[gentoo-user] [OT sort of] S-video support on NVidia-based cards

[gentoo-user] [OT sort of] S-video support on NVidia-based cards

[Mark Knecht]

Hi,
   This is sort of off-topic except it isn't if recent xorg-server
updates hadn't totally killed video operation on one of my Intel
GPU-based machines. I've not been able to fix it after two weeks and
cannot spend more time so I'm investigating spending $40 to buy some
cheap video card to just move on.

   Anyway, one feature I'd like to investigate with this card is
MythTV over s-Video. I already use this on another old machine which
is ATI-based but that ATI driver requires an old kernel so the machine
hasn't been completely updated in a couple of years now. If I can get
Myth out on the S-video port of this new card then possibly I can use
that machine for something else which would be cool.

   Anyway, in the $40 range NewEgg has some GForce 6200 cards that
look reasonable to me but I don't know how to determine if S-video
output is supported on these cards under Linux. Any problems?

   If it matters there are some FX 5200 cards but they seem slower,
older specs, so I'm hoping the 6200 series is a reasonable solution.

   Here's a link to the sort fo card I'm looking at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130465

Thanks,
Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT sort of] S-video support on NVidia-based cards

[James]

Mark Knecht <markknecht <at> gmail.com> writes:


>    Anyway, one feature I'd like to investigate with this card is
> MythTV over s-Video. I already use this on another old machine which
> is ATI-based but that ATI driver requires an old kernel so the machine
> hasn't been completely updated in a couple of years now. If I can get
> Myth out on the S-video port of this new card then possibly I can use
> that machine for something else which would be cool.

Some of the newer ATI cards surely support this?
I have not ever muck around with S_video,  but,
it's just another well define interface (port),
I would think.


>    Anyway, in the $40 


Ohhhh Nooooo! Stop the buss!

If you are spending new dollars, I'd highly recommend
this ATI card, The 4350!

ASUS EAH4350 SILENT, no fan just passively cooled.
It uses the latest (smallest transistor) technology
to build a very reasonable performing graphics card
with little heat and no noise. A Silent video card
has to be attractive for any audiophile?

It even comes with an HDMI output. I have not gotten
into the interfaces (splitting) the video and audio
feeds, yet, but it looks encouraging. It was $29
dollars, but, make sure it's fits into your
video slot on your mobo.


What I guess I'm really trying to say is, if you are
spending new money, get a video card that uses
the latest GPS technologies and has the outputs
you want. Do try to avoid video cards with HDCP
built in...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection

Although it's only a matter of time
before HDCP is reverse engineered and 
work_arounds developed, methinks...



hth,

James

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT sort of] S-video support on NVidia-based cards

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 6:31 AM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Mark Knecht <markknecht <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>    Anyway, one feature I'd like to investigate with this card is
>> MythTV over s-Video. I already use this on another old machine which
>> is ATI-based but that ATI driver requires an old kernel so the machine
>> hasn't been completely updated in a couple of years now. If I can get
>> Myth out on the S-video port of this new card then possibly I can use
>> that machine for something else which would be cool.
>
> Some of the newer ATI cards surely support this?
> I have not ever muck around with S_video,  but,
> it's just another well define interface (port),
> I would think.
>
>
>>    Anyway, in the $40
>
>
> Ohhhh Nooooo! Stop the buss!
>
> If you are spending new dollars, I'd highly recommend
> this ATI card, The 4350!
>

Hi,
   I don't want to mess with ATI and ATI drivers any more. Had too
much trouble with them in the past. Yes, they work. I have one in my
AMD64 Gentoo machine, but would rather use N-videa at this point.

   The application under discussion - my wife's Gentoo-only desktop
watching MythTV  - is the only thing that matters. New Gentoo updates
and apparently errors in the Intel drivers upstream - not caused by
Gentoo as best I can tell - have made my life a living hell around
here. If I could spend $5 and make the problem go away I would. The
S-Video isn't terribly important. The potential use is actually in
another machine where I'd like my Myth backend server to become a
sometimes frontend so that I could get away from the Asus/ATI/S-Video
solution currently hooked to the big screen. ATI dripped support for
the chipset in that box in the Linux driver and Gentoo decided not to
support the old driver or the kernel required to run it so that
machine hasn't been updated in over 2 years.

   I don't have any TVs with HDMI. We don't watch TV all that much. If
we do it's NetFlix DVDs or NetFlix via the Roku box. Myth just records
junk mostly and I need to display it on the TV which has an extra
S-Video input that I currently use. My wife doesn't play games,
doesn't need 3D or anything fancy.

   I guess what I'm saying is who are **you** to decide what makes
sense in my life or how I should spend my time and money? If you're
not interested in answering my question then why not simply stay
silent instead of this? If you want to start a thread of your own
about the merits of that card then feel free to do so and then you and
others can go down that path.

   I'll consider ATI again when 100 people on this list say it's the
best thing since sliced bread and they'd never buy another N-Video
card. Until then goodbye to ATI if possible.

- Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT sort of] S-video support on NVidia-based cards

[James]

Mark Knecht <markknecht <at> gmail.com> writes:



> solution currently hooked to the big screen. ATI dripped support for
> the chipset in that box in the Linux driver and Gentoo decided not to
> support the old driver or the kernel required to run it so that
> machine hasn't been updated in over 2 years.


There are folks that pull support, via specific chipsets, forward
for such things as this. Are you suggesting that the folks at Gentoo
singularly decided not to pull this driver forward? The kernel
hackers (firmware folks focused on PC type hardware) usually
make these decisions. Gentoo folks, except for those involved
in firmware or low level drivers, usually  have nothing to do
with drivers, based in the kernel space. Firmware folks often
backport drivers (same something for the 2.6.x to the 2.4.x)
to older kernels, or take sources from old kernels (say 2.4.x)
and port them to 2.6.x often in the embedded linux world. However
often these drives to not make it into the published kernels.

Also, drivers are "consolidated" all the time so that one "mega"
driver works with many devices. All of this I assume you know.
But video is a different horse. The video companies routinely
"age" or deprecated hardware and drivers so customers spend
new money. Not sure what the deal is in your case, I'm just
trying to help.



>    I don't have any TVs with HDMI. We don't watch TV all that much. If
> we do it's NetFlix DVDs or NetFlix via the Roku box. Myth just records
> junk mostly and I need to display it on the TV which has an extra
> S-Video input that I currently use. My wife doesn't play games,
> doesn't need 3D or anything fancy.


Nice to know.

>    I guess what I'm saying is who are **you** to decide what makes
> sense in my life or how I should spend my time and money? 

I think you miss-read my intentions. I was not really insisting
on what you do, just trying to provide a workable path towards
resolution. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (trying to be
polite here) and assume you are frustrated, due to your driver
not being pulled forward in the new kernel stuff. Being nasty
only discourages folks from help you, imho. I did not see
anyone else bothering to help you, or discuss your options.


> If you're
> not interested in answering my question then why not simply stay
> silent instead of this? If you want to start a thread of your own
> about the merits of that card then feel free to do so and then you and
> others can go down that path.

Um, looking back at the email, you suggest you are spend new
money. You did not state that you hate ATI and only nvidia
solutions are viable. In fact you talk about Intel and ATI video
hardware. Nvidia, imho, is the most aggressive
company at deprecating old hardware. I know  I have several 
Nvidia cards sitting on the shelf, but, all of my ATI cards
are mostly usable... (note ymmv).



>    I'll consider ATI again when 100 people on this list say it's the
> best thing since sliced bread and they'd never buy another N-Video
> card. Until then goodbye to ATI if possible.


got it

good luck


(pisst) if you look for somebody to pull the driver forward for you,
try to be nice to them....... Problem is Nvidia rarely makes the
chipset data available. ATI is much more copasetic with information,
imho. Of the dozens of embedded video drivers I have been
involved with, Nvidia is the one that always fails to provide
information necessary for small manufactures to use. ATI is
more forthcoming on critical data. There are many open source
efforts on ATI video cards and some on Intel too. I have not
really found any viable open source Nvidia driver projects....


James

[SOLVED] Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT sort of] S-video support on NVidia-based cards

[Mark Knecht]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 7:22 AM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Mark Knecht <markknecht <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>
>> solution currently hooked to the big screen. ATI dripped support for
>> the chipset in that box in the Linux driver and Gentoo decided not to
>> support the old driver or the kernel required to run it so that
>> machine hasn't been updated in over 2 years.
>
>
> There are folks that pull support, via specific chipsets, forward
> for such things as this. Are you suggesting that the folks at Gentoo
> singularly decided not to pull this driver forward? The kernel
> hackers (firmware folks focused on PC type hardware) usually
> make these decisions. Gentoo folks, except for those involved
> in firmware or low level drivers, usually  have nothing to do
> with drivers, based in the kernel space. Firmware folks often
> backport drivers (same something for the 2.6.x to the 2.4.x)
> to older kernels, or take sources from old kernels (say 2.4.x)
> and port them to 2.6.x often in the embedded linux world. However
> often these drives to not make it into the published kernels.

I am not suggesting anything about Gentoo, the devs, the packagers,
nothing at all. I was simply trying to state facts, and probably did a
bad job of it.

Basically, I have an on-board ATI device on an old Asus motherboard
where I require S-Video out. ATI stopped support S-Video on this
specific chipset 3 years ago. They still support VGA. The S-Video
capable driver only works with with a very old kernel. I would like to
replace this whole machine with something newer and I'd like to use
Nvidia because ATI didn't support me and Intel is broken with newer
xorg-x11 on one machine I have,

>
> Also, drivers are "consolidated" all the time so that one "mega"
> driver works with many devices. All of this I assume you know.
> But video is a different horse. The video companies routinely
> "age" or deprecated hardware and drivers so customers spend
> new money. Not sure what the deal is in your case, I'm just
> trying to help.
>

I appreciate that, but is it really 'help' when you start out your
post trying to point me in a direction other than the one I asked for
information on? you might have considered that I've thought about this
and carefully asked what I thought I wanted to know. Instead it seems
you wanted to take me in a direction contrary to what I was asking.
However, in rereading my original post I can see your point of view so
I apologize profusely.

>
>
>>    I don't have any TVs with HDMI. We don't watch TV all that much. If
>> we do it's NetFlix DVDs or NetFlix via the Roku box. Myth just records
>> junk mostly and I need to display it on the TV which has an extra
>> S-Video input that I currently use. My wife doesn't play games,
>> doesn't need 3D or anything fancy.
>
>
> Nice to know.
>
>>    I guess what I'm saying is who are **you** to decide what makes
>> sense in my life or how I should spend my time and money?
>
> I think you miss-read my intentions. I was not really insisting
> on what you do, just trying to provide a workable path towards
> resolution. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (trying to be
> polite here) and assume you are frustrated, due to your driver
> not being pulled forward in the new kernel stuff. Being nasty
> only discourages folks from help you, imho. I did not see
> anyone else bothering to help you, or discuss your options.

Well, it is true that you're the only one who has answered so far. The
post hasn't been out there very long so I didn't read anything into
that.

On the other hand, please consider that I asked about Nvidia S-Video
because I have 3 working Nvidia GPUs, 1 working ATI GPU, two broken
ATI GPUs and one broken Intel GPU. With those statistics which vendor
would you expect me to choose?


>
>
>> If you're
>> not interested in answering my question then why not simply stay
>> silent instead of this? If you want to start a thread of your own
>> about the merits of that card then feel free to do so and then you and
>> others can go down that path.
>
> Um, looking back at the email, you suggest you are spend new
> money. You did not state that you hate ATI and only nvidia
> solutions are viable. In fact you talk about Intel and ATI video
> hardware. Nvidia, imho, is the most aggressive
> company at deprecating old hardware. I know  I have several
> Nvidia cards sitting on the shelf, but, all of my ATI cards
> are mostly usable... (note ymmv).
>

Agreed. I was not as clear as I could have been, although I think the
title of the thread might cause one to exclude other vendors, assuming
you will give the OP the benefit of the doubt that he/she/it/thing
knows what they want. I think you actually didn't, but I can accept
that.

That said, I have still received no info on this list that answered
the original question. I asked the same question this morning on the
Myth list and got three targeted answers immediately, so my problem is
solved.

Thanks,
Mark

>
>
>>    I'll consider ATI again when 100 people on this list say it's the
>> best thing since sliced bread and they'd never buy another N-Video
>> card. Until then goodbye to ATI if possible.
>
>
> got it
>
> good luck
>
>
> (pisst) if you look for somebody to pull the driver forward for you,
> try to be nice to them....... Problem is Nvidia rarely makes the
> chipset data available. ATI is much more copasetic with information,
> imho. Of the dozens of embedded video drivers I have been
> involved with, Nvidia is the one that always fails to provide
> information necessary for small manufactures to use. ATI is
> more forthcoming on critical data. There are many open source
> efforts on ATI video cards and some on Intel too. I have not
> really found any viable open source Nvidia driver projects....
>
>
> James
>
>
>
>
>