G2 ti tv output

[hotpurple]

Hi there,

I'm having issues with my HTPC. I want to use it with a TV as the output exclusivly (ie no monitor). I'm using Windows XP Media Centre Edition and I can't get any output from the SVideo output (or the composite for that matter).

I select PAL/I as the TV standard then click ok and the monitor turns off. However, nothing appears on the TV.

I've tried several different sets of drivers now from 31.something to 61.something and they all do the same thing.

I know everything is plugged in ok as the bios screen comes up ok and everything comes up (in NTSC standard, ie black and white on my PAL TV) right up to the point where the windows logon screen should appear, then nothing. I can still hear the windows noises and I can use the keyboard to login and shut the computer down, I just can't see what I'm doing.

I've tried the special media centre driver on the nvidia website and that doesn't support older cards like the G2 ti so that avenue is closed off to me.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

Chris

[Shogun]

You need to turn off write combining.

[hotpurple]

ok, i'll give it a go, cheers

[Shogun]

I had the same problem as you for a while and found out that this sorted it.

[hotpurple]

ok, tried that, it didn't help, sorry.

Do you have any other ideas?

Chris

[Shogun]

Hmm il do a little research and get back to you. Have you tried disabling all the extra features?

[hotpurple]

Hi there, what sort of extra features did you have in mind?

I can view the desktop in NTSC mode if there is no video driver installed as presumably the graphics card just outputs to whatever is connected.

I've turned off write combining and that has done nothing at all. Other than that I've just been trying different drivers. I have had it working before on normal xp pro with the exact same drivers and setup so I just can't understand what is so different that this won't work.

Chris

[hotpurple]

Right, I've been playing around with TV tool for a bit and found some interesting stuff out.

From what I can tell the problem occurs whenever the nvidia driver loads up. If I start the computer in VGA mode I can use TV Tool to select 640x480 in either pal or NTSC and either function works fine. The problem comes when trying to enable 800x600 or the7something x 5something (native dvd res apparantly), the same happens if you select this in the normal display properties window. Basically as soon as the nvidia driver takes over the tv tuner goes mad and refuses to display anything.

Chris

[Shogun]

Iirc tvs can only displace 640x480 or some resolution like that.

[këö¬t]

Iirc tvs can only displace 640x480 or some resolution like that.

PAL is 720x576.

[hotpurple]

My tv output can go to 800x600 because I've done it before. The one on my Radeon 9800se AIW can do 1024x768 no problem.

Chris

[bmh.01]

The tube in the TV is only good for 720x576 unless your have a HDTV or LCD, so I think the resolutions are scaled when using tv out as a TV tube will only do 720x576, thats why tv-out generally gives a blurred picture.

[directhex]

try it with a linux-based HTPC package such as mythtv, i've used gf2 tv out fine before under linux

[hotpurple]

this is very true, the res is scaled. This isn't the problem however. The problem is that I can't get the TV output to output anything when the nvidia driver is controlling it. When there is no driver loaded up it will output an NTSC signal at 640x480. As soon as you try to do the transition from monitor to tv the monitor turns off and nothing appears on the tv

Chris

[bmh.01]

I had exactly the same problem with my old gf3 ti200 and never ever managed to solve it, the problem was that the nvidia drivers always wrongly detected my tv encoder chip. The only way I found around it was to use tv tool as none of the nvidia drivers ever worked and I tried a lot of revisions from 20.xx to 50.xx until I got rid of the card and none of them worked.

[hotpurple]

ah, that would make sense. I can use tv tool to make it work as well, but tv tool doesn't seem to be terribly reliable and doesn't always seem to make it work correctly.

Chris