Hi,

I am struggling to get colour working properly on my TV output for PAL UK. I am using an S-Video out from the motherboard of my VIA EPIA MII. When X starts up the size and positioning is spot on. However the colours are all green and blue on the front-end, it kinda looks like Predator vision.

I have set the BIOS settings to dual CRT and TV mode and I have it set to PAL both within the BIOS and in MythTv General Settings.

When Knoppmyth is booting up the colour looks ok on the VIA logo so I assume I need to set something in the X config file. I tried using an epia sample but that didn't work.

At the bottom of this page is the contents of my current /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file

Some of this information was automatically generated from the BIOS and from Knoppmyth install. However I have added a few bits to it having read some of the How To's on the Knoppmyth Wiki.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!


===================
Section "Device"

Identifier "Card0"
Driver "via"
VendorName "All"
BoardName "All"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT,TV"
Option "TwinView"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync?" "30-50"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "60"
Option "MetaModes" "1024x768,1024x768; 800x600,800x600; 640x480,640x480"

Option "TVOutFormat" "SVIDEO"
Option "TVStandard" "PAL-I"
Option "NoLogo" "on"
Option "sw_cursor"
Option "hw_cursor"
Option "NoAccel"
Option "ShowCache"
Option "ShadowFB"
Option "UseFBDev"
Option "Rotate"

EndSection

=========================
My Setup:

VIA EPIA MII 1.2Ghz
Knoppmyth R5A16
PVR 350 (can't get any tv output for this)
Region: PAL UK

1x CRT monitor
1x S-Video to Television

Hello,

I think the option names should be:

Option "TVType" "PAL"
Option "TVVScan" "over"
Option "TVOutput" "S-Video"
Option "ActiveDevice" "TV"

Also makesure you change XF86Config-4 non of the other XF86Config files are read

Ok, tried that but still getting Predator vision.

The relevant extract from my Config-4 file is now:

============================
Section "Device"
# The following line is auto-generated by KNOPPIX mkxf86config

Driver "via"
VendorName "All"
BoardName "All"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"

Option "TVType" "PAL"
Option "TVVScan" "over"
Option "TVOutput" "S-Video"
Option "ActiveDevice" "TV"

Option "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT,TV"
Option "TwinView"

EndSection

==========================

The busID was automatically generated, however if I do lspci I get:

============================
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266]
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]

0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8623 [Apollo CLE266] integrated CastleRock graphics (rev 03)

0000:00:14.0 Multimedia video controller: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 MPEG-2 Encoder (rev 01)

===============================

I remember reading about BusID's needing to be in hexadecimal. is that anything to do with it? is ivtv anything to do with it, or does that only affect Watch TV mode?

I discovered that my TV (or possibly just my scart adapter) didn't support svideo through the scart plug, so I had to set my tvoutput variable to "Composite". This worted out most of my colour problems.

Mephi

Ok, have got it working in colour on my TV now! However it requires a minor, yet inconvenient, piece of pratting about....

if I press CTRL ALT F1 to go to a shell prompt, then press CTRL ALT F7 to get back to X windows... voila! colour picture on my TV crystal clear!

Anyone got any idea why this problem occurs? if so what is the best way to make it not do this on startup.

The change to composite does indeed make it work via scart adaptor, I was also getting black and white, if I using scart, before.

Hi,

Don't know if this will help or not, but my BIOS on my Mini-ITX has the option for default TV output? I set this to PAL and even the BIOS is in Colour with S-Video.

G.

_________________
Knoppmyth Rules! if you can get the hardware

I got problems with inverted colours on my TV too.
I have not checked if it happens on the VGA output.
I have set output to both in the bios but have not plugged a monitor onto it.

the ctrl-alt thing works for me too.
Problem starts just after loging in to X.
Sometimes it also happens when a screensaver starts running.
In the start I had the problems also with mplayer while playing video, but this might have ended by now.

If there are solutions for these problems, I am very much interested (ofcourse)

I am running debian unstable at the moment.
Testing gave more problems, likely because of older software...

Hi,

yeh, I get the BIOS in colour on my TV, without any pratting around aswell. The problem lies within X. Regardless of the prudent solution, is there even a "cowboy" way of fixing the problem... i.e. add a few commands to a boot-up file somewhere to refresh (or exit and reload) X just after it is first loaded ?

I do not have black and white problems with my computer on the screen.
Only inverted colours after starting up X.
I do have black and white problems when I connect the s-vhs connector to a special connector to scart though that it goes black&white, but if I connect it directly to the s-vhs plug on the front of the tv, it is in colour.

The inverted colours problem than gets fixed by doing the ctrl-alt-1 and than ctrl-alt-7 switch.

just to confirm that we are on the same wavelengths, I have exactly the same problem as isnake, although i call inverted colours 'predator vision' ...

Hi,

Sorry If this solution has been cross-posted.

All you have to do is set DPMS from true to false in the MONITOR section of the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file.

Problem solved!

Thanks for all the advice in these threads. I have disabled DPMS, which fixed the "Predator Vision" problem, but I still have trouble with inverted colors...but only during video playback. If I plug in a VGA monitor, it looks fine. The Myth GUI also looks fine. CTRL+ALT+F1 - CTRL+ALT+F7 trick doesn't help either.

The color depth looks right, but blues are red and greens are purple, as if the chroma was inverted. I've tried using the S-Video and the Composite output (tweaking the BIOS setting to match), but it makes no difference. I also tried various CVS snapshots of the unichrome DRI and XOrg drivers, but they all work the same. I've also tried disabling DRI. My system is Debian and I'm currently using:

xserver-xorg: 6.8.2.dfsg.1-8
kernel: 2.6.13.3

Here is the relevant portion of my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
Identifier "VIA Technologies VT8623"
Driver "via"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "ActiveDevice" "CRT,TV"
Option "TVType" "NTSC"
Option "TVVScan" "over"
# Option "TVOutput" "S-Video"
Option "TVOutput" "Composite"
Option "DPMS" "false"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Video Out"
Option "DPMS" "false"
HorizSync 30-70
VertRefresh 50-160
EndSection

Anyone else having this problem? Any other hints?

Thanks,
Russ

Hi,

I assume you only have 1 tv-out? (from the motherboard)

Sounds like you might have XV picture controls enabled in the PLAYBACK settings. If so, just disable it and reboot.

If not, then, try and enable it and then use F when to adjust colour, contrast, brightness and hue. Mine always sets the hue to zero for reasons best known to itself.

Also make sure you have it setup in the BIOS correctly.

Ding ding ding! You nailed it on the head. Thank you! This has been driving my wife crazy.