Dongle 0.0.12 Issues

[radiofreak]

The 16:9 letterbox works fine on my 4:3 TV.

Unfortunately the changes made for the actual dongle seem to have some side effects. I have a PAL version of the MediaMVP. The MediaMVP is not directly connected to the TV but looped through my satellite receiver.

First I have observed that the picture quality has get noisy (OSD and "Live TV"). The picture quality is fine during booting. With dongle 0.0.11 the picture quality is also fine (in every situation). I have made sure that the video output has been set to "RGB+composite".

Second the video output seems not to shut off entirely when going from "Live TV" into stand-by mode (this seems not to be a problem when going from OSD to stand-by mode). That means that when I activate the stand-by mode while running the satellite receiver in the background I don't get anymore the video of the satellite receiver on TV like with dongle 0.0.11.

I hope that you can also reproduce the problems.

Cheers,
radiofreak

[radiofreak]

It seems like the MVP switches from RGB mode to composite mode after booting.

I have a MVP version with SCART connector. Here you can see the pin assignment of a SCART connector:
http://www.hardwarebook.net/connector/av/scart.html

Pin 16 shows if the video output is in composite mode or RGB mode. I have measured the voltage on that pin. During booting the voltage is more than 3V (RGB mode). After booting the voltage is under 1V (composite mode). With dongle 0.0.11 the voltage is always 3V.

I suppose that you have a MVP version with RCA connectors. In this case you probably wouldn't see any changes between dongle 0.0.11 and dongle 0.0.12.

Cheers,
radiofreak

[davep]

The old saying "The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from" comes to mind here.

AIUI Pin 16 was originally labelled "fast blanking". It was intended to quickly switch the TV between multiple video sources to allow such things as picture-in-picture or externally-generated subtitles. That's why it uses 3v signalling and 75 ohm line impedance. However at some stage it was changed to indicate whether composite or RGB video was being used.

My ancient TV subscribes to the original definition of pin 16, and I've found things work much better if I snip that connection in the SCART leads.

Dave

[Chris]

Well I'm back from a week away now, so I can get things moving again. I think I have found that the new modules I used for dongle 12 cause the problem with the switch back from RGB to composite. When I tested it my TV went to composite, but as I could switch it manually to RGB and it worked, I assumed it was my TV playing up as it's getting old and senile. Seems not though!

So, I'll be releasing a new dongle probably tomorrow when I have tracked down an unrelated segfault.

[Chris]

Make that two unrelated tricky little segfaults.. Anyway, done now!

[radiofreak]

With dongle 0.0.13 picture quality is fine again. Thanks!

Cheers,
radiofreak