[mythtv-users] composite video problems with upgrade to mythdora (same problem with mythbuntu)

[Jarod Wilson]

On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 11:45 PM, Larry <mythtv at american-hero.com> wrote:
> Ok, now that I have my lirc problem fixed I migrated my frontend back up
> to the living room.  When I connected the composite video up to my TV my
> original problem returned.
> All was well in the world until i upgraded to myth .23.  The backend
> works fine as does the local frontend on the box. The backend is just a
> CENTOS distro running the atrpms packages.
> My problem is the remote frontend box.  I was running mythbuntu 9.10
> until I upgraded to .23 which required I upgrade the mythbuntu box's to
> 10.04.  Once I did that my video out stopped working, or rather the
> output became garbled.
> I though the problem may be mythbuntu specific so I switched to mythdora
> but the problem followed it.
>
> my video card is
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo
> CLE266] integrated CastleRock graphics (rev 03)
>
> I have tried the openchrome driver, vesa,via and even vga to no success.
>
> during the boot process I can see all the screen just fine, but when X
> starts its as if the screen is somewhat "rolling" and "flickering"
> By changing the modes I can control somewhat how the "rolling" and
> "flickering" is presented but not stop the behavior.
>
> I'm not even sure how to diagnose this.  Depending on which slew of
> options i specify I get different errors in my Xorg.0.log but nothing
> that I can find that tells me what the problem is.
>
> Given that TV out via composite works just fine during bootup I'm
> guessing that I should be able to use some simple X driver but I have
> yet to land on the correct one.
>
> Anyone care to throw ideas out on how to diagnose what my actual issue is?

Sadly, I suspect the answer is this: via video hardware sucks. There
are very few users of it to begin with, relative to ATI and nVidia
(and even Intel these days), and even less on the Linux side. Linux
support for their video chipsets has always been pretty shaky, which
presents a chicken and egg issue -- nobody wants to use it due to
issues with it, but then there really isn't significant impetus to
make it work really well. I suspect this is a simple case of nobody
keeping the via video drivers up to snuff with the latest Xorg. I
could be wrong there, but none of the X hackers I know touch
openchrome on any regular basis, nor do they want to -- they all focus
on intel, radeon and nouveau.

-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod at wilsonet.com