Hey guys, I think I know what J.C. Roberts is looking for, but alas it is hard to find.
I also purchased one of these vga -> svideo cables, and it truly is just that, some form of converter from vga to s-video with no logic inside. So, you have to have the perfect sync on the vga side to make the picture show up nice on the TV side. I never got this to work. What I have found is lots of video adapters have a builtin s-video port, which works for displaying videos on the tv. With one huge caveat. Out of the 5 cards I have that do s-video out, two of them pci 'ATI Mach64' cards, only one (one of the 'ATI Mach64' cards puts out a signal that looks decent. Some of them put out signals that flicker and never sync, others put out signals that color shift or do other visual eyesores. So, if you really are on a low budget, find a used computer store and get some Mach64 card or some other card that has a known good s-video output signal, and enjoy your movies. Me, personally, I'm looking forward to saving up for a widescreen (2-3 years out at best) that has a vga/dvi input for a computer to display to directly without the s-video limitations. Until then, I enjoy lots of video files in my living room courtesy OpenBSD. Have fun, P.S. Edd, if you do have a resolution that works with the VGA->S-Video cable, I suggest posting it here on the mailing list, there will be a use for it to be in the archives I am sure. -- Todd Fries .. [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ | \ 1.636.410.0632 (voice) | Free Daemon Consulting, LLC \ 1.405.227.9094 (voice) | http://FreeDaemonConsulting.com \ 1.866.792.3418 (FAX) | "..in support of free software solutions." \ 250797 (FWD) | \ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ 37E7 D3EB 74D0 8D66 A68D B866 0326 204E 3F42 004A http://todd.fries.net/pgp.txt Penned by J.C. Roberts on 20080819 1:48.46, we have: | On Sunday 17 August 2008, Edd Barrett wrote: | > Hi, | > | > We have this BSD box with some films on, and someone had the idea of | > hookiing it up to the TV so we can watch DVD's etc in the living | > room. Not a bad idea, but I don't know how. | > | > My friend bought a VGA->Scart cable, and I have tried various | > resolutions and various horizontal and vertical ranges without luck. | > | > I asked a friend who is into this sort of thing and he reckoned | > [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a good start, but the best I have had is a messed up | > picture with diagonal scan lines moving down the screen quickly. | > | > If you google you get links to linux "howto's" for the proprietary | > linux drivers, so no thanks to that. | > | > I wonder if anyone knows a way. | | | Edd, | | Could you post (or privately email) your xorg.conf and X.org.log | | I don't know a thing about S-Video and have never heard of "Scart" | before, but we might be able to get the TV Out (Composite Video) | working on that card with the default driver. | | At one point in time, the TV Out on nVidia cards was handled by a | separate chipset (brooktree/conexant/philips/?) but I doubt that is the | case on GeForce4mx and newer cards. None the less, the trick with cards | that have multiple outputs is making sure you're talking to the right | output. The nv(4) driver will try to auto-detect if an output device is | connected (monitor/TV/?) but it may not get it right and may default to | the wrong output. | | There are two things you can try: | 1.) Force access to the TV Out interface through the BusID | (see xorg.conf(5)) | | BusID "PCI:1:0:0" | # or | BusID "PCI:2:0:0" | | 2.) Force access to the TV Out interface through CrtcNumber | (see nv(4)) | | Option "CrtcNumber" "integer" | | You can often coerce (force) video cards with multiple outputs to play | nicely even when they are such total garbage that the vendor (nVidia) | is afraid to provide specifications for them. | | There is one issue I see that might be a problem, namely NTSC versus PAL | but a lot of TV sets these days can accept either, so we might get | lucky. If not, the PAL modelines you posted look reasonable. | | Kind Regards, | JCR
