Video Out Question

[Jeric]

What kind of cabling will be used for video out? I'm kinda hoping the standard red/white/yellow or red/yellow variety so that the problems normally associated with propritary connectors to the gizmo (in this case it possibly being too short) are sidesteped by being able to go to walmart and picking up a longer bit of wiering.

 

[greendots]

"Final AV connector has been selected. It has enough pins to support line level inputs and outputs, TV output, UART, power and some GPIOS. It has 14 pins but looks like a larger USB OTG port so it has a lot of strength for hanging cables off of it." MW

You'll need a breakout cable to get "yellow/red/white" connections but I think it will be included. For sound you may need a headphone to RCA audio L/R (idk exactly what "line level inputs and outputs" is)

 

[Jeric]

Gratsi.

 

[Kings]

Red and White are not video, they are for the L/R Audio channels. The Yellow connector is Composite video out.

I would prefer S-video or Component out.

 

[WizardStan]

Red and White are not video, they are for the L/R Audio channels. The Yellow connector is Composite video out.

I would prefer S-video or Component out.

Svideo is definitely confirmed. I don't think I've seen anything about composite, although there's no reason it won't be included. It's just an extra resistor to turn svideo into composite. Component will not be included, however, unless someone has seen something I haven't. I'd wish it so, but can understand why it's not: the OMAP doesn't support it, and adding it would have required more parts that there just aren't room for. Not to mention it wouldn't have any increase in quality, seeing as how it would only be 480i anyway, same as svideo.
On the other hand, I am planning on picking up one of these which may (hopefully, seemingly, from some reviews I've read) convert the svideo to 480i component for those that want to plug it into their shiny new TVs.

 

[AireTamStorm]

I was really hoping for something progressive... No chance to get VGA on the thing, I guess. Oh well, not that I'll care when I'm out on the road.

 

[Tinnus]

On the other hand, I am planning on picking up one of these which may (hopefully, seemingly, from some reviews I've read) convert the svideo to 480i component for those that want to plug it into their shiny new TVs.

....I'm pretty sure this adapter does the exact opposite, gets a component signal and makes it S-Video. Moreover, it would make no sense at all to do S-Video->Component since you can't make a signal GAIN quality.

 

[Chip]

The Pandora does not support component video at all. One of those adapters would be pointless as Tinnus pointed out, because you would not gain any quality or resolution. The purpose of that adapter is to convert a component source to S-video, not the other way around.

 

[DaveC]

I was really hoping for something progressive... No chance to get VGA on the thing, I guess. Oh well, not that I'll care when I'm out on the road.

That is the big bummer, no RGB out support at all. All newer TVs support and look better with a good VGA connector or at least component or SCART. S-video looks like crap on todays TVs, composite is even worse. This is designed to be a laptop like computing device. If you wanted to connect it to a PC monitor for larger text, for internet word processing etc. you can't. Trying to read fine text on a TV through s-video will be super blurry.

 

[MarkoeZ]

aaahhh, we finally found a minor issue but i expect that since there are so many mod ppl here(is that even english? : ) maybe someone will find a way to place the rgb-chip(vga/dvi) used in the beagle into the panda in some way and make it work.

Disclaimer: im no hardware/kernel guy in any way, just been reading a lot so flame me if im wrong ; )

Else the devs may find a way since this is a feature lots of ppl are asking for, check the docking station topic.

Impatiently waiting for release anyway,

Cheers!

Edit: We/you(at that time prob) found the issue a long time ago, i know...

 

[Chip]

That is the big bummer, no RGB out support at all. All newer TVs support and look better with a good VGA connector or at least component or SCART. S-video looks like crap on todays TVs, composite is even worse. This is designed to be a laptop like computing device. If you wanted to connect it to a PC monitor for larger text, for internet word processing etc. you can't. Trying to read fine text on a TV through s-video will be super blurry.

Agreed. Proper HD video out is the only thing missing from the Pandora. Unfortunately, this shortcoming cannot be avoided. MWeston explained the situation pretty thoroughly a few months back.

There is still some hope for an external USB-to-VGA adapter, but I think we'll be ok even if that doesn't pan out.

 

[WizardStan]

On the other hand, I am planning on picking up one of these which may (hopefully, seemingly, from some reviews I've read) convert the svideo to 480i component for those that want to plug it into their shiny new TVs.

....I'm pretty sure this adapter does the exact opposite, gets a component signal and makes it S-Video. Moreover, it would make no sense at all to do S-Video->Component since you can't make a signal GAIN quality.

Actually it does make perfect sense, but only to me. It's not about increasing the quality, it's about compatibility.
My video projector is on one side of the room, while my tuner and audio equipment are on the other side. Between the two is a long component cable. This works great for all of my devices that have component out, but I recently wanted to watch some old VHS so tried to hook up my VCR which only has svideo. So too the Pandora. My choices are to either run another long svideo cable to my projector, put my VCR (or Pandora) near the projector and run an audio cable all the way back to my stereo system, or find a simple adapter to convert svideo to YPbPr. I can imagine a lot of new devices not coming with composite or svideo inputs in the future. The Y in svideo is directly compatible with the Y in YPbPr to produce a 480i image, it's just a matter of figuring out how to split the Chroma into respective parts.

Incidentally, that cable does actually do both, sort of. It's designed to take a component input and feed it directly to a 7 pin svideo din where the Infocus Projector can actually receive it on the extra pins. It doesn't do any converting, it just redirects the lines. It turns out it "works" the other way because a lot of devices that output svideo that have a 7 pin din (notably newer laptops) also output the Pb and Pr lines along the exact same pins. Reviews stating it worked despite it's original design were what I based my original optimism on. So again, no actual converting takes place, just lining up the pins.
That being said, I'm still optimistic about getting it to work. At the least I should be able to get a green and white image if I just splice the Y line.

 

[AireTamStorm]

That is the big bummer, no RGB out support at all. All newer TVs support and look better with a good VGA connector or at least component or SCART. S-video looks like crap on todays TVs, composite is even worse. This is designed to be a laptop like computing device. If you wanted to connect it to a PC monitor for larger text, for internet word processing etc. you can't. Trying to read fine text on a TV through s-video will be super blurry.

That is my single gripe with the unit. I still believe, however, that it will improve the visual quality of the games on that S-Video connection. I did a comparison video a while back for kicks of S-Video / Composite vs Component at the same resolution.... man I will miss the color quality of Component.

That being said, I have a Linux desktop, which is connected to my HDTV and does do 720p. At worst I'll stream video to my PC or experiment with SSH+AIGLX, which incidentally allows Indirect Acceleration over network. Some apps don't work, but I've found most games work over 802.11g as long as you don't push the resolution extremely high. This could provide the potential for Pandora => HDTV output of SDL games. I will experiment with this and get back to everyone once I have a unit. Potential problems include latency, bandwidth, and the encryption /network overhead of SSH.