Hello friends, I've posted this over at the ubuntu forums, but would hear if anyone here could help me as well.

I have had this problem for years, on different variants of linux/ubuntu, different graphic cards and differents TVs. This morning found me in the mood to find out how to solve it!

I have tried to search around, but as my english is limited to what the problem should be called, I haven't found anything. I'll try to explain.

Have a fresh xubuntu 8.04 i386 install with all updates installed. The graphics card is a Hercules 3d prophet of some kind, lspci tells me it's a ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R300 NE [Radeon 9500 Pro]. Installed the proprietary drivers when prompted, restarted, and got a picture on the TV (connected with s-video cable). Smoother than ever before!

The problem, as always, occurs when watching movies: The image looks great, but if there is much movement in the frame (fast panning of the camera for example), the TV does not seem to be able to update the picture fast enough, so the middle of the image "jitters" a little bit. The more movement, the more visible "jittering". It IS possible to watch a movie without getting a nervous breakdown, but it's still annoying as I know it probably could be fixed.

Does this has something to do with the refresh rate? Anyone got any hints on how to fix this (preferably the cli way)? Don't have physical access to the box at this hour (only ssh access), so I cannot tell you what refresh rate and resolution I'm running at the moment. Any hints on how to figure this out from the command line would also be greatly appreciated.

The TV is a Sony KV-29X1E, located in Europe.

Thanks in advance!

Being no expert on the subject, it does sound like a refresh rate problem. My suspicion would be that there is some way in the media player program you are using to limit the refresh rate to something the TV can handle. You may also try different interlace settings. As I said, I'm no expert, but good luck.