xorg 7.2 RC/ATI/TVout - a nice hack that WFM

[Jay R. Ashworth]

Just wanted to tip in a note about a fairly clever hack that saved my
butt rebuilding a MythTV box for my sister.

SuSE 10.2 comes with 7.1.99 for some reason unknown.  ATI drivers seem
only to want xorg releases through 7.1, officially, which might be that
reason.  

I had to upgrade to the newest ATI driver to talk to that x server, but
that meant I also had to upgrade my Radeon; <=9250 is no longer
supported.

So I got *all* that other stuff taken care of (by 11pm :-), and then I
discovered...

that there's a bug in the ATI drivers: XV displays stretch out twice
their normal height, and push down off the screen.  Only if you're
trying to use a standalone TVout monitor, as Mythboxen are prone to do.

Someone figured out a hack to force the driver to believe that it has a
CRT connected, which apparently solves the problem -- it certainly
worked for me.  It's written up here:

	http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/ATI_Proprietary_Driver

and perhaps the concept will help someone with something else at some
point as well.

And if there's an ATI rep listening, perhaps s/he can get them to fix the
bug.

Cheers,
-- jra


-- 
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