ATi Driver Quirk: Resolution Support

[privatebreyer]

I was perfectly happy with my AIW 9800 Pro. Untill I installed the 3.8 drivers. And no it's not what your thinking.

Using the 27in TV next to the pc, i would frequently load up a DVD, and watch it via the tv out. I found that by tuning the resolution all the way down to 640 x 480, the entire picture would show up perfectly on the TV, no scrolling required. Untill I installed the 3.8 drivers, which seems to have dropped support for 640 x 480.

Is there any way to get that resolution back without reverting back to 3.7 drivers, or am I just going to have to suck it up and shell out $80s for a real DVD player?

 

[Pete]

Try the 3.9's first. But what's wrong with the 3.7's that makes you reluctant to revert to them? 3.8 and 3.9 are more for feature releases and bug fixes than performance boosts.

 

[chsh1ca]

Umm, you'd expect feature release/bug fixes to keep things pretty well the same feature wise. Dropping 640x480 is very odd...

 

[rbV5]

Its always 480i output using TV-out (s-video or composite) You should use "Theater Mode" for output(enable it in the "Overlay" tab of the advanced display properties, and Cat 3.8's support overscan as well (enable it the TV properties in the "Displays" tab of the advanced display properties.

Theater Mode allows for full screen video display on the secondary display (TV) independant of the desktop resolution, and allows for the software player to be minimized to the taskbar.

 

[Auric]

What rbV5 said.

 

[privatebreyer]

Originally posted by: rbV5
Its always 480i output using TV-out (s-video or composite) You should use "Theater Mode" for output(enable it in the "Overlay" tab of the advanced display properties, and Cat 3.8's support overscan as well (enable it the TV properties in the "Displays" tab of the advanced display properties.

Theater Mode allows for full screen video display on the secondary display (TV) independant of the desktop resolution, and allows for the software player to be minimized to the taskbar.

Ok, were is it in 3.9?

The only thing in the overlay tab is brightness, Gamma, ect.

 

[Auric]

You don't see "Clone mode options" at the bottom of the Overlay tab? Is the matching (latest) Control Panel installed?

 

[privatebreyer]

Originally posted by: Auric
You don't see "Clone mode options" at the bottom of the Overlay tab? Is the matching (latest) Control Panel installed?

Oh, yeah. But its all grayed out, saying... These overlay settings are only available in dual controller Clone mode, and not single display or extended desktop configurations.

I've never seen anything refering to any of those settings.

 

[rbV5]

Oh, yeah. But its all grayed out, saying... These overlay settings are only available in dual controller Clone mode, and not single display or extended desktop configurations.

Just enable the TV display or even force detection(troubleshoot)if the display isn't even connected, in the displays tab of the advanced display properties. Then you can set the clone mode options. I'd suggest "Theater Mode", full screen video and the aspect ratio of your display.

You can enable overscan in the "adjustments" property sheet of the TV properties if you want to get rid of the border (if you have one) when your video is displayed.

 

[privatebreyer]

Thanks folks.

I now got it to work on 1024 x 768. Thats not going away anytime soon.

 

[Peter]

You know that an NTSC TV isn't ever going to show you more than about 470 lines? The ATi card's TV-out engine will just intermangle the higher resolution onto the 480-line NTSC format. Horizontal signal resolution is somewhere around 320 pixels. So actually, computing an image resolution above 640x480 is a waste of bandwidth when it's destined for a TV set. (Make that 800x600 for PAL.)