Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
On Fri, 31 May 2002, Doug McClendon wrote: that it can also do 540p. Ideally I'm looking for a good 640x480@60 modeline, and a 1920x540@60 modeline. 1920x1080i would be interesting to try, but since this is about using the tv as a big monitor, I'm really not interested in interlacing. I don't know about interlaced modes but Colas XFree Modeline Generator URL:http://koala.ilog.fr/cgi-bin/nph-colas-modelines hasn't let me down when it comes to progressive modes. I wish it were written in C so that the source would be readable to me. For example, here's a modeline for 1920x540@60 (progressive): ModeLine 1920x540 89.08 1920 2000 2400 2560 540 542 554 580 #60Hz Check the manual as you need bandwidth of 90Mhz for the above. -- Mikko ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
James H. Cloos Jr. wrote: Of more use I've jsut remembered that all of the details of the HDTV standards are published and I beleive available for public download at SMPTE's web site. Those should contain sufficient details of the timing, including blank intervals et al, to produce accurate xfree mode lines. You'll most likely need to do a bit of math to convert from timings in µs to timings in pixels, but the published details should be enough. Just tonight I was talking with a friend of mine who did all the work exactly as you said, though for win2k (same issues). His story kind of scares me a bit though, as his TV died a month or so after he finally got all the good 'modelines'. Luckily for him, it was less than a month beyond warranty, and he was able to convince toshiba to replace his tv. His suspicion is that it the timings he settled on were probably just fine, though the much experimentation he went through to find them may have been to blame for the tv death. Very unfortunately, he says he 'lost' them all since he decided just not to push his luck after that. Since its not my TV I'm playing with anyway (my brothers), AND its out of warranty, I think I probably won't chase this down until I hear some reports of other people being successful (and figuring out the modelines for me). I know HDTV's are still pretty rare (outside silicon valley :), but I would hope that good sets of hdtv modelines make it into X, or at least a readme/howto. I personally would have expected such a document to be available 2 years ago or more. I'm really quite surprised that I haven't heard of more people doing it. I did just hear of a windows bbs/mailing-list for that topic. If I find it, and its relevent/useful, and can translate it to xfree86, perhaps I can write said document. -dmc ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
---Original Message--- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: June 02, 2002 07:05:17 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv? On Fri, 31 May 2002, Doug McClendon wrote: Regarding 1080p for dvd, I think you are mistaken. My (only moderately educated) understanding was that the 'good' dvd players put out 480p instead of 480i(ntsc). I also don't think that there is any tv out there that does 1080p. The two hdtv standards are 1080i and 720p to my knowlege. The TV I'm interested in does 1080i, which I assume means that it can also do 540p. Ideally I'm looking for a good 640x480@60 modeline, and a 1920x540@60 modeline. 1920x1080i would be interesting to try, but since this is about using the tv as a big monitor, I'm really not interested in interlacing. Out of curiosity- Does anybody have any advice regarding fonts or any other tricks when you have severely non square pixels (1920x540)? It seems like it would be a nice feature of the X server to handle such issues transparently. I'd say you do want interlacing.Use 1920x1080i at 120 fields/sec = 60 frames/sec.At 120 fields/sec, flicker wont be a problem, the pixels will be squarish,and the interlacing will give you analog hardware anti-aliasing(in the monitor, not the card!).Sorry, I don't have a suitable modeline to suggest - my modeline toolsare for VESA GTF, which may not apply to HDTV, and none of them give a correct XFree86 interlaced modeline (X seems to want the vertical timings doubled, but I haven't worked out exactly what it wants).You can use the DisplaySize option to tell the X server what size the screen is. It will then tell any app that asks the horizontal and vertical pixel pitches (dpi), but this confuses sufficiently many appsthat by default we don't set this from the DDC info.The RENDER font system could probably cope, but most apps don't get anything sensible out of the old font renderer. I doubt there is anything now, but how far are we from an X server based on 3D hardware, i.e. a nice 5Kx5K non visible desktop that gets rendered with a bilinear filter to whatever resolution the desktop actually is? That would take care of generic anti-aliasing (fonts and more) quite nicely no? Zoomable windows...OpenGL based 3D window / desktop managers have been around forseveral years. I don't have any names, but they do what you want,plus allow windows to exist at an angle to the screen(tilt it away, so that you can still get an overview of what is going on, but take up very little width or height...).5Kx5K ? I believe that they allow the windows to exist in a 3D volumewith floating point coordinates (might even get around the limit (16bits?on coordinates on an X screen).-- Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna___Xpert mailing list[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert. IncrediMail - Email has finally evolved - Click Here
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
On Sun, 2 Jun 2002, Keith Packard wrote: Xft assumes that pixels are square; users and applications generally expect the dpi to be equal along each axis, so Xft plays along. Fixing that would be pretty easy; I could add an 'aspect ratio' field to Xft that could be configured per display. Certainly the underlying rasterizers are more than willing to draw with non-square pixels. I think I'll add an aspect ratio field to allow the right thing to happen. That might be nice, but Xlib.h has DisplayWidth() and DisplayWidthMM(), (ditto for height) and these can be set in the config file or probed via DDC. From these you can get the pixel pitches and aspect ratio (although this does assume similar screens for Xinerama). I can see that a completely free ratio makes snapping difficult, but it would be nice to have the choice of saying let the server calculate the pixel aspect ratio. Can you have a probe the pixel aspect ratio value from server information option ? Yes, that looks much better now -- aspect ratios of 1.2 still snap glyphs to the pixel grid to make them appear sharper when hinting is enabled. Sorry, are you saying that that an aspect ratio of 1.2 is rounded to 1.0, or that it is partially pixel aligned ie snaps on a 5:4 ? IIRC TVs use a pixel aspect of 1.2, so it isn't an idle speculation, I take it that with this change square characters remain square. -- Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Around 8 o'clock on Jun 3, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: That might be nice, but Xlib.h has DisplayWidth() and DisplayWidthMM(), (ditto for height) and these can be set in the config file or probed via DDC. From these you can get the pixel pitches and aspect ratio (although this does assume similar screens for Xinerama). I can see that a completely free ratio makes snapping difficult, but it would be nice to have the choice of saying let the server calculate the pixel aspect ratio. Xft is about to start ignoring the screen size entirely; the values present there are generally not what people really want (ref: last year's discussion with some torvalds goon on this topic). And, most people generally want the system to assume the pixels are square; it makes things look better when they have symmetrical pixels, rather than symmetrical size. It takes a rather significantly non-square pixel size ratio to make this relevant. Can you have a probe the pixel aspect ratio value from server information option ? I'll consider how this might look in the config file. I might make it look for an X resource; that could be trivially set at login time by the user. Sorry, are you saying that that an aspect ratio of 1.2 is rounded to 1.0, or that it is partially pixel aligned ie snaps on a 5:4 ? IIRC TVs use a pixel aspect of 1.2, so it isn't an idle speculation, I take it that with this change square characters remain square. The outlines are scaled separately in X and Y dimensions, then if hinting is enabled, the coordinates are shifted around to fit them to the pixel grid as appropriate. The result is that equal distances in the outline will remain approximately equal in the result, except that some distances will be adjusted to improve the appearance of the glyphs. Square characters will remain approximately square. Snapping the aspect ratio to whole integers would have been pretty boring :-) Keith PackardXFree86 Core TeamHP Cambridge Research Lab ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Mark Vojkovich wrote: Most PC video cards can't even come close to outputting HDTV on the TV-out. On the TNT, this is a function of which TV encoder is used and I've never seen one that could do more than 800x600. NVIDIA's Linux drivers don't support modes other than 640x480, 800x600 and for the few encoders that can do it, 1024x768. I've never actually seen anybody do HDTV under Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't any drivers that supported it on anybody's hardware. Mark. Are you really sure we are talking about the same thing? I am fully aware of the normal tv-out on nvidia cards, doing 640x480, 800x600, or 1024x768 with the right (btree?) chip doing the *conversion* to NTSC. This is absolutely, positively NOT what I'm talking about. When I mentioned getting 640x480 from the TNT to the TV, it was *NOT BEING CONVERTED TO NTSC FIRST*. It was going straight out the *hd15* connector (not the tv-out svideo connector), straight into the TV. This particular TV has 1 hd15 input, and 2 yuv inputs for HDTV. Also note, that this was done, using *both* the open source, and closed source nvidia drivers. AFAIK the open source drivers don't even touch the btree chip and tv-out functions. So I ask again, and eventually I will defer to your authority, but I want to make really sure- Are we on the same page here? Actually, I guess this is the clarifying point - Most PC video cards can't even come close to outputting HDTV on the ***TV-out*** It looks to me as though you didn't read my question closely enough I'm talking about treating the hdtv as a fixed frequency monitor, ***taking its input from a standard hd15 monitor cable*** -dmc On Thu, 30 May 2002, Doug McClendon wrote: I am astounded by the lack of resources (as reported by google) available regarding using HDTVs with xfree86. The only thing I found was a post long ago to this list. The only person who answered said this is a question for nvidia, regarding their tv-out support. To cut off similar responses: I'm talking about treating the hdtv as a fixed frequency monitor, taking its input from a standard hd15 monitor cable (or in my case, potentially via an hd15-yuv converter from audio authority). Currently, with my TNT, the default 60HzV 31.5khzH 21.5MHzDC modeline for 640x480 provides reasonable output, except that 10-15% of the pixels of the top and left of screen are not visible (i.e. off screen). Now, reading the handy video mode timings FAQ, it suggests that in such a case you move to a higher dot clock. Personally I don't want to endanger my (brothers) hdtv. Playing around with a multisync monitor, just jacking up the dotclock number in the modeline also ends up increasing the vertrefresh, which I'm _guessing_ could be a bad thing on the hdtv, which I'm _guessing_ is probably only going to be happy at 60hz. Anyway, clearly if I spent even more time than I have researching this issue, and didn't fear destroying a few hdtv's, I could probably run across the right modeline. But what perplexes me is that I can't seem to find any resources on the issue. Its like one of the first things that jumps out in my mind that I would do if I bought an hdtv. I can't believe there isn't more stuff/chatter on the net regarding this. For instance, its a 16/9 1080i hdtv. Clearly this implies(?) that the optimal progressive 60hz resolution would be 960x540(with square pixels). But personally I'd be satisfied at the moment with 640x480@60p or 854x480@60p, or roundabouts there. Just whatever the good dvd players output??? Anybody out there doing this? I can't be the only one? Anybody want to enlighten me as to how I'm wrong in my going assumption that 'hdtv support' is completely a software/modeline issue? (unless you care about the convenience of yuv/y-pb-pr cables coming straight out of the video card). Thanks for any help. I'd like to have a good idea what I'm doing, and what the risks to the TV are, before I do anything. Also, the modeline generator web pages out there don't seem to be doing much for me. -dmc ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: I guess from his reply Mark V didn't read this bit. :-( If you are prepared to convert the hd15 signal yourself the TV out limits don't apply, the HD15 signal on most cards should be plenty fast enough (I'm typing this at a 6 year old card that would do 2048x1536 @ 60/120Hz interlaced if I had a monitor that could cope). Exactly. And many HDTV's even have hd15 inputs, so asside from finding the correct modeline, there is no other conversion needed to be done by the user. In my case, the TV was already using the hd15 input for an over-the-air-set-top-hd-receiver, so I used a ~$70 hd15-yuv converter from audio authority. Given my very strong belief in what you expressed - that there is no such thing as 'hdtv support' since any 5 year old video card can easily output 480p, 720p, and quite probably even 1080i and 540p signals - I cannot figure out why I seem to be the only person doing this and looking for help. For 640x480 provides reasonable output, except that 10-15% of the pixels of the top and left of screen are not visible (i.e. off screen). Now, reading the handy video mode timings FAQ, it suggests that in such a case you move to a higher dot clock. Personally I don't want to endanger my (brothers) hdtv. Playing around with a multisync monitor, just jacking up the dotclock number in the modeline also ends up increasing the vertrefresh, which I'm _guessing_ could be a bad thing on the hdtv, which I'm _guessing_ is probably only going to be happy at 60hz. I've seen widescreen TVs in the UK advertising 100Hz images to reduce flicker, so they much be reprocessing the image somehow. I'd _guess_ that most (all?) HDTVs are digital (like most monitors now), and that the logic cuts out the picture if you give them a signal they don't like. While I don't take responsibility, I'd be prepared to try modelines out. You can always use ctrlaltkeypad +/- to switch from a good mode into one under test, and then back again if things don't look good. Yes, I would hopefully assume that the a TV that cost $5K would have enough smarts to reject dangerous input signals. However to contradict that, just using the standard tv-out (ntsc) features of the nvidia card, it has run into modes which do not sync, yet are not rejected by any logic. Although none of them has ever damaged the TV AFAIK. And yes, I know that I could be like a monkey trying all sorts of modelines, but I was really really hopeing that I was not the only person in the world doing this, and that perhaps someone out there could steer me in the right direction saving me time and failed -potentially risky- attempts. I'm sure its just a conspiracy by all the video card makers to squelch the knowlege that their new 'feature' of 'hdtv support' is nothing but a crock of... Thanks anyway for at least correcting Mark V. At least now when the next person searches google, they won't just find 2 questions posted to Xpert, with 2 quick replies telling people that its a tv-out issue. -dmc ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
James H. Cloos Jr. wrote: Doug == Doug McClendon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Doug I am astounded by the lack of resources (as reported by google) Doug available regarding using HDTVs with xfree86. Doug I'm talking about treating the hdtv as a fixed frequency Doug monitor, taking its input from a standard hd15 monitor cable (or Doug in my case, potentially via an hd15-yuv converter from audio Doug authority). I'd grab one of the modeline generating scripts and try out some. If your tv supports 1080p (many do for the benefit of dvd players, c), I'd try 1920x1080x60 modes. But I suspect you'll have to test some before finding the exact horizontal timing and necessary make/break ratios for a stable picture. Ok, so it sounds like I'll have to figure out the modeline myself. I'm still pretty amazed that there aren't more reports of people doing this already. Regarding 1080p for dvd, I think you are mistaken. My (only moderately educated) understanding was that the 'good' dvd players put out 480p instead of 480i(ntsc). I also don't think that there is any tv out there that does 1080p. The two hdtv standards are 1080i and 720p to my knowlege. The TV I'm interested in does 1080i, which I assume means that it can also do 540p. Ideally I'm looking for a good 640x480@60 modeline, and a 1920x540@60 modeline. 1920x1080i would be interesting to try, but since this is about using the tv as a big monitor, I'm really not interested in interlacing. Out of curiosity- Does anybody have any advice regarding fonts or any other tricks when you have severely non square pixels (1920x540)? It seems like it would be a nice feature of the X server to handle such issues transparently. I doubt there is anything now, but how far are we from an X server based on 3D hardware, i.e. a nice 5Kx5K non visible desktop that gets rendered with a bilinear filter to whatever resolution the desktop actually is? That would take care of generic anti-aliasing (fonts and more) quite nicely no? Zoomable windows... -dmc You might be able to get some data from the manufacturer on what inputs are supported. They probably hide more complete specs somewhere on their sites. -JimC ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
On Fri, 31 May 2002, Doug McClendon wrote: Regarding 1080p for dvd, I think you are mistaken. My (only moderately educated) understanding was that the 'good' dvd players put out 480p instead of 480i(ntsc). I also don't think that there is any tv out there that does 1080p. The two hdtv standards are 1080i and 720p to my knowlege. The TV I'm interested in does 1080i, which I assume means that it can also do 540p. Ideally I'm looking for a good 640x480@60 modeline, and a 1920x540@60 modeline. 1920x1080i would be interesting to try, but since this is about using the tv as a big monitor, I'm really not interested in interlacing. Out of curiosity- Does anybody have any advice regarding fonts or any other tricks when you have severely non square pixels (1920x540)? It seems like it would be a nice feature of the X server to handle such issues transparently. I'd say you do want interlacing. Use 1920x1080i at 120 fields/sec = 60 frames/sec. At 120 fields/sec, flicker wont be a problem, the pixels will be squarish, and the interlacing will give you analog hardware anti-aliasing (in the monitor, not the card!). Sorry, I don't have a suitable modeline to suggest - my modeline tools are for VESA GTF, which may not apply to HDTV, and none of them give a correct XFree86 interlaced modeline (X seems to want the vertical timings doubled, but I haven't worked out exactly what it wants). You can use the DisplaySize option to tell the X server what size the screen is. It will then tell any app that asks the horizontal and vertical pixel pitches (dpi), but this confuses sufficiently many apps that by default we don't set this from the DDC info. The RENDER font system could probably cope, but most apps don't get anything sensible out of the old font renderer. I doubt there is anything now, but how far are we from an X server based on 3D hardware, i.e. a nice 5Kx5K non visible desktop that gets rendered with a bilinear filter to whatever resolution the desktop actually is? That would take care of generic anti-aliasing (fonts and more) quite nicely no? Zoomable windows... OpenGL based 3D window / desktop managers have been around for several years. I don't have any names, but they do what you want, plus allow windows to exist at an angle to the screen (tilt it away, so that you can still get an overview of what is going on, but take up very little width or height...). 5Kx5K ? I believe that they allow the windows to exist in a 3D volume with floating point coordinates (might even get around the limit (16bits? on coordinates on an X screen). -- Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Around 17 o'clock on Jun 2, Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote: You can use the DisplaySize option to tell the X server what size the screen is. It will then tell any app that asks the horizontal and vertical pixel pitches (dpi), but this confuses sufficiently many apps that by default we don't set this from the DDC info. The RENDER font system could probably cope, but most apps don't get anything sensible out of the old font renderer. Xft assumes that pixels are square; users and applications generally expect the dpi to be equal along each axis, so Xft plays along. Fixing that would be pretty easy; I could add an 'aspect ratio' field to Xft that could be configured per display. Certainly the underlying rasterizers are more than willing to draw with non-square pixels. You can actually do something similar, but not quite the same by setting a matrix when rendering text. The problem with using a matrix is that the matrix is applied after the hints; that makes the characters always appear the same, independent of the matrix, but makes the transformed characters no longer aligned to pixel boundaries. Disabling hinting would at least make them appear no worse under transformation. I've tried this with Xft2 and (after fixing several bugs), it works just fine. I think I'll add an aspect ratio field to allow the right thing to happen. Keith PackardXFree86 Core TeamHP Cambridge Research Lab ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
On Sunday 02 June 2002 06:53 pm, you wrote: OpenGL based 3D window / desktop managers have been around for several years. I don't have any names, but they do what you want, plus allow windows to exist at an angle to the screen (tilt it away, so that you can still get an overview of what is going on, but take up very little width or height...). But I do. Check out the latest cvs sources from enlightenment 0.17. It's immature but fairly stable. Are there any others, then? -- homepage: www.student.kuleuven.ac.be/~m9917684 jabber (=IM): [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Around 13 o'clock on Jun 2, Keith Packard wrote: I think I'll add an aspect ratio field to allow the right thing to happen. Yes, that looks much better now -- aspect ratios of 1.2 still snap glyphs to the pixel grid to make them appear sharper when hinting is enabled. With current CVS, you can edit .fonts.conf to include: !-- set default aspect ratio for fonts not specifying one -- match target=font test qual=all name=aspect compare=eq double0/double /test edit name=aspect mode=assign double1/double /edit /match !-- double the aspect ratio to make fonts twice as wide -- match target=font edit name=aspect mode=assign times nameaspect/name double2/double /times /edit /match And, you can specify the aspect ratio in a font name: $ xclock -digital -render -fa 'times:aspect=4' These effects are cumulative; with both in place, the font will be displayed 8 times as wide as normal. Keith PackardXFree86 Core TeamHP Cambridge Research Lab ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Doug == Doug McClendon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: JHC I'd grab one of the modeline generating scripts and try out some. JHC If your tv supports 1080p (many do for the benefit of dvd JHC players, c), Doug Regarding 1080p for dvd, I think you are mistaken. My (only Doug moderately educated) understanding was that the 'good' dvd Doug players put out 480p instead of 480i(ntsc). I also don't think Doug that there is any tv out there that does 1080p. I knew when I sent that that I ought to have worded it better Anyway, I wasn't thinging so much of current DVD players -- although the digital tape players may be capable of it -- but rather of the various proposals for furture players. I'm sure I've seen 1080p at 24 fps at least proposed for highend films. Of more use I've jsut remembered that all of the details of the HDTV standards are published and I beleive available for public download at SMPTE's web site. Those should contain sufficient details of the timing, including blank intervals et al, to produce accurate xfree mode lines. You'll most likely need to do a bit of math to convert from timings in µs to timings in pixels, but the published details should be enough. (I should have thought of this before, esp as I have been a member) [SIGH] -JimC ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
Re: [Xpert]modelines for hdtv?
Doug == Doug McClendon [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Doug I am astounded by the lack of resources (as reported by google) Doug available regarding using HDTVs with xfree86. Doug I'm talking about treating the hdtv as a fixed frequency Doug monitor, taking its input from a standard hd15 monitor cable (or Doug in my case, potentially via an hd15-yuv converter from audio Doug authority). I'd grab one of the modeline generating scripts and try out some. If your tv supports 1080p (many do for the benefit of dvd players, c), I'd try 1920x1080x60 modes. But I suspect you'll have to test some before finding the exact horizontal timing and necessary make/break ratios for a stable picture. You might be able to get some data from the manufacturer on what inputs are supported. They probably hide more complete specs somewhere on their sites. -JimC ___ Xpert mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/xpert
