[donjjones]

I recently purchased a GeForce 8400 GS generic card for a P4 machine I had laying around. I loaded up with XBMC Live and to my surprise every single file I threw at it including the killa sampler and others played perfectly on it. I had to turn on the vdpau support. VERY IMPRESSED. I tried Windows 7 on the same machine and the video just couldn't keep up. I even installed the latest drivers but it didn't make much of a difference. So I'm sticking with the linux version.

My problem is this - I have a Magnavox 51" rear projection TV with component inputs. It supports 1080i and 480p resolutions from what the manual says. I tried the component connection from my GeForce card and the screen had slanted/scrolling lines. The image is there of the XBMC interface but it's just impossible to see anything. Seems like some sort of a sync issue. DVI / HDMI / VGA are not options on this particular set.

I do know 1080i works with my Xbox 360 attached to it. I've also had an old XBox with XBMC in the past on it and had similar problems but I was able to overcome them with trial and error with resolution tweaking. I'm looking for some guidance on doing this with XBMC live / linux version. A useful function would be to use a button on the remote that could cycle through all the resolutions to find something that works since the menu is unviewable.

Any tips on how to overcome this and get the video to sync up right with the TV?

Thanks,
DJ

[data10]

I was curious if you found a solution to your problem. I have an evga nvidia chipset card (9500) with component out to my TV and I can see the image, its just blown up super large and appears in the top left corner when set to 1080 in xbmc and when set to 480 its super small in the upper left hand corner.

I'm wondering if it's maybe a driver issue with xbmc live on ubuntu OR if it's related to the video card itself. I'm thinking of installing the card in a windows machine with drivers let me mess around with the TV out settings to see if I can see it on the TV.

any help is appreciated.

[donjjones]

I recall having to adjust the settings in the xorg.conf or something like that to have TV Out=Component or something along those lines.

Also, I recall after installing the live version, it like to overrite the xorg.conf or the X11.conf or whatever on every boot and I had to track down what it was that was doing that.

Sorry I couldn't be more specific. Hope this helps!

[derwood]

I have a 51" Magnavox rear projection that sounds very similar to yours. I also have an 8400 GS connected to it thru the component out on the 8400GS.. I've been able to figure everything out for either 480p or 1080i.

Below is my xorg.conf. All you should have to do is replace your xorg.conf with mine. Also, you will want to connect the 3-wire HDTV component out from the 8400GS to the TV. On my TV, its the 4th set of inputs, and theres 5 connections if I remember, but you only need to use 3 of them.

Hope this helps some

Here's my xorg.conf. Its set for 1080i:

Code:

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (buildd@palmer)  Mon Nov  3 08:46:46 UTC 2008

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier     "Monitor0"
        VendorName     "Unknown"
        ModelName      "TV-0"
        HorizSync       30.0 - 50.0
        VertRefresh     50.0 - 70.0
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier     "Screen0"
        Device         "Device0"
        Monitor        "Monitor0"
        Option         "TVOutFormat" "Component"
        Option         "TVStandard" "HD1080i"
        Option         "ConnectedMonitor" "TV"
        Option         "TwinView" "0"
        Option         "metamodes" "1920x1080 +0+0"
        DefaultDepth    24
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth       24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load           "dbe"
        Load           "extmod"
        Load           "type1"
        Load           "freetype"
        Load           "glx"
EndSection

# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used
#Section "InputDevice"
#        Identifier     "Mouse0"
#        Driver         "mouse"
#        Option         "Protocol" "auto"
#        Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
#        Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
#        Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
#EndSection

# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used
#Section "InputDevice"
#        Identifier     "Keyboard0"
#        Driver         "kbd"
#EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "Layout0"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used
#        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
# commented out by update-manager, HAL is now used
#        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier     "Device0"
        VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
        BoardName      "GeForce 8400 GS"
        Driver  "nvidia"
        Option  "NoLogo"        "True"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

[donjjones]

Thanks for the reply derwood! I wish that conf file was around when I started my endevour, I sunk about 5 hours into figuring it out. But I learned a little bit about linux along the way so I guess it was an overall good thing for me.

I'm going to try your file out anyways and see if it yields better results...

Thanks again
Don

[graysky]

Please let us know if it does!

[derwood]

Don't feel bad, Don. When I set this up about 10 months ago, it took me about 5 or 6 hours to figure out myself, and I have about 10 years with Unix and Linux. I had to play with the scan frequencies manually because they just cannot be found for these Magnavox rear projection TV's.
So, I took a stab (which can be dangerous for your TV) and used standard scan freq's for 1080i.. Which ended up working..

By the way, the model on my TV is 51MP392h.