Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Users

HD: desparate, grasping at straws

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greg at gregandeva

May 29, 2006, 1:27 PM

Post #1 of 11 (1279 views)
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HD: desparate, grasping at straws

I just spend FOUR HOURS with PowerStrip and I am totally unable to come
up with a 540p or 1080i setting that will work with my Pioneer PRO-930HD
TV. I have also spent hours at other times Googling and not finding any
pre-defined mode lines for this TV. Are those the only options? If so
then I feel that I will have to give up on HD. which will mean that I
have wasted hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours (my desktop with a
PVR-500 worked fine as an SD backend; the only reason for building a new
server was to do HD).

I have gotten settings that are within 0.04 of the correct scan rates,
but I still can't get anything other than "this signal is not supported"
when I plug the VGA cable into the TV. But the Comcast box produces an
excellent 1080i signal over HDMI, so I know it's possible. Right now I
am horribly frustrated with nowhere to go.

I am following directions at:

http://archive.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33207

This in turn was a link that I got from Jarod's web site. Looks like it
might be a bit old; are there any hints out there on using PowerStrip
that are more up to date than this? Is there anything other than random
trial and error that can lead to a working setting?

I also can't get my HD3000 card to work. I have tried to use the
qamscan.sh script http://www.tux.org/~peterw/ / It finds channels, I can
also see mplayer windows popping up as the script runs, so I know my
card is good, but I can never tune any of the channels with azap once
it's done. But there isn't a lot of point in spending a lot of time on
this unless I can get HD display to work.

--Greg

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marcone at xs4all

May 29, 2006, 2:36 PM

Post #2 of 11 (1244 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

>I just spend FOUR HOURS with PowerStrip and I am totally unable to come
>up with a 540p or 1080i setting that will work with my Pioneer PRO-930HD
>TV. I have also spent hours at other times Googling and not finding any
>pre-defined mode lines for this TV. Are those the only options? If so
>then I feel that I will have to give up on HD. which will mean that I
>have wasted hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours (my desktop with a
>PVR-500 worked fine as an SD backend; the only reason for building a new
>server was to do HD).
>
>I have gotten settings that are within 0.04 of the correct scan rates,
>but I still can't get anything other than "this signal is not supported"
>when I plug the VGA cable into the TV. But the Comcast box produces an
>excellent 1080i signal over HDMI, so I know it's possible. Right now I
>am horribly frustrated with nowhere to go.

It's entirely possible that it only accepts 1080i on the HDMI input, but
not on the VGA input. You might want to check the manual.
However, since the panel's native resolution is 1024x768, you could also
just pick that resolution, and let mythtv scale and deinterlace as needed.

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allanwilson at gmail

May 29, 2006, 8:40 PM

Post #3 of 11 (1228 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

On 5/29/06, Marco Nelissen <marcone [at] xs4all> wrote:
>
> >I just spend FOUR HOURS with PowerStrip and I am totally unable to come
> >up with a 540p or 1080i setting that will work with my Pioneer PRO-930HD
> >TV. I have also spent hours at other times Googling and not finding any
> >pre-defined mode lines for this TV. Are those the only options? If so
> >then I feel that I will have to give up on HD. which will mean that I
> >have wasted hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours (my desktop with a
> >PVR-500 worked fine as an SD backend; the only reason for building a new
> >server was to do HD).
> >
> >I have gotten settings that are within 0.04 of the correct scan rates,
> >but I still can't get anything other than "this signal is not supported"
> >when I plug the VGA cable into the TV. But the Comcast box produces an
> >excellent 1080i signal over HDMI, so I know it's possible. Right now I
> >am horribly frustrated with nowhere to go.
>
> It's entirely possible that it only accepts 1080i on the HDMI input, but
> not on the VGA input. You might want to check the manual.
> However, since the panel's native resolution is 1024x768, you could also
> just pick that resolution, and let mythtv scale and deinterlace as needed.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users [at] mythtv
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>

There is a very good chance that your TV limits the resolution for the VGA
input. Could you get Windows or Powerstrip to show on the TV at all. What
does it say about the VGA input in your manual. I would go with DVI to HDMI
if you can't get the VGA to work. On my sony they limited the VGA input and
everything works great with the DVI. Hope we point you in the right
direction.

Allan

greg at gregandeva

May 30, 2006, 9:03 AM

Post #4 of 11 (1223 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

On Mon, 2006-05-29 at 14:36 -0700, Marco Nelissen wrote:

> It's entirely possible that it only accepts 1080i on the HDMI input, but
> not on the VGA input. You might want to check the manual.

Thank you very much for that suggestion. It was a great help.

The manual is, of course, content-free on this subject. All it says is
that the native resolution of the TV is 1024x768. In other threads on
this list, I have read that this is fairly typical. Few TV's are
actually 1920x1080 native resolution. So it never occurred to me that
the resolution accepted by the VGA port would be limited. However, that
does appear to be the case. I first changed the Windows NVIDIA driver to
start displaying through the HDMI port, and went to work on PowerStrip
again. It is now possible to produce a configuration with 1920x1080
resolution that has the scan rates exact (33.75 horiz, 60.00 vertical).
I got the Linux modeline out of this and tried it in xorg.conf.
Progress! It actually does produce a signal that the TV believes is
1080i on the HDMI input. I still have quite a bit of work to do though.
The image I get has the X screen in a 4:3 window with the gray bars on
the side, even though it is a 1080i image. My attempt to use mplayer to
play an HD recording on this screen completely locked up the system and
I had to push the reset button to recover. Even logging in via ssh and
killing mplayer didn't do it. On a regular 1024x768 screen through the
VGA output, it plays the recording fine, but of course in a 16:9 window
within the 4:3 X screen, and it's not real HD. But at least I am at a
point now where I could go back to the HD-HOWTO's and maybe make some
further progress. Once I get this done, I'll have to post *my* modeline
on the Wiki so the next person with this TV doesn't have to go through
all this.

> However, since the panel's native resolution is 1024x768, you could also
> just pick that resolution, and let mythtv scale and deinterlace as needed.

Can you actually do this and get a good picture? Sounds like it would be
pretty CPU-intensive.

--Greg

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greg at gregandeva

May 30, 2006, 9:06 AM

Post #5 of 11 (1235 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 10:03 -0600, Greg Woods wrote:
> It is now possible to produce a configuration with 1920x1080
> resolution that has the scan rates exact (33.75 horiz, 60.00 vertical).

I'll correct myself before someone else does: that's 30.00 vertical. I
had 60 on my brain from the time I spent trying 540p.

--Greg

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mtdean at thirdcontact

May 30, 2006, 10:01 AM

Post #6 of 11 (1229 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

On 05/30/2006 12:03 PM, Greg Woods wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-05-29 at 14:36 -0700, Marco Nelissen wrote:
>
>> However, since the panel's native resolution is 1024x768, you could also
>> just pick that resolution, and let mythtv scale and deinterlace as needed.
>>
> Can you actually do this and get a good picture? Sounds like it would be
> pretty CPU-intensive.

If you've got Xv support (and you should for a Myth box), it's basically
"free." The video card does the scaling.

Mike
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greg at gregandeva

May 30, 2006, 10:12 AM

Post #7 of 11 (1210 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 13:01 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 05/30/2006 12:03 PM, Greg Woods wrote:
> > On Mon, 2006-05-29 at 14:36 -0700, Marco Nelissen wrote:
> >>pick that resolution, and let mythtv scale and deinterlace as needed.
> >>
> > Can you actually do this and get a good picture? Sounds like it would be
> > pretty CPU-intensive.
>
> If you've got Xv support (and you should for a Myth box), it's basically
> "free." The video card does the scaling.

How does one go about this? I doubt if it's as simple as changing the
playback resolution to 1920x1080. I think I recall seeing where you
enable Xv in the mythtv-setup, I may have already done this.

--Greg

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mtdean at thirdcontact

May 30, 2006, 11:21 AM

Post #8 of 11 (1211 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

On 05/30/2006 01:12 PM, Greg Woods wrote:

>On Tue, 2006-05-30 at 13:01 -0400, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>
>
>>On 05/30/2006 12:03 PM, Greg Woods wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Mon, 2006-05-29 at 14:36 -0700, Marco Nelissen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>pick that resolution, and let mythtv scale and deinterlace as needed.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Can you actually do this and get a good picture? Sounds like it would be
>>>pretty CPU-intensive.
>>>
>>>
>>If you've got Xv support (and you should for a Myth box), it's basically
>>"free." The video card does the scaling.
>>
>>
>How does one go about this? I doubt if it's as simple as changing the
>playback resolution to 1920x1080. I think I recall seeing where you
>enable Xv in the mythtv-setup, I may have already done this.
>

You just need Xv, not XvMC. Xv is used automatically if your video
driver supports it.

However, IIRC, Marco was suggesting you use 1024x768 (your TV's native
resolution) and let your video card scale down from 1920x1080. In other
words, you don't need to use an "HDTV resolution". Using the TV's
native resolution makes a lot more sense.

Mike
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greg at gregandeva

May 30, 2006, 11:35 AM

Post #9 of 11 (1209 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

> use 1024x768 (your TV's native
> resolution) and let your video card scale down from 1920x1080. In other
> words, you don't need to use an "HDTV resolution". Using the TV's
> native resolution makes a lot more sense.

I will have to figure out how to integrate this into the TV's own
scaling. I currently do have my screen configured to use 1024x768
resolution, but the TV sees this as a 4:3 picture and what I get is a
4:3 picture with gray bars when I do this.

--Greg

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cnlibmyth at gmail

May 30, 2006, 12:02 PM

Post #10 of 11 (1224 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

I will have to figure out how to integrate this into the TV's own

> scaling. I currently do have my screen configured to use 1024x768
> resolution, but the TV sees this as a 4:3 picture and what I get is a
> 4:3 picture with gray bars when I do this.
>
> --Greg

How can 1024x768 be a 16:9 picture? It is always gonna be 4:3. I would
guess you have to play with powerstrip to get the correct 1080i line.

marcone at xs4all

May 30, 2006, 7:40 PM

Post #11 of 11 (1200 views)
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Re: HD: desparate, grasping at straws [In reply to]

>I will have to figure out how to integrate this into the TV's own
>
>> scaling. I currently do have my screen configured to use 1024x768
>> resolution, but the TV sees this as a 4:3 picture and what I get is a
>> 4:3 picture with gray bars when I do this.
>>
>> --Greg
>
>
>How can 1024x768 be a 16:9 picture? It is always gonna be 4:3.

Only if you assume square pixels. If you can somehow tell the TV that the
pixels are not square, you can make it some other aspect ration.

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