I want to connect my computer to LCD-TV, what res? [SOLVED]

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

I have bought Toshiba 37WLG66S telly and I want to connect my computer with it (running mythtv on it)
What resolution should I use or can I even use exactly any imaginary resolution?

I have an option of using VGA cable or HDMI. I believe the right solution is connecting to HDMI.
Here comes the problem, however. Almost all of the LCD-TVs have 1366x768 native resolution, this is no
standard for any of the broadcasts - why?

I am also not sure that the telly will accept native resolution via the HDMI socket nor that I can define
that from the xorg.conf, can I?

Now as for the other options - there's always 1080i and 720p, or maybe 1080p. That would be
1280 × 720 or
1920 × 1080

Can I give them to xorg.conf

Now if I am receiving stuff with DVB-T in Europe - I think I get stuff with 1080i (if it's HDTV - if not it is? what?)

Does anyone has experience from this.

My graphic card is Club 3D CGN-628ATVD (GeForce 6200), funnily it should be HD-ready but on a resolution
list initially it says:
640x480 200 Hz
800x600 200 Hz
1024x768 200 Hz
1152x864 200 Hz
1280x1024 200 Hz
1600x1200 200 Hz
1920x1080 120Hz
1920x1200 100 Hz
1920x1440 90 Hz
2048x1536 85 Hz

Well at least 1920x1080 looks promising - will it automatically work with progressive scan if I select this resolution?
What should I use for:
HorizSync
VertRefresh
in xorg.conf

I am sure that if there is somebody who can tell me the answer it will be on Gentoo forum

skwang · Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:27 pm Post subject:

I have an LCD-TV that whose native resolution similar to yours. The way I went about doing this is that the LCD-TV is just a LCD monitor that is 1) very large and 2) has multiple input connections. Don't think of the monitor as a TV. It's just a display. I'll talk a little bit about watching TV later.

What I did was plug the LCD into the computer's VGA port, and X11 automatically detected it's hardware configuration. So horz. and vert. freq. were automatically detected. As for the resolution xorg configured itself to use the 1366x768 resolution because that is what the LCD wanted to use. I believe one of the advantages of using VGA is that X11 can autodetect your monitor's settings.

Watching television broadcasts is a different story. Imagine for a moment if you have a monitor with 1600x1200 resolution. If you wanted to watch a video with 640x480 resolution, you'd load up xine/mplayer/your favorite movie player and there would be a box, 640x480 is size that would appear and your video would play. Likewise if you record a high def show at whatever resolution it happens to be (720p or 1080i) it will play in a box that is that video's size. If you use "fullscreen" mode then the player will stretch out the video to fit your monitor's resolution. A 640x480 video will look crappy fullscreen on a 1600x1200 monitor.

My point is that mythtv just records videos. The TV show has some native resolution and more importantly your TV capture card will produce a video file with AxB resolution. For me, the AxB resolution is independent of whatever resolution your monitor can display. When you go to play a video using mythfrontend, it will play fullscreen on your LCD monitor. If the original recording was 640x480, then the video will stretch out to 1024x768, and you'll get some black bands on the left and right. If the recording is 1280x720 mythfrontend will stretch out the video to play at 1366x768. If the recording is at 1920x1080 then the video will shrink to 1366x768.

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

If I did so - what command do I have to give in order to have X11 detect my screen?

I tried now Xorg -configure

ok then I started X -config /root/xorg.conf.new

looking back at /var/log/Xorg.0.log I get:

(II) Module ddc: vendor="X.Org Foundation"
compiled for 7.1.1, module version = 1.0.0
ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 1.0
(WW) NVIDIA(0): Failure reading EDID parameters for display device CRT-0
(II) NVIDIA(0): Monitor0: Using default hsync range of 28.00-33.00 kHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Monitor0: Using default vrefresh range of 43.00-72.00 Hz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Clock range: 12.00 to 400.00 MHz
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x350" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "320x175" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x400" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "320x200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "720x400" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "360x200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x480" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "320x240" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x480" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "320x240" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x480" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "320x240" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "400x300" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "400x300" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "400x300" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "400x300" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "400x300" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "512x384" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "512x384" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "512x384" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "512x384" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "512x384" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1152x864" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "576x432" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1280x960" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x480" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1280x960" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x480" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1280x1024" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x512" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1280x1024" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x512" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1280x1024" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "640x512" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1200" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x600" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1792x1344" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "896x672" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1792x1344" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "896x672" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1856x1392" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "928x696" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1856x1392" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "928x696" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1440" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "960x720" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1440" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "960x720" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "832x624" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "416x312" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1152x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "576x384" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1400x1050" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "700x525" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1400x1050" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "700x525" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1600x1024" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "800x512" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1920x1440" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "960x720" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "2048x1536" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "2048x1536" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "2048x1536" (hsync out of range)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Not using default mode "1024x768" (hsync out of range)
(**) NVIDIA(0): Validated modes for display device CRT-0:
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "640x480": 25.2 MHz, 31.5 kHz, 60.0 Hz
(**) NVIDIA(0): Default mode "320x240": 12.6 MHz, 31.5 kHz, 60.1 Hz (D)
(II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 640 x 480

I tried typing in that default vsync and refresh rate and so on but the picture
is very dim and the color are really dark and corrupt. No success here. I was almost
better off when trying it via the HDMI but still no cigar.

skwang · Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 9:31 pm Post subject:

My memeory is fuzzy because it has been a year since I set up my LCD. You can try

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

That's exactly what I tried...

Firstly with VGA - the screen is somehow flashing all the time. (Like scanning for a picture).
It shows the first boot screen and so on from BIOS but from bootloader text and so on
it remains dark - and when I boot into text mode it remains dark - I would assume that this
has nothing to do with xorg or X.

Couple of trials with Xorg.conf and I can get the desktop up but it is so dim that is barely visible,
colours seem pale and distorted (as far as I can even see them)

With HDMI the machine runs up with text and shows all without that irritating flashing and I even
got right colors in one trial where the desktop actually came up but the res was wrong and after
I changed something it did not come up anymore...

EDIT: this morning I tried it again and I got the desktop up with HDMI but it looks like the res would be
very low - maybe something like 640x480 or so? I think my Modeline needs tweaking - I have now only 1920x1080
standing there...During the boot the text is somewhat off screen from width...

Isn't there any "standard" one should give for HDMI for Vertical Refresh and Horizontal Sync?
What is the meaning of these parameters anyway?

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

I found this:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_HDTV

So I don't know
IgnoreEDID option sounds kind of dangerous and the vertrefresh and horizsync the guy has sound kind of high.

skwang · Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 4:13 pm Post subject:

For some reason gentoo forums didn't show your "Xorg -configure" posting, which is why I suggested it to you, sorry about that... :oops:

I am afraid it has been such a long time since I did this. For instance I have no idea what I set for horz. and vert. freq. In addition I am posting from work and not home, where my mythtv setup lives. I think my LCD-TV had correct or at least nearly correct EDID information. The IngoreEDID option the wiki is talking about makes sense if you read this wikipedia article on EDID. When I get home I'll post some relevent portions from my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. In the end I think I just specified the LCD as a monitor with1366×768 resolution.

Lastly, you are correct in that you need to custom configure a modeline setting. I'll try to find out more when I get home.

Before I go rambling on you also might want to try searching the MythTV users mailing list archive. Plently of people use LCD-TVs with 1366x768 (or higher) resolution and you may find some help there.

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

That was more or less the trick - unbelievable the picture is blowing my
brainz out. Needed the proper modelines and that option
Somehow 1080i did not work on mythtv - wathing tv was screwed
(propably cpu load shot to moon) but 720p works perfectly

skwang · Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 7:42 pm Post subject:

Jykke,

If you've managed to get your system working can you

Jykke · Apprentice Joined: 31 Mar 2006 Posts: 246

There is something strange because I too did not see your reply of EDID in between!?!
I answered to my own post once I got encouraged enough to try out the IgnoreEDID option.

These sites were of help:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_HDTV
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Modeline_Database
http://www.linuxis.us/linux/media/howto/linux-htpc/video_card_configuration.html

Although I did not directly find my Toshiba there I took the generic modeline:

Modeline "1920x1080_i" 74.52 1920 1952 2016 2208 1080 1084 1096 1126 -HSync -VSync Interlace
and
ModeLine "ATSC-720-60p" 74.25 1280 1320 1376 1650 720 722 728 750

from the mythtv modeline database - I am not sure of the latter - can't check my computer right now.
For vertrefresh and horizsync I gave something moderate:
HorizSync 31-46
VertRefresh 59-61

The only problem was that mythtv did not want to run properly with 1080i - it started and so on - menus worked
screen was ok - I could listen to music but if I tried to watch a video or watch TV it sort of stuck - I assume CPU load
went to 100% but I had no chance to check it. I then tried the 720p resolution - it worked perfectly and afterwards I
did not try anything else anymore.

I am not sure I could get the native resolution working since I am taking my DVI cable with adapter to a HDMI connection
and according to my telly it won't accept every possible signal.

I could try 1080p if interlacing was the ground for the freeze but I think it would have low frequency? Secondly, native resolution
is quite close to 720p and 1080i/1080p would be greater than that, therefore I don't see a point running a higher resolution than
native since there are no pixels to show it anyway, right?

I am not sure what kind of modeline would be worth trying for native resolution...
I am quite happy the way it runs now so I don't know whether I want to mess with running system too much...