...
and then stretch to fit your screen? I know this is an option for the xbox and windows platforms.
Thanks for responding.
I can give that a try. When I had the xbox connected the TV would display the appropriate resolution on screen (ie 720p, 1080i). It's almost as though the TV thinks it's still in 1080i even though I'm telling xbmc to change the display. I think it might be a problem with xorg.
But to be honest, wtfdik.
**OK. Just tried to increase the size of the 720p screen using the calibrate option, but that doesn't work. The arrows just move off into a black part of the screen.
I also tried it in the other HDMI inputs (just in case). No change.
**Ok. What does the hash key do? Cos I press it in 1080i and there isn't much of a difference. But I press it in 720p and it goes from small corner screen to full screen. But my TV still reports 1080i. Any ideas what is going on?
Try disabling "Force Full GPU Scaling" for your TV in nvidia-settings.
I got an error trying to access nvidia-settings:
Quote:libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Trying to fix it, hosed my system. Thankfully clonzilla server came to the rescue. Any pointers in the right direction ie I'm back at the error at the top of this post. This one.
So I managed to fix it. I found some help
here and then I ssh into my asrock and
Quote:export DISPLAY=:0.0
followed by
Quote:sudo nvidia-settings
And lo and behold, up pops nvidia-settings on my tv. I press hash key and then I can set 720p and then the TV reports 720p (down from 1080i). Killasample plays fine and the whole thing is almost perfect.
I say almost cos hitting hash key can mess it up, and because it doesn't seem to survive a reboot (have to ssh in and repeat). Any ideas on having the settings stick?
OK.
I have seen that the native resolution of the TV is
1366x768 but trying to get that resolution just led nowhere (plus that resolution is not written anywhere in the manual). 1360x768 is.
I swapped out the HDMI and replaced with a VGA cable.
So i've spent a bit more time trying to get it to 1360x768 and SUCCESS Killasample plays even better than when played in 720 (10 frames dropped instead of 22).
The UI fills the screen. But when playing videos there seems to be space at the top. Are these the missing 6 pixels?
Do I stick with this or the 720p over hdmi?
*Gone back to 720p over HDMI. Any ideas how to make it survive a reboot (as post above this one)
*Still not any closer to working this out.
My GF has been creaming her pants all night about the quality of the 720p. I'm going to try what's outlined in
THIS post and see if that helps the setting stick. If not I'll be posting logs galore.
Once that's fixed I may attempt to get it running at its native resolution. I did read that it's worth doing, but again. wtfdik.
Thanks for listening.
Hey Sisyphus,
can you please post your xorg.conf for the VGA setup which works at 1360x768?
- I'd really like to try this as well since I also have a Toshiba HD ready LCD TV with 1366x768 px and I'm lost in the middle of nowhere with my trials to find a proper X11 setup.
Thanks a lot!!
Marcus
Will post it tommorrow. I know how you feel. This really could have been avoided if we'd just got a 1080p tv. D'oh.
TBH though. I think getting 1360x768 was one of the easiest things I've accomplished (and I've spent alot of hours already fiddling with it all). I hooked up the VGA, pulled out the HDMI, trigger nvidia-settings, choose 1360x768 and bob's your uncle - if my recollection is correct. Thing is, I don't understand why we can't trigger that resolution over HDMI. VGA lacks the native option, which if I understand correctly would be 1:1. I dunno.
What makes you think that 1366x768 is the native resolution?
All this, and tbh I only watch SD stuff. It is doing my nut in!
Been working on it this morning.
1) Still can't get 720p to survive a reboot.
2) Switched over to VGA again. Load nvidia-settings. Choose 1366x768 (advanced) and TV reports 1360x768. This survives a reboot.
PASTEBIN -
xorg.conf
Questions: What is the native of the TV? 1366x768 or 1360x768? Can't seem to get either resolution via HDMI. Is there going to be much of an improvement (the only real difference I can see between HDMI and VGA is some aspect ratio difference (but that could be a TV adjustment thing) and perhaps some blurring on VGA RSS scrolling.
If I don't get much help here, I may try and get some specific
TV advice elsewhere.
Final point. I did notice that the Inglourious Basterds trailer plays pretty horribly over VGA (looked like an interlacing problem). I haven't compared it to HDMI.
*Just for good luck I'll also provide my
xlog.txt
Okay. I might be getting somewhere.
From reading around (googling vga vs HDMI) I gather that the TV only reports 1080i, 720p through the HDMI cable, but reports the true resolution through the VGA cable.
The Toshiba website tells me that my panel is 1366x768 native. Now I don't quite understand, if when I set this resolution in nvidia-settings over HDMI, does this scale to 1366x768, or is it scaling to 1080i? In other words is it treating 1366x768 as a 1080i format (when I set it to 1280x720 (i think) it reports 720p over HDMI. Whereas over VGA it reports 1360x768. Which still isn't 1366x768.
If you get my drift?
Do you ever feel like a character out of scanners?
**
Ok. So I think I was right. I have it currently running over HDMI. XBMC reports 1366x768 and the TV reports 1080i. Everything seems to play fine. SD stuff seems to have a border of a few pixels. The H264 trailers seem to not have this problem. I'll see what it's like over the evening.
***
Spoke too soon. Gone back to my non-sticking 720p settings because of some interlacing issues. I will post a log later.
Another day of pulling out my hair. Here is a
debug log &
old.log.
One thing I have noticed is that nvidia-settings cites my TV's native resolution as 1920×1080 and when I turn off gpu scaling, it crashes and reboots (with res set to 1366x768). It doesn't do this when I have selected 720p.
Anyone please give me some ideas?
Wow, this is the EXACT issue i have, is this an issue with nvidia drivers or just xbmc? I wish you had a solution for this, i'm in no way as good on this as you are.
1366 vs 1360 is, because the Nvidia driver can only handle horizontal resolutions which are a multiple of 8. I think I've read about this limitation somewhere.
Now, what I don't understand is, if it simple leaves 3 pixel black on the left and the right of the display, and pixel-maps the other ones correctly. That would already help a lot.
I'm courios to test your Xorg setting tomorrow here as well.
Mostly, because I recall that my Toshiba is limited to VGA resolution (640x480) via the VGA cable.
Definitely, these "HD ready" TVs do a lot of internal scaling when you feed them with whatever is your source material. (And I think, this may be acceptable because they are designed for that...)
But I also agree that a 1:1 pixel mapped "HD 1080p" TV may be simpler to handle.
Thanks for the moment, will see that I find some time tomorrow !
Marcus