Is there any way to force TV out on a video card?

[Swanny]

Hello all,

I have an interesting problem with my HTPC. My video card is an XGI Voliari V3. It was outputing directly to my TV. Tonight I switched around the cableing to run the video and audio through my receiver so I could switch it.

The problem is that the video card evidentally autosenses whether or not there is a monitor on its outputs when the computer starts up. When running through the receiver (even the the receiver is on its input), the computer does not think it has an output and refuses to use TV out.

The only way I've found around this is to hook up the TV directly when the computer starts. Then I can switch the cables around to go through the receiver and it still works. But if I restart the computer it re-autosenses and quits working.

So, is there any way to force a video card to use a specific output? I haven't found any way to disable the autosense "feature".



Thanks for your suggestions,
Swan

 

[Peter]

The autosense at bootup will always do what it does. Most videocard drivers let you force-enable the TV-out. Browse XGI's control panel extensions for such a switch - there aren't too many pages. Their SiS predecessor chips let you rerun the detection from there ... so if this is still there, it'll help.

 

[Swanny]

Frusteratingly, I have not found a function to force TV-out. That's what I've been looking for. The XGI utility does let me run a re-detection, but it still thinks there's no receiver. I think I'll need some sort of 3rd party or Windows app to force TV-out.

 

[Peter]

Well if it still thinks there's no receiver, then your switch thing isn't terminating the signal wires correctly. (The detection works by looking at what wires drive a load and which ones don't.)

In other words, even if you somehow manage to force the TV-out on, signal quality won't be as good as it could be (and that'll be bad enough for SDTV).

 

[Swanny]

I know the signal quality isn't as good. I saw that with my own eyes. But it's still good enough that I'd like to be able to use this!

 

[ShadowBlade]

nvidia has an option to "force tv detection"