[lug] TV-out on a NTSC CRT TV

[Davide Del Vento]

>> I suspect that playing with these modelines might be the solution, but
>> I've exhausted my guesses and didn't find a proper way to find the
>> right one.
>
> The video timings how-to might help.
Thanks, this is a nice answer. It remembered me of the good ole 90s.
See below for the results.

> There also used to be an app that would let you adjust each
> timing real-time to see what it did.
I guess you mean xvidtune. Unfortunately that doesn't work anymore on
a modern  system, especially if it's dual screen like this (even
turning one screen off). Anyway, besides the time consuming and
confusing style of xrandr, I think xvidtune is equivalent of it.

> That might help too, although the TV "auto adjust" might make
> it's behavior non-linear.
So this is what I did: read the
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO/index.html (luckily
the kids felt asleep soon tonight) then tried a few modelines,
starting from the ones I knew to "almost work". Then I started
changing the values as described here:
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XFree86-Video-Timings-HOWTO/fixes.html (most of
the problems are vertically: horizontally it's not perfect, but I'd be
happy if I could fix the vertical ones only)

Problem is: none of the vertical numbers in the modeline (besides the
resolution) have any effect at all!!! Even the resolution, has a very
little effect, and not the ones I'd expect. Weird thing is that going
beyond the 480/525 resolution limit, things improve a little bit.
Maybe the TV is correcting in the way it thinks is correct, thus I'm
always seeing almost the same crap? Unexpected, but possible.
For today, I'm done (too time consuming: creating a new resolution
costs three xrandr invocations about 3sec total, plus typing and
looking at the output and deciding what to do next), but tomorrow I
will play more, probably with the resolution only.

Ah, and as I said at the beginning of the thread, interlaced or not
interlaced does have a very relevant effect, but it too is reversed
from what I'd expect (interlaced is stable but almost half-sized, not
interlaced is almost-but-not-quite-right-size and flickers...)

'Night
Davide