[lug] TV-out on a NTSC CRT TV

[Davide Del Vento]

Googling didn't help. The hw is a ATI Radeon Mobility U1, according to lspci.
Things that I've found online were either completely effectless, or
failed to execute, like

atitvout ntsc
- it said "Maybe this option is not supported by your graphics
adapter?", but it said so with pal too

xrandr --output S-video --set load_detection 1
xrandr --output S-video --set tv_standard ntsc
- for both it said "BadName (named font or color does not exist)"

Any ideas? I can't believe that they had separate hw for pal and ntsc!

Thanks,
Davide

On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 12:07, Davide Del Vento
<davide.del.vento at gmail.com> wrote:
> The machine is running Ubuntu 8.04 and that doesn't show anything on the TV.
> I tried a couple of distro I had on live CD and the one those worked (sort
> of). It is Ubuntu 10.04 but is not prompting me for any proprietary driver.
>
> I thought that since I was seeing *something* (and I don't care about the
> resolution, 320x200 would be ok for me :-) this was something more about the
> TV than about the video card. Since it is a very old laptop (at least 5
> years, probably 10), I have no idea about what hw is inside, beside the
> disk, which I replaced myself. I know is an HP, only because the logo is
> very noticeable :-)
> Anyway tonight I'll check the make/model of the video section (and I'll
> Google possible solutions before bothering you).
>
> Thanks for the advice,
> ;Dav
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 21:48, John Hernandez <jph at jph.net> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Davide, it would help to know more specifics about the video
>> hardware (lspci output) and the Linux distro/version.
>>
>> This may be dated information, but I think the proprietary driver was
>> the fastest (perhaps only?) path to TV-out success with nVidia
>> systems.  I don't recall ever doing that with older ATI or Intel
>> hardware, but I bet someone here did...
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Davide Del Vento
>> <davide.del.vento at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> > I'm trying to have a TV (not-too-old, but CRT) working with the TV-out
>> > of my media laptop (a very old HP bought in Italy). Purpose: show the
>> > kids some cartoons on a larger screen.
>> >
>> > I'm struggling to have it working: I do see the image, but it is never
>> > good enough. The autodetected default call the "monitor" unknown, and
>> > use an non-interlaced mode which shows double images, partially
>> > overlapping in vertical, and some flickering.
>> >
>> > I tried these:
>> > http://www.arachnoid.com/modelines/
>> >
>> > http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Modeline_Database#NTSC525_itu-r.2Fbt:_470_601_656
>> > http://smackmini.dax.nu/tv-out.html (I know, this is PAL)
>> >
>> > without any success, besides understanding what follows:
>> >
>> > 1) I figured out that using an interlaced mode, stops the flicker and
>> > completely separates the images, so I can see two images (squeezed in
>> > the vertical direction), one on top of the other - with a relatively
>> > large black area in between (and probably part of the images out of
>> > the screen). From here, I tried to play with the other numbers, to see
>> > if I could move one image out of the screen and enlarge the other one,
>> > but...
>> >
>> > 2) the other numbers of the modelines, don't seem to have any
>> > noticeable effect, maybe the TV is "autocorrecting" whatever it is
>> > receiving to what it thinks is the right way?
>> >
>> > Any suggestion on what to do?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> > Davide
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