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ATI card tv out nightmare on Ubuntu 8.04
It's been my second day now here since I installed Ubuntu 8.04 x64 edition and configured my ATI X1300 card to work properly with the ati proprietary driver, included in the Ubuntu repositories. Since then I've been trying unsuccessfully to do something as simple as switching between TV and monitor display. /I figured out they both are not going to work right at the same time/.
I'd like to do that via command line, so that when I get the things working I could just put them in a bash script and automate the whole thing.
Ati provides basically two utilities for controlling the display settings - aticonfig - the command line tool and amdcccle - which is the alternative of the catalyst control center. Both appear to be extremely buggy and I'm unable to make any use of them at all so far. For example commands like
aticonfig --enable-monitor=tv does the job of switching the tv on and turning the monitor off, however both resolutions get messed up - the tv output is only at 1024x768 however the screen size is 1280x1024 and playing videos in full screen mode results in only part of the picture being displayed. Reverting back to monitor display only makes my screen 1024x768 and subsequent commands to change the resolution via aticonfig produce error messages. I can remedy the situation using amdcccle anually but thats not what I want, besides both tools seem to be doing lots of other stuff and producing a number of error/warning/info messages.
I think I read somewhere that a guy mentioned something about storing a working copies of the amdpcsdb file and overwriting it each time he does a change, but I don't know how to tell fglrx to reinitialize its settings after I overwrite the file - I don't want to reboot or reset X just to change my screen resolution
If there's anyone out there that has managed to get their tvout working properly - please share the experience
I'd like to do that via command line, so that when I get the things working I could just put them in a bash script and automate the whole thing.
Ati provides basically two utilities for controlling the display settings - aticonfig - the command line tool and amdcccle - which is the alternative of the catalyst control center. Both appear to be extremely buggy and I'm unable to make any use of them at all so far. For example commands like
aticonfig --enable-monitor=tv does the job of switching the tv on and turning the monitor off, however both resolutions get messed up - the tv output is only at 1024x768 however the screen size is 1280x1024 and playing videos in full screen mode results in only part of the picture being displayed. Reverting back to monitor display only makes my screen 1024x768 and subsequent commands to change the resolution via aticonfig produce error messages. I can remedy the situation using amdcccle anually but thats not what I want, besides both tools seem to be doing lots of other stuff and producing a number of error/warning/info messages.
I think I read somewhere that a guy mentioned something about storing a working copies of the amdpcsdb file and overwriting it each time he does a change, but I don't know how to tell fglrx to reinitialize its settings after I overwrite the file - I don't want to reboot or reset X just to change my screen resolution
If there's anyone out there that has managed to get their tvout working properly - please share the experience
ASKER
Thanks for the reply,
I think I might have gotten it, time will tell
Here's what I've done so far:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6066913#post6066913
This is definetevly not a x64 issue it's just a poor ati drivers general support. I have both x86 and x64 ubuntus and things look pretty much the same.
Also I had similar to yours configuration in WinXP, the difference being that I used my TV as a second monitor - I'd have the player for example on my monitor and the movie would play on the TV - having the movie playing on both displays is too much a distraction for me
Even in XP however the catalyst control panel was a piece of crap - the shortcuts wouldn't work, the keyboard shortcuts wouldn't work....everything was so messed up, so I gave up using it completely and kept just the ATI driver. There was another little tool for WinXP, I forgot what it was called but that worked nicely for me - it did just what I wanted it to do, namely make 2 shortcuts for switching the displays - 1) only monitor, 2) extended desktop on monitor and TV. Then I assigned keyboard shortcuts to those and I was able to control all that with my custom built remote control receiver. Now I'm trying to do the same thing in Ubuntu, but the road is much, much steeper here...
I think I might have gotten it, time will tell
Here's what I've done so far:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6066913#post6066913
This is definetevly not a x64 issue it's just a poor ati drivers general support. I have both x86 and x64 ubuntus and things look pretty much the same.
Also I had similar to yours configuration in WinXP, the difference being that I used my TV as a second monitor - I'd have the player for example on my monitor and the movie would play on the TV - having the movie playing on both displays is too much a distraction for me
Even in XP however the catalyst control panel was a piece of crap - the shortcuts wouldn't work, the keyboard shortcuts wouldn't work....everything was so messed up, so I gave up using it completely and kept just the ATI driver. There was another little tool for WinXP, I forgot what it was called but that worked nicely for me - it did just what I wanted it to do, namely make 2 shortcuts for switching the displays - 1) only monitor, 2) extended desktop on monitor and TV. Then I assigned keyboard shortcuts to those and I was able to control all that with my custom built remote control receiver. Now I'm trying to do the same thing in Ubuntu, but the road is much, much steeper here...
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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I saw your abandoned question so will try to asist you.
I have no experience with Ubuntu and x64 bit drivers
x64 bit drivers can be hell in itself to get them right.
But I'd say you'll have a fair bit of tweeking to get them to work.
The TV res cannot be like a desktop it has use 16 bit colours.
Checking my settings in windows xp pro my desktop is 1280 x 1024 the secondary monitor TV 68 CM uses 1024 x 768 16 bit. I use clone mode. Not twin view or dual.
That's how it is even for windows xp pro and nvidia.
The following howto addresses and solves the problems of Linux's,especially (X)(K)Ubuntu's,
support (or lack of) for dual monitors.The howto is assorted into four driver-specific categorizes.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/dual-monitors-with-nvidia.html
Hope it helps you