[mythtv-users] HDTV Success Stories?

[Brad Templeton]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 10:05:21AM -0800, Joe Barnhart wrote:
> 
> --- Roy Murphy <roy.murphy at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > I'm going to be driving a 1080i native HDTV CRT with
> > a VGA-Composite
> > adaptor (no DVI or HDMI inputs on this model). I
> > hear that an nvidia
> > adapter can drive HD with less processor, but
> > interlace dosn't work.
> 
> nVidia 5200 FX is your best bet.  XvMC doesn't work
> correctly with myth, but Xv works pretty well.  I have
> a setup exactly as you describe -- RPTV locked to
> 1080i over VGA -- and 1080i output looks VERY good. 
> My 720p shows are sub-optimal but I think that's
> because of the scaling done to convert it to 1080i on
> the fly.  I have more jaggies and motion artifacts
> than I should see.  But it's very smooth in both
> cases.  I'm using KnoppMyth R4V5 on an Intel 530 (3
> GHZ) and Intel 865PE chipset.

You won't be using DVI but many people have reported inability
to get DVI to work with this card.

Now I may have been alone in this, but I found that even
when driving with vga through a vga->component converter,
when I displayed at 1080i on the HDTV, there would be a
slight jerkiness to the video.   Plenty of idle CPU so
that wasn't the cause.   When I would us exactly the
same setup to a progressive monitor at lower resolution (so xvideo
was scaling the 1920x1080 window down) it was smooth as silk.

I never resolved it and return the TV for other reasons.  There
was speculation I might have needed to play with my refresh
rate or something since it was slightly off from 59.97hz.  (or
really half that for the full frame.)

Just to warn you issues such as that can happen.  You
probably mean a vga to component adapter, not a vga to
composite adapter!

The nvidia proprietary drivers will do interlace, though there
can be lots of fun getting them to work, to load and to
compile with anything but certain kernels.  (You need patched
drivers for 2.6.10, or for earlier kernels and earlier drivers.)

The thing to watch out for on other cards is that many xvideo
systems have only been heavily used at up to 1600x1200.  Usage
at 1920 wide is a recent thing, much less tested.   Thus the
onboard video in one of my systems (which I don't use) flakes
out over 1440 wide.  The open source radeon driver flakes out
over 1600 wide.   I have unichrome in another system I am
planning to try, but debian does not yet officially support
xorg or xfree86 4.4, which I think the unichrome drivers need.
There are lots of unichrome users here but mostly with sdtv.

(There is an xorg deb package out there, I will try it at
some point.)