NVIDIA TV Out the Easy Way [HOWTO]

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If you're like me, the only time you use TV out is to watch some video that you've downloaded off the web on your television. I never could get my NVIDIA TwinView to work correctly, but I think that this method is better for watching movies anyway. I can right click on any movie file, and there is now an option under "actions" in my KDE menu to "View on TV" (adapted from http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=13948 and http://www.iofcea.de/cgi-bin/seite.pl?file=linuxtvout). This way uses KDE servicemenus, but there's probably an equivelant for Gnome, etc.

The way this is set up, the movie opens on the television, and my laptop screen turns off while the movie is playing. Once the movie is done or you hit escape, the tv picture turns off and your laptop display is back to normal. The tricky part for me was setting up my xorg.conf to enable this.

Here are the relevant snippets from my xorg.conf. You may have to change some resolution sizes based on your TV. Also, I have an NVIDIA graphics card, so the options are probably different on other cards:

atdsm · Posted: Mon May 02, 2005 9:56 pm Post subject:

Nifty. I'll have to try it out with my card...
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svf · n00b Joined: 01 Feb 2005 Posts: 50

thanks

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jdoe · Posted: Tue May 03, 2005 11:38 pm Post subject:

works here

thanks... that's what I was looking for

I manage it with a nautilus script

~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/watch_on_tv
(must be chmod +x )

jspr · Posted: Thu May 05, 2005 2:40 pm Post subject:

Work perfectly here

thank you!

tommy_haaland · Guru Joined: 04 Oct 2003 Posts: 320

Mine doesn't seem to work. I have Gainward card which is a Geforce FX 5200, 128 mb.

When I start gnome, I see the nvidia screen, so the driver is loaded. I copied this to ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/watch_on_tv :

killercow · Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 2:00 pm Post subject: tried it on a geforce 256 deluxe

I tried this on a geforce 265 deluxe, and since it doesn;t support twinview i had to alter the config a tad.

When i booted with the monitor on the card, it played nice, and gave me 800x600 on the monitor.
After setting the correct settings to x it gave 800x600 on the tv. so i was happy, things were good.

After the first reboot (without the monitor attatched) my entire screen has been displaced, almost 20% of the screen has fallen of the bottom. (not virtual desktop).

I tried a bunch of different hsync,and vsync, but the all either screw up the entire screen or displace the screen even more.

also tried overscan options in the config, doesn't do squat.

does anyone know how to fix this?

El Tazar · n00b Joined: 06 Nov 2004 Posts: 57

Using Nautilus under Gnome and mplayer, I had some problems with paths containing whitespaces. I now use the following:

marcowave · Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 10:53 am Post subject:

works almost perfect!

3 little problems:
1. It works in Black&White.. I try to set PAL-B and PAL-G in xorg.conf but it doesn't change... I have to change something else?
1. If I want to play a DVD on tv?
2. If I want to play a .rm file on TV? rm files work perfectly on mPlayer, but I don't have the option in the menù "play on TV"

one question:
is it possible to switch between the two screens?

avi and mpeg work perfectly!

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JSharku · Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 2:45 pm Post subject:

marcowave · Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 4:07 pm Post subject:

marcowave · Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2005 4:20 pm Post subject:

ok now is on color

the other problem is that in the "View on TV (mPlayer)" contextual menù appears only with .avi and .mpg files...
I want it to work even with .rm files (always in mPlayer)

how can I do this?
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Linux User #351189 --->A.K.A. "Johnny"<---
Acer TM292LMi: PentiumM 1,5 GHz - 1 GB ram - Radeon 9700M 64MB - Intel 802.11b/g WLAN - DVD-RW - Gentoo Linux - KDE 3.5.2
GentooServer: AMD Athlon 700 MHz - 512 MB ram - HD 80 GB - Kernel 2.6 - Fluxbox

rawoul · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2003 Posts: 65

I have a much better way of doing this, but i think it only works on dual head graphic cards.
This method simply sets up two X screen on one display (:0.0 and :0.1), instead of two displays (:0 and :1). This way only one X server is active, and you can have both screens displaying something at the same time. This is also better than TwinView since it doesn't use Xinerama.

Now to play a video on the TV you just have to do

Pajarico · Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2005 10:17 pm Post subject:

Why mine doesn't work? I have a geforce 5200 fx with VGA, DVI and S-VIDEO. I'm currently trying to get VGA+SVIDEO. I try with:

count_zero · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 1:54 am Post subject:

@Pajarico:
try this instead:

Pajarico · Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:34 pm Post subject:

Thanks.
Ummh

I get the same again:

Pajarico · Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:30 pm Post subject:

*bump*
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Bigun · Advocate Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 2198

*bookmarked*
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Bigun · Advocate Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 2198

Ideas what this means?

Bigun · Advocate Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 2198

Bigun · Advocate Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 2198

Nevermind, got it to work beautifully with mplayer-bin:

Pajarico · Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 5:29 pm Post subject:

Ok, as suggested by bigun89 i reverted my xorg.conf to look like the one of the first poster.
Something was going wrong, not sure about what, but also the euroconnector at the back of my TV cannot take S-video, so i have to plug it on the front of the TV, a bit annoying but it's ok.

Now the problem comes with the output. I created this script:

Bigun · Advocate Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 2198

Pajarico · Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject:

Tried both ways and i'm still getting the Xorg desktop and the x cursor. :cry:

Is the same again, X starts, mplayer starts, but they don't connect to each other.
I don't see any errors with the last command, then again is too long and i might missed something. What did you expected to see?

:wink:

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Bigun · Advocate Joined: 21 Sep 2003 Posts: 2198