[vdr] FRC - RGB/Scart with the Intel 830 driver

[Thomas Hilber]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 03:40:25PM +0100, dave cunningham wrote:
> If I'm reading the patches correctly it seems that the ATI chips can
> currently do 720x576 only, where the Intel chips can be configured for
> 1440x576 and 1600x1200 only.

for VGA2SCART (without FRC) Intel chips can be setup for 720x576i also.
The 1600x1200i is just an experimental sample resolution for use of 
FRC at a DVI/HDMI port. 
Why exactly 1600x1200i? I do not yet own a HDMI capable monitor. My DVI 
test monitor accepts interlaced modelines at 1600x1200i only. 

> The Intel driver has been patched to allow a 12MHz dot clock - is it in
> fact capable of supporting 720x576 interlaced? If so is there a hardware
> limitation preventing the FRC syncing working at this resolution?

The 1440x576i is driven at doubled dot clock. So it effectively represents
a regular 720x576i PAL timing too. The reason for 1440x576i is: the FRC 
gains doubled horizontal timing resolution. As a result variable frame rate
can be controlled in finer (twice as much) increments.

BTW:
With the help of some users of vdr-portal.de it turned out that even this
finer frame rate control eventually is to coarse for some particular
picky TVs. Though I myself didn't face such a TV yet.

> (I ask as I'm planning to use a Mini-ITX Atom board with a GMA950 to be
> hooked up to a standard-def TV. It would be good if I could use the
> onboard video and leave the PCI slot free.)

I just tested i915 and i945 (see [1]). The D945GSEJT board gives you
the smallest and most energy efficient VDR currently possible. You
can use the plain board as SCART streaming device.

Cheers
   Thomas

[1] http://lowbyte.de/vga-sync-fields/vga-sync-fields/README