Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

Gareth · 28th May, 2013, 02:42 AM

Hi all,

I've been having some resolution related problems since adding a Yamaha ysp-2200 soundbar to the output of my RPi (which is running 1.0a5). Here's some background info on the problem and what I've tried so far.

The first issue I encountered is that some of the HDMI modes stopped being available after I rebooted the RPi when it froze. After this the following happened:

1 tvservice -e CEA wouldn't show all modes my TV is capable of (for example, all 1080 modes disappeared)
2. XBian would boot in 480p
3. 1080 modes were not selectable from System -> settings -> video output. The max resolution I could set was 720p.
4. 1080p movies would not play at full resolution (TV mode was still 720p)

I think the soundbar introduced a problem with the HDMI EDID negotiation so I modified config.txt to load the EDID from a file:

Code:

These are the actual modes my TV is capable of (not the reduced list following the problem). I exported these to /boot/edid.dat and then modified config.txt to load this. 

xbian@pilounge ~/.xbmc/userdata $ tvservice -m CEA

Group CEA has 15 modes:

           mode 1: 640x480 @ 60Hz 4:3, clock:25MHz progressive 

           mode 2: 720x480 @ 60Hz 4:3, clock:27MHz progressive 

           mode 3: 720x480 @ 60Hz 16:9, clock:27MHz progressive 

           mode 4: 1280x720 @ 60Hz 16:9, clock:74MHz progressive 

           mode 5: 1920x1080 @ 60Hz 16:9, clock:74MHz interlaced 

           mode 6: 720x480 @ 60Hz 4:3, clock:27MHz x2 interlaced 

           mode 7: 720x480 @ 60Hz 16:9, clock:27MHz x2 interlaced 

           mode 16: 1920x1080 @ 60Hz 16:9, clock:148MHz progressive 

           mode 17: 720x576 @ 50Hz 4:3, clock:27MHz progressive 

           mode 18: 720x576 @ 50Hz 16:9, clock:27MHz progressive 

           mode 19: 1280x720 @ 50Hz 16:9, clock:74MHz progressive 

           mode 20: 1920x1080 @ 50Hz 16:9, clock:74MHz interlaced 

           mode 21: 720x576 @ 50Hz 4:3, clock:27MHz x2 interlaced 

           mode 22: 720x576 @ 50Hz 16:9, clock:27MHz x2 interlaced 

  (native) mode 31: 1920x1080 @ 50Hz 16:9, clock:148MHz progressive 

xbian@pilounge ~/.xbmc/userdata $ cat /boot/config.txt 

initramfs initramfs.gz 0x00a00000

arm_freq=900

core_freq=375

disable_overscan=1

gpu_mem_256=128

gpu_mem_512=128

sdram_freq=400

over_voltage=0

decode_MPG2=0x3eb696b7

decode_WVC1=0xfb655124

hdmi_edid_file=1

hdmi_force_hotplug=1 

hdmi_force_edid_audio=1 

xbian@pilounge ~/.xbmc/userdata $ cat /boot/edid.dat | xxd 

0000000: 00ff ffff ffff ff00 4dd9 0084 0101 0101  ........M.......

0000010: 320f 0103 8046 2878 0aee 91a3 544c 9926  2....F(x....TL.&

0000020: 0f50 5400 0000 0101 0101 0101 0101 0101  .PT.............

0000030: 0101 0101 0101 023a 80d0 7238 2d40 102c  .......:..r8-@.,

0000040: 4580 dfa4 2100 001e 8c0a d08a 20e0 2d10  E...!....... .-.

0000050: 103e 9600 dfa4 2100 0018 0000 00fc 0053  .>....!........S

0000060: 4f4e 5920 5456 0a20 2020 2020 0000 00fd  ONY TV.     ....

0000070: 0030 3e0e 460f 000a 2020 2020 2020 01da  .0>.F...      ..

0000080: 0203 2277 4e14 0304 1213 0501 0716 9f10  .."wN...........

0000090: 1511 0623 0907 0783 0100 0066 030c 0020  ...#.......f... 

00000a0: 0080 011d 0072 51d0 1e20 6e28 5500 dfa4  .....rQ.. n(U...

00000b0: 2100 001e 8c0a d090 2040 3120 0c40 5500  !....... @1 .@U.

00000c0: dfa4 2100 0018 011d 00bc 52d0 1e20 b828  ..!.......R.. .(

00000d0: 5540 dfa4 2100 001e 011d 8018 711c 1620  U@..!.......q.. 

00000e0: 582c 2500 dfa4 2100 009e 011d 80d0 721c  X,%...!.......r.

00000f0: 1620 102c 2580 dfa4 2100 009e 0000 0039  . .,%...!......9

I can select all of these modes from the System -> Video Output menu now.

The problem I have now is that when I set the GUI resolution to 720 (it was 1080), I can only see the top left-hand corner of the UI (approx 1/4 of the screen). If I change the Video Output to 1280x720p then the UI renders correctly - I can see all of the screen - but, 1080 movies play at 720p.

I'm sure I've messed up a setting somewhere while trying to fix the HDMI issue but I can't work out how to fix this. I'd like to get back to having the GUI res at 720 but be able to play 1080 content at 1080.

Any advice would be great!

Thanks
Gareth

**rikardo1979** · 28th May, 2013, 02:48 AM

any chance you have something like this?
http://forum.xbian.org/showthread.php?pid=9299#pid9299

Gareth · 28th May, 2013, 03:05 AM

(28th May, 2013 02:48 AM)rikardo1979 Wrote: any chance you have something like this?
http://forum.xbian.org/showthread.php?pid=9299#pid9299

I feel a bit silly now!

I just fixed the problem by doing the Video calibration the screen. I've done this before when the borders were out by a bit but it never occurred to me to try it for the problem I had - I could literally only see a quarter of the screen!

Many thanks,
Gareth

**rikardo1979** · 28th May, 2013, 03:10 AM

nice one

did you try the the aspect ratio on TV at any chance?

Gareth · 28th May, 2013, 03:28 AM

I found a couple of options on my TV -
Auto Format (on or off)
Screen Format (Wide, Zoom or Smart)

I just tried these but they didn't fully to correct the video calibration problem. I'm not sure what they're supposed do but perhaps they can only correct the calibration / timing within certain limits.

Many thanks for the help - it's much appreciated Smile

**rikardo1979** · 28th May, 2013, 04:01 AM

im just curious here as I never needed to use the screen calibration in over 7 years of using XBMC. I not saying you did wrong or you not need one Wink

-what TV do you have?
-what is the native resolution of the screen?
-does the AVR affect the video signal or is it go through out to TV?

Gareth · 28th May, 2013, 04:38 AM

The TV is a Sony KDL40W2000U with a native / panel resolution of 1920x1080.

I don't know what the soundbar does to the HDMI input it's not a full-blown AV receiver but it processes audio and acts as an HDMI switch. There are very few configurable options for HDMI video so perhaps it just passes the video through, processes the audio and messes around with EDID a bit.

There's another setting on my TV called Display Area. This has four options Normal, Full Pixel, -1 and -2. It's set to Full Pixel now. Changing it in from Full Pixel results in some of the UI borders being lost. There seems to be a fair number of options that change the timing / calibration slightly and I'm not sure how they relate to each other or what the defaults are!

I'll try disabling overscan later in config.txt and see what happens.

**rikardo1979** · 28th May, 2013, 05:10 AM

yes, you should start with disable_overscan=1 as by default and remove all the video calibration you did.
Than play with the screen settings in your TV options.
Not easy to say what which setting in your TV does exactly as I never had a chance to play with one, but I would definitely give it a try Wink

You can even try remove the EDID mod from the config.txt and start by adding just a
hdmi_force_hotplug=1 and see if that help at all.
As you can see there are a lot of options how to do this so definitely not an easy one to say which way you should go.
I'm afraid you just need to try and find the right one for you Wink

Please keep us updated with your results and findings
-thx-

Gareth · 28th May, 2013, 06:36 AM

I've set disable_overscan=1 - I didn't realise this was a default option.

The UI and videos are a perfect fit with the video calibration showing (0,0) for the top-left and bottom-right arrows and I kept the TV settings as they were (full pixel, Auto Format=off and Screen Format=Normal). These TV settings are good for my SKY+ box too.

I don't understand how the calibration was so far off but I'd been changing the Video settings in XBian and config.txt a lot because of the EDID problem, restarting a lot and had some unavoidable non-clean shutdowns. I recall needing to change the calibration before but I can't remember why and have done quite a lot of messing around with different settings since then!

Regarding the EDID mod, I did try hdmi_force_hotplug=1 before configuring EDID from a file but didn't have any luck with that. It seems that the YSP soundbar gets into a state where it will only report a limited set of EDID settings. When it's in this state, plugging the Pi into the TV directly, rebooting and doing tvservice -m CEA shows the full list. Whereas plugging it into the soundbar and rebooting shows a different set with no 1080 settings.

Once again, everything seems to be working perfectly Smile

Thanks,
Gareth