[Mplayer-users] TV Out

[Robinson, Chad]

RE: [Mplayer-users] tv out on nvidia cards --> Renaming to TV Out (most of
us don't care about NVidia!)

Stephen Davies wrote:
> Chad Robinson wrote:
> > I don't know about NVidia, but I am using an ATI All-in-Wonder Pro 
> > with TV-out and SVGALib. (X11 works, too, but I prefer SVGALib.) 
> > Works very well, although I can't go above 640x480.
> 
> And I can tell you that a Voodoo 3000 with TV-out works.
> 
> I hacked the bt869 driver to support 720x576 output.  What chip does
> the ATI card use to make the interlaced video?  Would this bt869 
> driver help you?

Thanks for the offer, but actually, I'm not using direct video out. The ATI
card automatically turns on its TV-out whenever you are in 640x480 or a text
mode. Therefore, I use Linux Framebuffer at boot to go into 640x480, and
stay in that mode forever after, using scaling in MPlayer to scale up
smaller movies.

The only problem is, no down-scaling in MPlayer. So, this does not work for
movies wider(usually)/taller(never seen on) than 640x480. :-( I was thinking
about trying to hack this in by reversing what the up-scaling does, but
really don't know much about bilinear/bicubic math, so it'll have to wait
for the moment.

Otherwise, this is nearly a perfect solution. I get to save all the space of
X, and I can have a fully automated solution. My project will have its own
640x480 SVGALib interface that I will write to allow the user to select a
movie to play using an I/R remote control. No keyboard, no mouse.

> Incidentally - there is another approach to TV output from PCs - which is
> to drive the TV directly with PAL-rate interlaced output from the VGA
> card.  This can be done with a simple VGA->SCART cable with few or even no
> active components.  And a TV with an RGB-input SCART.

For what it's worth, I've done this. (Although I use NTSC, and some
conversion is in order.) I must say, it's a bit of a pain. Picking the right
video card, etc. It's better to just buy a VGA->NTSC/PAL converter. They can
be had for about $80 for 640x480/800x600 versions, and a bit more for all
major resolutions. If your video card doesn't support TV-Out this way works
fine.

But, it's a bit blurry...

Regards,
Chad

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