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S-Video out with radeon with strange 'lines' showing

Hi!

I've recently hooked up my pc to my very old TV-set and I've managed to get TV-out (S-video) working fairly quickly.
BUT, I'm having a weird issue. The picture on the TV-set is distorted with 'white-lines' running through it horizontally.
Its difficult to describe, but it looks a little like a sheet of writing-paper splashed across the screen... :(

I've searched around and haven't found a solution yet. The weird thing is, that running windows, I get no such display corruption.

I'm using the very latest xf-video-ati driver atop a r300 (radeon 9600) card. The TV is a very old model, PAL standard.

Output from xrandr:

Code:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 960, maximum 4096 x 4096

VGA-0 connected 1280x960+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 355mm x 266mm

  1280x960      85.0*+

  720x400        85.0 +

  1280x1024      85.0    75.0  

  1152x864      75.0  

  1024x768      100.0    85.0    75.1    60.0  

  800x600        85.1    75.0  

  640x480        85.0    75.0    60.0  

DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

S-video connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

  800x600        59.9 +

  640x480        59.9

Switching between resolutions changes nothing...

Any ideas?

To illustrate this, here is a photo I took of the actual TV-screen. You can see that the picture is composed of a thinner 'bright line' followed by a thicker 'dark line'.

Those are flyback lines.

In the normal working, the screen writes a line as the dot is moved across it and the information fed to to the video outputs. Then the output is blanked so you won't see it, and the dot returns across the screen to begin another line.

Your dot is not being blanked on return, hence the lines. Double check all connections, especially the S-Video.

I've already triple checked all connections :cry:

The thing is, the s-video signal is connected to the TV via a scart-connector. Originally if I plugged this connector into the TV firmly, I would only get a BW screen. I searched around the internet and found solutions that either required the purchase of ridiculously high-priced adapters, or soldering or worse. At one point I read about the signals each pin on the scart-connector carries and how that by 'not firmly' connecting the connector the one 'extra pin' that seems to exist on it, just does not connect and the colour reappears.
So, the connector is now in place 'just right' (for colour), and TV-out from WindowsXP works just fine. I only get these lines from linux.

But I will try, maybe these flyback lines are gone in BW mode.
I'll report back!

Can be an internal monitor problem. Try turning brightness down.

OK,
I've now rechecked the connection, waggled it about a bit, sadly though the flyback lines remain, no matter what I do, even in 'BW-mode' :(
I'm assuming you meant the TV's brightness settings, I've also had no luck with tuning them..

So, I'm now pretty sure this has to do with the driver-side of things, unless of course this remains a configuration issue.
As mentioned before, my setup works great using WinXP, so maybe I should try and find out what settings are being used there..
Do you know of any software to aid in this. I use atitray tools for setting everything up, not CataclystControlCenter.

Basically, as I see it, this has something to do with timing.
So probably the windows-driver is 'driving' the TV differently than the xf86-video-ati is. Question is, how to adjust things accordingly? :confused:

I would suspect that the S-Video signal is corrupted.

I would echo MTK358's diagnosis.

If you go digging further, those lines are known as flyback lines.

Tomorrow is Sunday, and I should be able to find some time, maybe I'll figure it out :)

Thanks so far!

Same issue as poster...

Hi hungrigerhaifisch,

Did you ever figure this out, i have the same issue running ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 on Dell Inspiron 5100 with s-video out on Lucid Lynx. As you said the display is fine in Windows.

Thanks.

Resolved issue...

Never mind i've resolved this myself. Seems my particular TV had a setting allowing me to designate AV2 as S-Video, on doing this i was then able to use tv_standard as ntsc instead of pal and retain the colour, it also removed the white lines, everything is now tickety boo.

Thanks.