[MPlayer-users] Offtopic -- G400 TV-Out on a single output G400

[D Richard Felker III]

On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 06:20:08PM -0500, Ryan Underwood wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, Oct 06, 2003 at 05:49:49PM -0400, D Richard Felker III wrote:
> > > 
> > > AFAIK, TV-Out under XFree86 (as well as dualhead at all) requires the
> > > proprietary module.  To avoid that you could use the framebuffer device
> > > instead.
> > 
> > That's for G450/G550, which are crippled/lame versions of the G400.
> > The G400 is all-free.
> 
> Sorry, I meant TV-Out on the second head.  The mga hallib driver exists
> for G400 as well and is required under XFree86 for TV-Out (unless you
> know otherwise)?

Definitely not true. Just use matroxset to switch the second head to
tvout after starting X. (You should be using the UseFBDev option to
the mga X driver so it does mode-setting thru fb device rather than
raw io, but I don't know if it matters.)

> > I don't see how it could require extra nonfree
> > stuff for X, since you can set it up for TVout without the X server
> > even knowing one head is on TVout...
> 
> If you can let me know how to use the second head in VGA and in TV-Out
> mode under XFree86 without the hallib, I would much appreciate it!
> (I have a dualhead console working with the linux fb console)

After starting X with one head in a video mode suitable for tvout, use
matroxset to put that head in tv mode rather than vga mode:

  matroxset -f /dev/fb1 2

Replace fb1 with fb0 if you want the primary head on tvout, and
replace 2 with 1 if you need PAL instead of NTSC. Use 128 to switch
back to vga output.

Rich