ATI tv out on linux

Khannie

I'm trying to get a myth-tv box up and running....

Last time I tried, I assumed that there would be ATI tvout support, and of course there wasn't, but it's now listed as a feature on the ATI driver website. Just wondering if anyone is using it successfully?

Part2:
Alternatively, the Hauppauge PVR ivtv drivers can drive X on tvout, but I had dvd playback issues before with this (i.e. playback was crap). Could someone explain how this works at a hardware level? Does the video card output get re-routed to the PVR? Or is it just acting as a rubbish graphics card? I'd like to be able to play mame games (which I'd expect the PVR350 can't handle), but I did pay for hardware mpeg decoding, so I'd like that too.

Can I have my cake and eat it?

I'd be more than happy to just get reasonable tv out from the built in ATI card (it's an Asus Pundit with an integrated Radeon 9100).

voxpop

best place I've seen for mythtv answers - http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/

Khannie

Doh! *slaps head*

Thanks. I should have checked the mailing list first. It's /supposed/ to be myth specific, but it has everything even vaguely myth related in it.

Anyone here have the ATI tv out running though? I was thinking of using ubuntu for it, but there's a quality howto for Fedora (which I used during my failed attempt a few months back).

Khannie

Update for anyone who comes this way in the future.....

I did get it working eventually, though it wasn't easy. Here's what I did:

Installed Ubuntu 5.10 plus usual goodies plus fglrx drivers from the apt repository

After some failed manual attempts, I used "fglrxconfig" to configure my xorg.conf (remember to backup your original).

the 2d drivers (under "ati" in the drivers section of the xorg.conf) do not work for tvout (garbled display). If I changed this to "fglrx" (3d accellerated drivers) anything with OpenGL was causing a system hang requiring a hard reboot. I edited the xorg.conf to disallow OGL for all but root (in case I wanted to attempt to debug it). There are comments in the file to show you where to edit.

At this point, it was relatively stable, but I was still getting the occasional random system hang just after bootup. Saving an empty gnome session seems to have overcome this issue.

In short: The ATI drivers are still unfortunately crap, but you can overcome the issues with some effort.

edit: last thing....you need to manually enable DMA for optical drives in ubuntu!
hdparm is your friend.

voxpop

jeysus - well done getting ati and mythtv to work together - i figured it was still basically impossible !! I gotta say that the geforce+fedora+mythtv takes very little work to get up and running espically with the wilsonet.com guide and is very stable

Khannie

I did try it with FC3 nearly a year ago, but there was no ATI tvout support at the time for my (built in) card. The ivtv drivers for tvout on the PVR cards was dodgy too ("dodgy" is kind). They seem fairly stable now by comparisson.

At the time I did get it working, but dvd playback was terrible and mame was unplayable, so I ditched it.

Mame and dvd playback are decent enough now with my new setup (though I'm having trouble getting fullscreen mame, I'm sure I'll sort that). I haven't got Myth setup yet, but we've just moved house, so I'm internetless temporarily.

You're spot on about yer mans guide though. Absolutely legend. Taught me loads of stuff that I've been able to take to the new install.

On the nvidia front: I'm never buying ATI again. Only reason I did was because it's built into the Pundit-R that I bought for my htpc core. Would have gotten one of those cubey cases, but the mrs. said that she wasn't having something that looked like a computer in the living room.

<insert whip noise>