No Video playback on TV but do have the interface.

[andymck]

Hi

After looking into linuxmce for a while now I finally got round to getting a semi working setup.  I have a core / hybrid setup with external drive attached containing some movies, photos etc...

As a test i attempted to use an old laptop I have lying around as an MD.  I connected this to an LCD TV downstairs and went through the setup process.  During the AV wizard i noticed that while I could see the interface on both the laptop screen and the connected LCD TV, the TV did not show the video (i.e. the girl giving the instructions )...i thought this weird but ignored it for now...

After setup was complete i was presented with linuxmce running on the tv, the interface is there, the flickr images are being displayed.  However if i playback any video the same problem occurs, playback is fine on the laptop screen but on the tv all i get is a dark blue box where the video should be....

I find this extremely weird as all i am doing is outputting the laptop video to the tv, and as all looks good on the laptop screen why would it not show up on the tv...especially as the interface and flickr images etc are showing up....

Anybody any ideas as to what the problem could be ?


Thanks

Andy

[fibres]

It sounds like the laptop actually has a seperate part of the graphics card for each screen. In windows running on the laptop can ou have the laptop screen and the lcd tv as 2 different screens? If so I have experienced problems with this within windows only showing played video on one screen.
See if you can tell the laptop to only use the lcd screen and not the laptop screen this may solve the problem.
You should have a function button on the laptop keyboard which can be used to switch which screen is in use.
You may have to run the av wizad again after setting this.

Regards

[andymck]

Hi, thanks for the reply....

I can alternate the display between the laptop screen and the lcd tv via the method you point out..i.e. press function key and f10 to toggle the output. 

And this all works as expected except that any output to the tv is missing video...and video only...i.e the interface, images etc are there....

I checked the bios and it did have a video option to determine the screen in use, i.e. internal, external or auto...it had been set to auto so I switched it to external but same prob.

I could understand it better if the tv got no signal at all, but it gets everything except for video....

Its like some sort of voodoo...

Andy

[colinjones]

Andy

Video disappearing in the setup wizard is not all that unusual for LMCE and usually relates to how you set up your screen in the av wizard (which options, etc). Do a search on the forums for missing video (Sarah!)

Something I would strongly suggest is that you switch the video output to the TV only before even going through the av wizard. The laptop's video system would certainly have separate frame buffers for the 2 screens because they are likely to be two different images - it wouldn't be much use if you could only output to the TV if it happened to have exactly the same resolution and other parameters as your laptop's display - so getting different output certainly isn't impossible.

By default LMCE has the UseEDID option turned off, so it doesn't probe the TV for these parameters, but there could be some other effect going on that having 2 displays confuses it. Moreover, you may end up wanting to turn on the UseEDID opton in your xorg.conf file so that it probes the TV and gets its settings right, and there you will definitely want it only to have one output...

[andymck]

Thanks Colin...have tried with UseEDID on but same problem.

I just realised that once linuxmce kicks in ( i.e. the flick images start displaying ) I can no longer alternate the output between the laptop screen and the lcd tv.  Both displays are locked on, as if the toggle button on the keyboard no longer works...while in the AV wizard etc I can toggle the output between both screens.

Regards forcing the laptop to output to only one display and the external LCD TV at that, can this be done via the xorg.conf file ?  I had a look and it appears to have only one screen configured...

Thanks

Andy