Gp2x11 Vga Through Tv-out Support?

[danboid]

I've been absent from these forums for some time so I was delighted to return and discover the finished BoB dock is now available! Long, long, LONG overdue!

Of course, the BoB enables multi-player gaming, TV video playback but is anyone seriously working on developing it into a truly usable portable Linux computer right now? I know somebody has already ported a kdrive X11 server to the 2X but its not much use at the moment seeing as it doesn't do any greater than standard (320x240) resolution and X11 really requires AT LEAST 640x480 res to do standard desktop computing tasks.

Some apps we may be able to run when we have X11 with proper TV-out (640x480+) support include:

rox - cool file and desktop manager, great for low-memory devices

Ted - lightweight wordprocessor

osb browser : Nokia's GTK web browser based upon safari / khtml

xarchiver - like winzip

goobox - easy CD ripping

xmms - the classic u*ix winamp clone

Maybe even gnumeric for a spreadsheet and gnomebaker or brasero for CD/DVD burning!

The above apps all run great with just 64MB of RAM as I've used them all on my Zaurus, but the GP2X kernel can only access a max of 32MB RAM right? This may mean the more memory hungry apps like gnumeric or brasero may not run so well.

 

[woogal]

I'm working on getting the tvout driver working properly but at the moment it's refusing to display at anything other than the dvd resolutions. Once I've got it working, I'd imagine X11 will be able to run at 320x240, 640x480, and even 800x600 and 1024x768 but I've no idea how well those will appear on as tv as they're both above tv resolution.

 

[danboid]

Cool!

So you say you've got X11 working through the TV-out at 720 x 576 or 704 x 576? Great news! Of course, it may be necessary for some games to be able to access exactly 640x480 but being a bit over is great as X11 won't (shouldn't) really be used for games on the 2X - emus and games would be much better avoiding X11 altogether due to its memory consumption. Does the kdrive server not like 720x576?

Can't wait to see where this goes!

 

[synkro]

I'm working on getting the tvout driver working properly but at the moment it's refusing to display at anything other than the dvd resolutions. Once I've got it working, I'd imagine X11 will be able to run at 320x240, 640x480, and even 800x600 and 1024x768 but I've no idea how well those will appear on as tv as they're both above tv resolution.

W00t w00gal! that's the stuff we want tp hear SOMEONE is working on it....

 

[bacteria]

Does this mean decent quality tv-out display quality at last??

 

[woogal]

Cool!

So you say you've got X11 working through the TV-out at 720 x 576 or 704 x 576? Great news! Of course, it may be necessary for some games to be able to access exactly 640x480 but being a bit over is great as X11 won't (shouldn't) really be used for games on the 2X - emus and games would be much better avoiding X11 altogether due to its memory consumption. Does the kdrive server not like 720x576?

Can't wait to see where this goes!

All apps through tv out are already at those resolutions, but scaled up from 320x240. The GPH driver only works at pal or ntsc resolutions, which is bad. Those resolutions are great for dvds but crap for everything else. All 320x240 apps are scaled to 720x240 or 720x288 (which is really the same as 360x240 or 360x288), which is why they all look slightly crap. Even the 320x240 game mode that GPH provided in the driver doesn't work .

 

[fusion_power]

Could it be possible some day, to run games with bigger resolutions than 320x240 on gp2x with an Monitor or TV? OpenTTD for example would really benefit if the gp2X could display the game in 640x480. Or if someday someone want to make a Diablo (2) Port... :lol:

 

[Parkydr]

X11 won't (shouldn't) really be used for games on the 2X - emus and games would be much better avoiding X11 altogether due to its memory consumption.

It's memory consumption is just over 1 MB, hardly a limiting factor.

The thing that might cause with emulators is that there is a network connection between the client and server and it's obviously going to be slower than writing directly to the screen buffer.

For most of the puzzle games released, X would be adequate.

Edit: Works for faster games too - I just tried Xbill and speed is not a problem (size of the screen is though )

 

[danboid]

So you're saying 360x288 is the max res possible on the 2X?

What about mplayer as included with the firmware? If I play a video file with that that is > 320x240 and < or equal to 720x576 through the TV output it doesn't lose any quality does it? I'm sure the 2X was advertised as being able to play at least 720 x 480 through TV-out but is this a lie? Is not not true 720x480 or 720x576?

If you have got X11 working at 720x576 then why is that no use? Does that res not display on TV? Of course it won't be anywhere as clear and defined as on a monitor but If that res or PAL 704 x 576 or NTSC 720 x 480 / 704 x 480 does display on a TV then any of these resolutions would provide enough screen real estate to run a good Linux desktop with.

Also, if we can't use the second 32MB for normal RAM could it maybe one day be used as 2D/3D graphics memory by xorg or is it too slow for that?

 

[Orkie]

If somebody shows me how to do it, I'll write a driver. Woogal is working on the kernel driver I think, not the X server.

As I understood it, the framebuffer is stored in the upper 32MB of RAM anyway, so the display is stored there anyway. As for 3D memory, I don't really know what you mean. And I'll have you know that not only is the X server useful at 320x240, it already is used by what seems to be a fairly popular port - ParkyDR's GP2Xpdf

 

[pcklee123]

Does SDL already support tv-out at higher resolutions at PAL or NTSC resolutions? So if we used kdrive-sdl instead of kdrive-fb, would it work?

 

[Shadowsithe]

It's good to hear people are working on the TV out. It was definitely one the things that convinced me to buy a GP2X, which left me rather disappointed. Now that I own one... it's not the biggest loss, but it would certainly be an appreciated feature.