tvo?

[hippie91]

(posted this in the matrox hardware forum and got no reply whatsoever)

i need to get my g400 to do tvo only (it's going to be connected only to the tv. i've tried the tvo bios (actually every single one since 1999) but none of them switch the card over to viewing out of the tv in dos. i tried just using normal dualhead clone, but when that's the case it won't play video overlay on the 2nd head. i can use dvdMAX to get around that, but then if i even open a video file it's auto full screen and you lose any control of the comp unless you alt-f4 it (which won't work if you accidentally press a mouse button)... making it so i'd have to disconnect everything and carry the comp over to a monitor just to close the video (sort of pointless since i'd have to just hit the powerplug on the back to shut it down)

i have an old g200 marvel but the mini atx board i have doesn't take 3.3v cards so that's a no go also

i'm fairly resolved to having to either buy yet another video card, or buy another MB (seems slightly useless to have a brand new one sitting around)

i tried running MXINFO but it couldn't find any sort of matrox card in the comp (probably a bad thing)

is it possable to enable tvo bios on an old millenium 2/rrs card? i have one of those sitting around also

[hippie91]

bump

[dZeus]

I've got one of my G400s in such a setup: only a TV is connected to the PC and I use it for playback of video material and some games.

I do get output on my TV in text-mode (right after the BIOS POST), as when I updated the BIOS it asked me if I wanted TV-Out support to be enabled in DOS (and answered positively of course).

In Windows desktop I have both clone and dvd-max enabled, and they work fine. In fact, you can have overlay in clone by enabling the 'optimize for performance' option in the clone properties (be sure to use a very recent driver version). But you won't get full overscan playback in that mode, so I use DVD-MAX instead for video playback.

If you use PowerDVD (I tested with v4), it will close/clear the overlay surface after the video clip has ended, so it will return to the desktop in clone mode without the need of closing the video player like you do right now.

[hippie91]

well i've tried every bios and every driver for 2k and i get nothing at post (in fact it takes like 5 minutes b4 it'll even beep for the post so something is definatly wrong). does the overlay on the 2nd head work if you didn't set the bios to tvo and just have it on close (with the optomize for performance option).

i looked at bozes i could just plug the vga output into to get a svid signal but they were all pricey and really crappy looking

[dZeus]

I get the overlay in clone mode on the secondary monitor, regardless of using the DOS tv-out BIOS or the normal one.

But only when I enable 'optimize for performance' in the clone options.

The G450 and G550 on the other hand don't support TV-Out in DOS and also won't output overlay in clone mode, performance mode enabled or not.

Did you try a different videocard in your system? 5 Minutes before a BIOS POST sounds very wrong to me.

btw. did the Matrox BIOS flash program ask you wether to enable DOS TV-Out mode when you flashed the G400's BIOS ?

[hippie91]

yeah the bios asked for th-o and i set it to tv-o, rebooted (went smoked a cig and came back and it'd almost be ready to post), checked to see if tv-o worked, flashed back to a non tv- bios, rebooted, flashed to the next earlier tv-o bios, and so on until i'd tried them all. i would use my old g200 cause i know it's tvo works fine, but the MB doesn't take it. i don't think that the old rrs i have would be able to do fulltime tv-o. the powersuply that was in that comp had the voltages pretty far off, i dunno if that would be the problem, but i should get a new psu in the next couple days... sadly when i'm out of town... i'll let you know what happens when i put it all back together and try it with performance settings.

on performance settings does it still look ok?

[dZeus]

The only thing the 'performance' setting does in Clone mode, is that it will sync the refresh rates of both heads. So if you're outputting to NTSC on the second head, the first head will also be locked to 60 Hz refresh. If you're only driving a television from the G400, there's no reason at all to enable 'quality' over 'performance'.

I'm very curious about the PSU. Please do tell after you upgrade it

[hippie91]

heh
last time i tried to boot to get some info off that comp the windows installation was messed up too (could be because the power goes off every time i turn it on for a few mins)

when i actually was able to make it into windows, the cpu would get really hot (switched this cpu from a diff comp and it gained 20 degrees C) and the MB monitor would come up saying the voltages were more thatn 10% off (the 12V+ was like 13.2)

gonna have to turn off the other comps or something to be able to have the tv AND that comp running

[hippie91]

you are awesome!

i couldn't sleep tonight so i decided to mess with the comp a little, i reinstalled windows, switched it to performance and BINGO! i was able to play a file and not have it be auto full screen! i haven't really tested it too much since i'm all twitchy and have already moved on to other things, but as far as i can tell it works!

thank you greatly.