Ubuntu Hoary Tv-out howto.

[Daniel Hedblom]

By Daniel Hedblom (daniel.hedblom at solleftea.se) 2005.05.15

This howto show howto use the tvout function on Ubuntu. I have only tried this
with Geforce MX 2 and 440 but it should work just as well on any driver from
nvidia.com. I suspect it will work with any card who you can get to run on the
TV from an xorg.conf file. The trick for me is to just make a second xorg.conf
file that works on the tv. That way you dont have to mess with the original one
and are free to experiment.

For e.g the Device section of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf2 looks like this:

-----------------8<--------------
Section "Device"
        Option     "NoLogo"                     "True"
        Option     "ConnectedMonitor"           "TV"# <str>
        Option     "TVStandard"                 "pal-b"# <str>
        Option     "TVOutFormat"        "COMPOSITE"# <str>
	Identifier	"NVIDIA Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x]"
	Driver		"nvidia"
	BusID		"PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

-----------------8<--------------

ConnectedMonitor, TVStandard and TVOutFormat are the ones important. Theese
settings depends on what TV you use and what country you are in. The whole list
is availiable in the documentation at /usr/share/doc/nvidia-glx/README.gz 


This stops the X server currently running.

Make a copy of your current xorg.conf:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf2

Start your new X server with:

sudo X :1 vt8 -xf86config xorg.conf2 

This starts the X server and transfer control to it on vt8. To return just press
[Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Backspace]. When you have a working xorg.conf2 witch gives you a
picture on the TV its time for the rest. 

We will have to do a script for starting mplayer, xine or what videoplayer you
happen to like.

My script video.sh looks like this and are put into /usr/bin :

-----------------8<--------------
#!/bin/sh
# Starts an empty X session with a separate xorg.conf settings file.
X :1 vt8 -xf86config xorg.conf2 +bs -ac &
#Exports Display to 1
export DISPLAY=:1
# Launches an xterm that launches mplayer or any other program on the tv.
/usr/X11R6/bin/xterm -e /usr/bin/mplayer -fs -zoom "$*"
-----------------8<--------------

In Nautilus or Konqueror i just point at this script. (/usr/bin/video.sh)

The script starts a new X server, exports it and run mplayer in full screen with
the file handed to it from Nautilus, Konqueror or any other file manager. To
check out the script if it fails try it from a shell so you can see any possible
error message. Just use /usr/bin/video.sh /path/to/file.mpg.

Ohh, and remember to make it executable:

chmod 755 /usr/bin/video.sh

You cannot start the X server as a normal user on ubuntu so we have to fix that
since you do not want to be root all the time.

nano /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

Change allowed_users=rootonly to allowed_users=anybody.

Your tv out should now be working nicely. 



Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum!

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