SuSE 10.0: TV Out on NVidia GeForce FX 5200

Problem

How can I enable TV Out on my NVidia GeForce FX 5200 on SuSE 10.0?

Solution

TwinView

TwinView is an Nvidia specific extension to X. From readme:

TwinView is a mode of operation where two display devices (digital
flat panels, CRTs, and TVs) can display the contents of a single X screen
in any arbitrary configuration.  This method of multiple monitor use
has several distinct advantages over other techniques (such as Xinerama):

  o A single X screen is used.  The NVIDIA driver conceals all
    information about multiple display devices from the X server; as
    far as X is concerned, there is only one screen.

  o Both display devices share one frame buffer.  Thus, all the
    the functionality present on a single display (e.g. accelerated
    OpenGL) is available on TwinView.

  o No additional overhead is needed to emulate having a single
    desktop.

In order to clone the screen the tv, I had to modify xorg.conf.

These are the relevant parts of my xorg.conf to clone the screen to tv:

Section "Screen"
  DefaultDepth 24
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      15
    Modes      "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      16
    Modes      "640x480"
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      24
    Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      4
    Modes      "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  SubSection "Display"
    Depth      8
    Modes      "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480" 
  EndSubSection
  Device       "Device[0]"
  Identifier   "Screen[0]"
  Monitor      "Monitor[0]"

  Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT,TV"
  Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
  Option "TVStandard" "PAL-B"
  Option "TVOverScan" "0.0"
  Option "TwinView" "true"
  Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "28-93"
  Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "50-180"
  Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
  Option "MetaModes" "1024x768, 1024x768"
EndSection


Section "Device"
  BoardName    "GeForce FX 5200"
  Driver       "nvidia"
  Identifier   "Device[0]"
  Screen       0
  Option       "Rotate" "off"
  VendorName   "NVidia"
EndSection


Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier   "Layout[all]"
  InputDevice  "kbd" "CoreKeyboard"
  InputDevice  "Mouse" "CorePointer"
  Option       "Clone" "off"
  Option       "Xinerama" "off"
  Screen       "Screen[0]"
EndSection

Caveats

1. With the monitor connected to the digital connector (DVI), the SecondMonitory according to X is not the TV, but the monitor. So the frequencies specified at SecondMonitorHorizSync and SecondMonitorVertRefresh should not be those of the monitor, but those of the TV. See logfile Xorg.0.log for clues.

Drawbacks

The TV output is always on? How can I turn on TV output only when I want to?

Journal

20061229

Linux - Configuring TV-Out

Answer from nvidia.custhelp.com hinting settings for your X config file

"can I switch CRT <-> TV without killing X"

Forum thread with tip how to setup X with TwinView; automatically enabling TV Out when switching to lower resolutions

http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86_40/1.0-2880/README.txt

Nvidia readme with various tips how to configure/debug X.

http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-8774/README/appendix-g.html

A more recent HTML version of the "Configuring TwinView" appendix

20061230

Linux Conspirare - UnOfficial Nvidia tvout Information

Page with lots of information and example configurations for non-twinview cards

Page with example X configuration of my Loewe Xelos 5270 ZW television.

Advertisement

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus