# component video (TV-Out) with nvidia and nouvau



## donald1000 (Nov 27, 2009)

Hi!
I have a nvidia card with the nouvau driver, Dual Head on amd64 running. Now i want to get the TV-Out (Compontnent Video) working, so i can watch movies on my TV. Is this possible with nouvau and xrandr? IÂ´ve got the 7 Pin interface on my video cards like in this picuture:


> http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/imageview.php?image=310



Does anyone of you have experiences with this?


----------



## robbak (Nov 27, 2009)

As for the software and driver support, I don't know.

With regard to the socket: Use the adapter cable that came with your card. If you have lost it, then you should be able to cadge an old one off your friendly neighborhood PC tech. I've got two of the things in the drawer I have my keyboard resting on. That is, Socket to composite/Svideo: I don't know about component.
By the way, one of them is a standard-looking S-video socket to component. I don't know whether it mixes it down with resistors in the plug, or whether there is some intellegence built in to the card it is supposed to be plugged in to.


----------



## SirDice (Nov 27, 2009)

It could be component (red, green and blue RCA plugs) but it could also be composite (single yellow RCA plug). Slight difference between the two. Component is HD whereas composite is plain PAL/NTSC. If you have a relatively new flatscreen TV it may have HDMI or even DVI. Both are essentially the same except the connector is different. You can get DVI->HDMI converters. In that case I would get a KVM switch that's able to switch DVI and use that (so you don't lose your dual-head configuration). No need for TV-OUT (which is usually refers to a PAL/NTSC signal on s-video or composite).

One note about DVI, they come in thee versions. DVI-D is digital, DVI-A is analog and a combination of the two DVI-I. For DVI-A you can get DVI->VGA adapters. Only DVI-D or DVI-I is convertible to HDMI. The only downside is that the conversion will not carry audio but that's usually easily solved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface


----------



## tingo (Nov 29, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Component is HD whereas composite is plain PAL/NTSC



Slight correction: component video can be HD, it doesn't have to be. More info on Wikipedia component video. Some old monitors and TVs have component video in, but they are ony SD (standard definition).


----------



## donald1000 (Nov 30, 2009)

Thank you all for your suggestions.

I have a VGA interface on my TV. And as mentiond above, that was my first idea to get the screen with my dual head config to the TV, but i only get a black screen. I switched the resolution to 640x480 but again a black screen. The component video interface works fine on WinXP and in my xorg.log on the BSD system there are three interfacec detected: DVI-0 DVI-3 and TV-0

TV-0 must be the component. But i didnÂ´t find nothing on nouveau website about supporting this.


----------



## SirDice (Nov 30, 2009)

Make sure you're connected to the TV and it's switched onto the correct channel when starting X. It's likely X picked up your monitor's horiz. and vert. frequencies which might be too high for your TV.


----------



## donald1000 (Dec 1, 2009)

ok thanks. I will try this and post the results here.


----------

