HDTV is acting weirder than ever

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WisdomWolf
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HDTV is acting weirder than ever

Post by WisdomWolf »

I just aquired a nice 23" HDTV for my bedroom. I went out and bought a set of Monster's Component cables to take advantage of the high definition immediately. I was especially interested in being able to run Gentoox in decent resolutions while still being able to read eveything on screen. I had screwed up my previous version of gentoox so I went ahead and deleted all the files for that. Then I popped my Home 3.2 disc in the drive to install knowing that I would probably have to install from ssh.
I start the cd from UnleashX and my screen went blank...then the fans got really loud and the xbox shut itself off.
So then I tried booting from the gentoox loader 5.9 I have on my X3. I was able to get into the install, but when it came time to actually do the install it said it couldn't find any FatX partitions.
So I hooked up my xbox with standard composite cable and got gentoox installed just fine that way...then I ran though setup and selected HDTV, 720p. When I rebooted I reconnected the Component cable and launched the gentoox.xbe from UnleashX, back to the loud fans and shutting down. I have a v1.0 xbox with an Xecuter 3, Samsung SDG605, and a locked Maxtor 200GB hard drive. I have no idea what I am doing wrong, but I really want to view this in high-def somebody please help me.
vplayer
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Post by vplayer »

try pulling out all the controllers and then boot into gentoox. you can plug in the controller after it boots up..

Change your tv resolution to 480p and try.
Box: XBOX ver 1.1
Mod: Xecutor 2.3 lite+
Hdd: WD 80GB
Dash: Evox, Ava, XBMC
Linux: Gentoox Pro 4.2
WisdomWolf
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Post by WisdomWolf »

I have tried both choosing the gentoox.xbe and then unplugging all the controllers...same thing, loud fan and then xbox turns itself off. Then I tried booting via the boot loader, but it just wants me to insert the Stardust CD, it doesn't even recognize that I installed linux. I installed it to F with the stardust CD with composite cables in case you were wondering. As far as the TV goes it automatically sets it's resolution to whatever the source is outputting. I just don't get it, what is wrong here?
vplayer
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Post by vplayer »

have you also set that inside your dash. I am not sure whether you have to on M$Dash, but like XBMC and Avalaunch you could. Just see what your setting is for the dash that starts first.
Basically what I am trying to say is, if the resolution is set high when you start your xbox, I dont think it would work when you get to gentoox.

hope that helps
Box: XBOX ver 1.1
Mod: Xecutor 2.3 lite+
Hdd: WD 80GB
Dash: Evox, Ava, XBMC
Linux: Gentoox Pro 4.2
WisdomWolf
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Post by WisdomWolf »

I have UnleashX set to use 480p. If I set it higher the text actually gets bigger and way off screen. So I know that's set right, and when I start an application or game the screen shows me the mode that the TV is in. However when i launch gentoox.xbe it just goes black and says Video 3 in the corner as if I have turned off the xbox. I know my xbox supports 1080i and 720p though as I currently run XBMC at 1080i. Any more suggestions?!?
WisdomWolf
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Post by WisdomWolf »

Ok when I went home for lunch I decided to try launching gentoox from within XBMC since it seems to handle the resolution switching better. IT WORKED!!! I got a garbled screen at first when it displayed the blue loading screen, but as soon as it started bootup the text appeared on the screen clear as can be. However I now have to research how to fix the overscan problem and why in the hell the virtual keyboard is hideously long. So I fixed one problem only to run into another. I will mess with it when i get home.
vplayer
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Post by vplayer »

Its a good step forward, atleast your hdtv screen has a display. :) .
Box: XBOX ver 1.1
Mod: Xecutor 2.3 lite+
Hdd: WD 80GB
Dash: Evox, Ava, XBMC
Linux: Gentoox Pro 4.2
WisdomWolf
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Post by WisdomWolf »

I found a better explanation of how fbset works here it is:


============================================================
On v1.6 xboxes the kernel has limited support for the xbox's graphics chip and so has no built in overscan correction i.e. the timing (the sum of visible and non visible pixels) is fixed. Simialrly there is no overscan correction when using any of the hdtv modes on any xbox versions.

In theory it should be possible to increase the number of invisible pixiels and decrease the number of visible pixels by the same amount, reducing the resolution but correcting overscan.

The command you need to use for this is fbset. This shouldn't be run in X so you need to start in textmode and either have a usb keyboard or be able to ssh into XDSL (add 2 ssh to the append line in linuxboot.cfg) see the CHEATCODES.txt included in the download for more details. Then if your using ssh connect to your xbox using the username root and pass xbox.

First run fbset -s to see your current framebuffer infomation

it should look something like this:

mode "640x480-60"
# D: 25.176 MHz, H: 31.469 kHz, V: 59.942 Hz
geometry 640 480 640 480 32
timings 39721 40 24 32 11 96 2
accel true
rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,0/0
endmode

the format is as follows

geometry xres yres vxres vyres depth
timings pixclock left right upper lower hslen vslen

If you want to find out what all of these mean type man fbset. The ones we are interested in are:

xres, yres - horizontal and vertical resolution
vxres,vyres - virtual horizontal and vertical resolution (should match xres, yres in most cases)
left, right, upper, lower - margins at left, right, top and bottom of the screen

We want to decrease the resolution and increase the margins to compensate. The horizontal and vertical resolution number must always be divisible by 8 and the sums

xres + left + right
yres + upper + lower

should remain constant. You should keep any other settings (pixclock etc) the same

You can apply new settings with

fbset -g <xres> <yres> <vxres> <vyres> <depth> -t <pixclock> <left> <right> <upper> <lower> <hslen> <vslen>

So for example you could could try decreasing the vertical resolution by 40 and increasing the top and bottom margins by 20 each to compenstate

Starting with the timing infomation above this would yield

fbset -g 640 440 640 440 32 -t 39721 40 24 52 31 96 2

Moving centre of the screen:

With these adjustments you may find it fixes overscan on one side of the screen (e.g the bottom left) but not on the opposite side as the screen is nolonger centered. To change this try the following:

Looks like to change the position of the screen you need to change the position of the sync pulses. This time tweak hslen and vslen while keeping the sums

xres + left + right + hslen
yres + upper + lower + vslen

constant

hslen is length of horizontal sync pulse, vslen length of vertical sync pulse

To move the screen to the right I think you need to increase hslen & decrease the left and right margins to compensate. To move the screen up increase vslen & decrease the top and bottom margins to compensate. I think you will need to make your changes in multiples of 8 (i.e. could decrease top and bottom margin by 8 increase vslen by 16)

Disclaimer: I don't have a v1.6 xbox or hdtv set to test this on - this is all theory. If you make big changes to the timing infomation it may be possible to damage your television - be careful when changing things and just make small changes.

If it does work for you add the fbset command you used into /opt/bootlocal.sh so it is run everytime you use XDSL
GamE
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Post by GamE »

The fix to your problem is really simple.

Go to te MS Dash
Uncheck all forms of HDTV - Set 480p to no / 720 P to no and 1080i.

Once you do that, reboot your box / Start Linux and you should be good to go.

If for some reason you still can not get in, do the following

Disconnect your HDTV cables and install your standard cables
(keeping all HDTV options turned off in MS Dash)
Launch Gentoox
Login as root
run xbvset
select 720p or whatever your resolution is
once it reboots
switch to your HDTV Cables
Launch Gentoox
ENJOY!!!


It's nice to be back
WisdomWolf
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Post by WisdomWolf »

Thanks for your help, but I already got in. I just launched gentoox.xbe from XBMC so I could still play my games in high-res if I want to. The only problem I have now is the stupid overscan. I found settings for fbset that managed to get everything just inside the borders of my screen, but it is giving me an accordion like effect. Everything is perfect and clear except the center horizontal lines...in the center of the screen there is something like 3 displays overlapping. Everything gets chopped up and replicated, but only in the center. I can't figure out how to change that, it is very annoying and makes things very difficult to read. I'll try to post a picture later. Anybody have any ideas what would cause this?

O and btw this is happening in XDSL v.02 as well.
Trevante
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Post by Trevante »

Go to te MS Dash
Uncheck all forms of HDTV - Set 480p to no / 720 P to no and 1080i.

Once you do that, reboot your box / Start Linux and you should be good to go.
Well yes that works, but most of us would like to keep our HDTV modes enabled, instead of having to disable them whenever we want to run Linux. Not to mention that some of us are on computer monitors and may not be able to view 480i signals.
Disconnect your HDTV cables and install your standard cables
(keeping all HDTV options turned off in MS Dash)
Launch Gentoox
Login as root
run xbvset
select 720p or whatever your resolution is
once it reboots
switch to your HDTV Cables
Launch Gentoox
ENJOY!!!
I'll try this later on.... does it solve the problem with Gentoox Loader/Xromwell not loading in HDTV mode, or does it just set your gentoox resolution to a HDTV setting? It doesn't look like it would fix the loader problems, but I can't be sure until I've tried it.
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