QID LP PCIe: TV ouput

[gajdosik]

Sorry for double posting, I just realized that my first post was in the wrong forum. So here I go again:

First of all thanks for this support forum and for the patched driver, the original driver did not produce a working kernel module for me: the official kernel module would not load because of some missing symbols. By the way: only the 32bit driver works for me, the 64bit version (same kernel(2.6.25.10), same distro(gentoo), same X(7.2)) does not work: the X-Server uses 100% CPU.

But this is not the main problem, although a solution would be nice. The main problem is TV output. Quadhead output on ordinary monitors works fine (2 screens with 2 monitors each). But I want output on PAL TVs. I have a connector cable that connects the QID LP PCIe to 4 analog PAL monitors. So when I use this cable I can connect to TVs only, no monitors. But this is ok for me. In fact I want to connect my box to 12 PAL monitors using 3 QID cards. But for the beginning I connect just one PAL monitor and want to see an image on this monitor.

The main problem is that the output image has bad sync. I cannot produce an X11 Modeline that gives a stable image, the vertical sync is wrong, so that the image rolls down the monitor about once in 2 seconds. I find that the option "QIDTV" has no effect at all: same behaviour if it is there or not. The option "QID" has even a negative effect: with the option "QID" also the horizontal sync is wrong. My PAL monitor is ok: I can successfully use it with the TV output of NVIDIA or ATI cards. The only reason I use Matrox is that I should be able to successfully connect 4 PAL Monitors to one card, at least according to the specs.

This is my xorg.conf:

Section "Modes"
Identifier "MatroxModeLine"
Modeline "720x576g" 13.875 720 744 808 888 576 586 592 625 Interlace
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "device_0"
Driver "mtx"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
# Option "QID"
Option "QIDTV"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "monitor_0"
UseModes "MatroxModeLine"
HorizSync 10.0 - 120.0
VertRefresh 20-100
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "screen_0"
Device "device_0"
Monitor "monitor_0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "720x576g"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Please notice that I am not interested in what is described in section 6 - TV-output of readme-advanced.txt:
"With this option, you can clone your display onto a television while using a single display mode." I do not want to see a portion of my ordinary display cloned on the TV. In fact this is not even possible for me, because the connector cable connects to 4 TVs only. I would rather be interested in section 3 - QID TV-output.


I use gentoo linux with
# uname -a
Linux XXXXXXXX 2.6.25.10 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri Oct 10 14:15:01 CEST 2008 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much in advance,
Johannes Gajdosik

[gajdosik]

I confirm that with the new driver version 1.4.6.2 X11 also works for 64 bit systems: the X process uses 100% CPU only for 2 minutes during startup, afterwards it behaves normally just like in 32 bit linux. I use 8GB of RAM. Thanks for the great work and quick fix! TV output still does not work for me.
Johannes Gajdosik

[tuxx-home.at]

I confirm that with the new driver version 1.4.6.2 X11 also works for 64 bit systems: the X process uses 100% CPU only for 2 minutes during startup, afterwards it behaves normally just like in 32 bit linux. I use 8GB of RAM. Thanks for the great work and quick fix!

Great to hear that, thanks for the feedback!

But I want output on PAL TVs.

Have you made sure that the firmware of your cards has been set to output to PAL TVs?
Out of the pbioslin (BIOS update tool) readme file:

Code: Select all

TV-output support (Matrox QID)
==============================

The BIOS ("Basic Input/Output System") for Matrox QID product
supports TV-output in DOS and VGA display modes. To match the TV
standard used by your video devices, you may need to change the TV
standard used by your Matrox product. To change the TV standard of
your Matrox product:

Linux
-----

(1) Copy the files included with this software to a directory on
    your hard disk. For example, you can copy files to the root
    directory on your drive.

(2) At a command prompt change to the directory where you copied
    the files. For example, type "cd /root" if you
    copied the files to the root folder of your drive.

(3) Depending on your TV standard, type:

        pbioslin /tvout ntsc

    or

        pbioslin /tvout pal

(4) You need to restart your system for the changes to take effect.


You can get the BIOS file from the HOWTO section in here:

[http://forum.tuxx-home.at/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28]

[gajdosik]

Thanks for the quick reply!

Now I have updated the BIOS(./pbioslin.bin -i 979-34.bin), rebooted the computer, switched to PAL (./pbioslin.bin /tvout pal), rebooted again. But it did not change anything in the TV output. I still get the same thing as before, which is unusable output because of bad sync.

I got hold of an ordinary VGA-to-Video adapter cable from Matrox (VGA in, Video/S-Video out). Measuring the cable revealed: the "video out" maps directly to the Red color channel of the VGA input. "S-Video out" maps to green and blue. So my analysis is this: The "Matrox QID LP PCIe" produces no PAL signal at all, just an ordinary RGB signal on the VGA output. The option "QIDTV" has no effect at all. When I specify a Modeline with the exact same timings as a PAL signal (as I have done in my xorg.conf), my PAL monitor is capable of displaying a BW-Image that contains the red color of the RGB signal, with some sync problems as discibed in my original post. On the other hand, when I specify a Modeline with standard VGA timings, a standard LCD monitor can display the image, but the PAL monitor displays only garbage when I connect it to the matrox card.

Has anyone ever been able to get TV output out of the Matrox QID? If so, what xorg.conf is necessary to accomplish that?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Johannes Gajdosik

[tuxx-home.at]

Please redirect this question to Matrox Techsupport then. I'm afraid that's all I can do for you.

[gajdosik]

Thanks for helping so far. I have written to the matrox tech support. Lets hear what they say.
Johannes Gajdosik

[tuxx-home.at]

You're welcome and thanks for contacting them. Please keep us updated when you get a fix to your problem!

[gajdosik]

Matrox tech support have send me a testing driver that supports TV output on 4 connected TV sets. They claim that the official driver would work for 2 TV Monitors, but before the testing driver I never got even a single TV output working. The testing driver has still problems for me: the image on the TV output is scaled down, so that resolution is lost. They say they are working on it. After this the next problem will be getting OpenGL to work on all 4 TV monitors.

Is there any experience with OpenGL on all outputs of the QID?

Johannes Gajdosik

[tuxx-home.at]

That are actually great news!
What's the version numbering of the new driver? 1.4.7? 1.5.0?

[gajdosik]

The new versions up to now were mtxdriver-installer-x86_32-1.4.6.2.zip and mtxdriver-installer-x86_32-1.4.6.3.zip. Although TV output works, there are still problems, that I hope matrox support will solve.

[gajdosik]

I have now got a new driver from matrox support (mtxdriver-installer-x86_32-1.4.6.4.run). The driver is 32bit only, and I can compile and use it after applying the changes made by tuxx-home.at. That means: take the sources from tuxx-home.at and the precompiled object files and library files from matrox, put it all together, compile and install. The driver gives 4 times TV output on one QID LP PCIe card. XVideo works quite fine, OpenGL does not work.

I can use the driver with 2 QID LP PCIe in one computer (8*TV output); 2 QID LP PCIe + 1 QID LP PCI64 does not work.
The quality of the generated TV signal is kind of disappointing: the vertical resolution is degraded when compared with NVidia, it seems like the odd ane even fields are blurred together, thus reducing vertical resolution from 576 to 288 lines.

Still I hope that Matrox will include this fix into the next official driver.

Thanks again to this great site and the inofficially patched driver, without it the official driver would not even compile for a contemporary kernel.

Johannes Gajdosik