I have an old Dell Optiplex GX240 running Windows XP hooked up to my Olevia HDTV. I'd like to format this computer and install Ubuntu 10.04.

After burning the Ubuntu install disk, I hook the computer to the tv via HDMI and reboot to the CDROM but upon booting I receive an 'Invalid Format' error and no video is shown.

I did some searching - there is very little info about this problem. This post http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1063217 seems to indicate that the solution is to hook up the computer to an old CRT monitor, then after the computer has booted, switch the HDMI cable to the tv.

This solution is unsatisfactory. Does anyone have experience with this problem? Is there another way to get around this problem?

Thanks.

No experience with this problem, but looking at link, It appears that your computer needs to emit a 60Hz video signal. Best way I can think of to do this is to create a bootable flash drive with persistent storage, boot it on a laptop (or a PC hooked up to a normal monitor), and create an xorg.conf file with the appropriate modeline.