[Bedpan]

Ok,

I have been banging my head at this all night trying to get XBMC running (well) on my Acer 3200....... Problem I am having appears to be with my TV, a LG 42LC7D

Running Beta1 Live

Problem: Screen blanks out intermittently when going into menus and almost entirely when playing a movie. This also occurs under Windows 7 and Vista.

I believe the issue is that the PC is not reading the EDID from the TV and running at incorrect resolutions and refresh rates... In reading on the TV it seems I should be targeting 1366x768@47Hz... XBMC LIve and windows for that mater want to be at 60Hz it seems.

How do I go about forcing this on XBMC Live (or windows for that matter)? I have poked at the xorg.conf file, but how do I force a refresh rate?

Am I going about the problem wrong? I may well be barking up the wrong tree.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

I bought this Acer just for this purpose, I really don't want to go buy a new TV as well :-)... I lie, I do but I know there is no money for that, and I still need a receiver!

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[Bedpan]

Well.. Little sleep tonight... Work should be fun..

I have figured some stuff out, but still not making much progress..

I followed through this thread on setting up xorg.conf
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=54685

Problem I am seeing is no valid modes above 640x480. Following through the log file it later says:
Unable to validate any modes; falling back to the default mode
"nvidia-auto-select"


I have forced things to 640x480 and I am no longer getting the blanking issue..... It is however nasty looking ;-)

Anyways.. Am I better posting this over in the howto, or anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Mike

[Bedpan]

Sorry, double posting between here and the Howto thread. Getting no response there after a day or so.. So here it is here now. Please, anyone able to offer assistance?

Any experts on this stuff live around Oshawa Ont? I will glad buy beer/food or provide small sums of cash for assistance :-)

Been fighting with this for a few nights now and getting nowhere... Highest res I can get to work without tv blanking out is 640x480... At this rate I might as well bring my Xbox back out of the closet and use it... Ugh!

Anyways, I have been hacking around the xlog.txt file but unable to get any modelines that work.... By adding



I can get the following mode




I have created and tested the modeline for this with the same results of cutting out intermittently..


I guess I should add that the PC is connected to the TV via HDMI. I have not tried DVI or VGA, but would rather not do to limitations of each (no audio and lower quality).

Again any assitance on this is GREATLY appreciated.. I will gladly paypal $20 to someone if they come up with a winning modeline.

At this point I am willing to try most anything. If I cook the TV it gives me an excuse to buy a new one, not that I have the cash for that, but that is what credit is for ;-)

Cheers all and thanks for reading.

Mike

[harbingerofdoom]

47hz?
according to LG:
http://www.lge.com/us/tv-audio-video/tel...47LG70.jsp

you should be running 1080@120hz with that panel. trying to run it at 47hz is going to cause problems. in your settings, you should be able to see a screen setting of 1920×1080@120 which should fix your problems i would think.

[Bedpan]

Wrong panel. Its the LG 42LC7D. Thanks very much for looking... I am thinking I may have to jump over to one of the Linux forums to see if I can find someone who is really good with this stuff.

Not a lot of info on the LG site for this panel... Here is what I can find:
http://reviews.cnet.com/flat-panel-tvs/l...85734.html

Ug..

Thanks again for the response.

Mike

47hz?
according to LG:
http://www.lge.com/us/tv-audio-video/tel...47LG70.jsp

you should be running 1080@120hz with that panel. trying to run it at 47hz is going to cause problems. in your settings, you should be able to see a screen setting of 1920×1080@120 which should fix your problems i would think.

[harbingerofdoom]

http://www.lge.com/us/support/product/su...t-profile#

there is the PDF for your model.
go to page 28 for the specific info on supported resolutions.

its kinda odd... it looks like you have to tell the panel what resolution you are running as well...

[Bedpan]

Thanks for pointing this out. It would appear that the option to specify the input may only be for VGA connector, but I will give it a try and get back here.

Thanks again!!

Mike

http://www.lge.com/us/support/product/su...t-profile#

there is the PDF for your model.
go to page 28 for the specific info on supported resolutions.

its kinda odd... it looks like you have to tell the panel what resolution you are running as well...

[Bedpan]

Well, reviewing the manual maybe the start of something good...

Still not quite where I want to be yet but making progress I think. I jumped back to the windows world to test something out...

Findings: It looks like HDMI will only use 1280x720, not 1366x768 as both windows and Linux are trying to pump out.

Some more work is required to get a modeline out of this but I hope there is enough info in the manual that I can get a working one. The main problem being that no resultions about 640 x 480 are being report as valid. That said I know what is working in windows now, I should be able to figure out a working modeline now.

Thanks harbingerofdoom, if this proves to get things running in linux I will send you some $$'s for the help.

Mike

[Bedpan]

Well... I thought we were on the right road.. 1280 x 720 seemed to be working.. Well I guess I did not wait long enough.

I have cut back over to VGA and audio cable. The picture is softer and not as sharp. At least it works..

:-(

Mike

[harbingerofdoom]

well, at least there is some progress. honestly since i dont have anything that is high def, running xbmc at 1360x768 works just fine for me.
perhaps give it a shot & see how it works for you & if you can at least live with it until you can get the HDMI sorted out?

[Bedpan]

Thats sorta the plan...

I got things running in windows on VGA at 1360x768. Now my family can at least use the box. The proc is a little weak though and there is some frame dropping on 1080p videos. I still have the live version there and I can poke at it when time allows and see what I can figure out.

The help is truly appreciated.

Mike

well, at least there is some progress. honestly since i dont have anything that is high def, running xbmc at 1360x768 works just fine for me.
perhaps give it a shot & see how it works for you & if you can at least live with it until you can get the HDMI sorted out?