ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 S-Video / TV-Out on Linux
Jun 18, 2004ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 TV-Out / S-Video Out ( Fedora Core 1 and Debian Sid )
First you need to download and install ati tv out or if using Fedora, check dag’s repo for an RPM while Debian users can apt-get atitvout.
Also, you need to have mplayer (may work with other programs, but this is the only one I’ve tested). To read the man page for the program, in a terminal, type ‘man atitvout’ (no quotes).
1. Reboot your laptop with the S-Video plug hooked to your computer and TV.
2. You may need to experiment with your resolution, however I found mine to work fine leaving it at 1024×768, you may want 800×600, etc.
3. IF you changed your resolution, Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to restart X
4. First try running your movie on the laptop screen by using a terminal and typing: mplayer MOVIEFILE such as this: mplayer movie.avi
5. Assuming that works properly:
su
Enter Password
xhost +
/usr/sbin/atitvout detect (it SHOULD say something like: LCD/CRT attached, TV attached)
/usr/sbin/atitvout -f t (and you should see your display on the TV)
6. Now run your mplayer command again and you should have your movie playing on the tv screen. (Example: mplayer /directory/MOVIENAME.avi), press f to make mplayer go into Full Screen mode.
7. Sometimes weird stuff happens, like moving the mouse or pressing Alt will screw up the colors, I dont know why this happens, but I have heard of others having the same problem. If this happens, Ctrl + Alt + F1 to switch to your terminal and Ctrl + Alt + F7 to switch to the laptop screen. From there, do atitvout -f t again and that should fix it.
8. When the movie is done/you are done watching it on the TV, shutdown your computer,
unplug the S-Video cable, and start it up again, the laptop should be back to normal.
YMMV This was tested on a Dell Inspiron 5100.
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June 25th, 2004 at 11:42 pm
[...] there is any performance change Specialized tasks like watching DVDs, burning CDs, using TV-Out Expect tutorials on configuring Synaptics and fixing ALSA’s volume in the coming days [...]
July 27th, 2004 at 3:51 pm
If you change to software cursor in your X configuration, the problem with wrong colors will disappear
July 27th, 2004 at 7:29 pm
Very interesting, I will give that a try.
August 25th, 2004 at 10:04 pm
I did all as you said, but with no luck:
$ atitvout detect
CRT is attached.
TV is attached via Composite.
$ atitvout -f t
Forcing Rage Mobility/Rage 3D Pro LT mode
VBE call failed.
Maybe this command is not supported by your graphics adapter?
Did your parameters (if you specified some) really make sense?
Please try all other available commands before complaining!
Can you help me? Any comments will be appreciated!!
August 26th, 2004 at 4:42 am
First off, what distro and version are you using? Are you using XFree or X.org?
I have never seen this error so I don’t know what to tell you at this point. Did you try googling for the VBE call failed thing?
When I do ‘atitvout detect’ I receive this:
LCD is attached.
TV is attached via S-Video.
I have no idea what your “Composite” means or if it has anything to do with S-Video.
All I can suggest is google, especially if you are not using Fedora Core 1 or Debian, as that is all that I’ve been able to test this on.
April 13th, 2009 at 8:03 am
on a ibm-laptop with card ATI Radeon Mobility M7 LW (AGP) on Knoppix 5.3 atitvout failed me miserably. It could not detect my S-Video as attached, but the following commands activated tv-out for me with 3d-compiz etc.:
xrandr –output S-video –set load_detection 1
xrandr –output S-video –set tv_standard pal
xrandr –addmode S-video 800×600
xrandr –output S-video –mode 800×600
hth