[Wylug-help] Linux Graphics/Monitors Vivo/DVI Questions

[John Hodrien]

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, Dave Fisher wrote:

> 1. Am I correct in thinking that the monitors advertised as 'digital',
> receive signals from the graphics card via D-Sub connectors/cables?

I'd ignore it completely.  If it's a TFT and it says it's got a DVI port, then
it'll accept DVI-D which is good, since it does give you a better signal.

> 2. Does 'VO' and 'Video-Out' just mean 'composite video' out?
>
>   - If not, what does it mean?

AFAIK it normally means Composite/S-Video out.

> 3. Am I correct in thinking that 'digital' monitors  produce better
> (less error-prone, more controllable) output?

If you're talking TFT, and it has a DVI connector, then DVI offers a nice
advantage, as the pixel information doesn't have to get converted into the
analogue signal a monitor expects, and then back to a digital signal the LCD
expects.  No problems with resizing or anything else, since the graphics card
is able to directly address the physical LCD elements (or whatever they're
called) on the display.

> 4. Do the Linux nVidia drivers actually support digital video out?

Yes, I do so on my desk.

>   - I'm mainly looking at nVidia cards since they seem to offer the
>     least trouble in terms of basic features.

If you ignore the binaryness, they're top notch.

> 5. Do the Linux nVidia drivers support composite video out?

Yes, although I'm more impressed with the quality of the S-Video from my ATI
card than my Nvidia.  But it does work just fine.

> 6. I understand that the Linux nVidia drivers support TV-Out, but are
>   there any known problems with configurimg it?

None, tis easy, but it doesn't downsample the image when I tried it, unlike
the ATI windows drivers, that do a pretty good job of converting a 1024x768
image into something that squishes onto a TV (which depending on what you're
doing, isn't of interest anyhows).  If you go 800x600, it's pretty much bang
on the nail.

> 7. If DVI and VI mean 'digital video in', do graphic cards have it in
>   order to take input from devices like digital video cameras?

DVI isn't anything to do with input.  I'll not speak about the VI part, since
I've not used a VIVO capable nvidia video card.

>   - Do cameras and such devices use D-sub connectors?

No, not to my knowledge.  You'll get a firewire connector on a digital video
camera, which works just nicely with software like kino.

jh

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