I havent been following this thread but have you checked the open source drivers? New features are always being ported in. The two options are; - Radeon driver (module is named ati) - Radeonhd driver (module is named radeon)
Check out the current features here http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature all boxes are for the radeon/ati driver unless the box contains (RHD, in which case it's the radeonhd/radeon driver). In particular TV out should work on R100/R200/R300 based cards.
