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EPIA TVOut driver

EPIA TVTool

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A TV-Out utility for VIA EPIA motherboards

Version 0.2 released 20/12/2002

PLEASE NOTE - while this page is still here in the hope that the driver might continue to be useful for some people, I no longer have easy access to the neccesary hardware to develop it any further.

WARNING:
This is highly experimental software - it is probably chock full of bugs, and due to its hardware-hitting nature, must be run as 'root'.  You use this software entirely at your own risk - I will not be held responsible for any damage to your system or loss of data resulting from crashes caused by this driver.


Background
VIA's EPIA boards include a TV encoder capable of displaying several different resolutions, and filling the screen to varying degrees with overscan control.  My modified Trident driver allows the degree of overscan to be set in the XF86Config file, but a dedicated tool is required to change overscan on the fly, which is where TVTool comes in.


What does it do?
TVTool is used to adjust various parameters relating to TV-Out on the EPIA motherboards.  The tool should work from within X and at the FrameBuffer, though only the former has been thoroughly tested.
Overscan and TV Standard can be adjusted on the fly
Both the EPIA-5000 and EPIA-8000 are supported, along with other similar boards, such as the Jetway B860T and the Lex Light.  These all use a VT8601 NorthBridge and a VT1621 TV encoder.


What doesn't it do?
There is no support for the new EPIA-M series.


Known problems:
Currently, the --tvactive option turns off the TV-Out enough for the display to return to the monitor at non-TV scanrates, but doesn't disable the TV-Output itself, so the TV will display garbage.


Installation:
TVTool is provided as source code, so you need to compile it before use, which should be no more complicated than:

    cd <tvtool-directory>
    make

The resulting executable must be run as "root".  It takes the following options:

        -h --help       display this message
        -v --version    display version
        -o --overscan   sets the overscan type, if possible.
                Possible values are:
                        0: Normal (default)
                        1: Overscan
                        2: Underscan
                Not all settings are available in all resolutions.
        -s --tvstd      sets the TV Standard.
                Possible values are:
                        0: PAL (default)
                        1: PAL-M
                        2: NTSC
                WARNING: PAL-M mode is not yet fully tested
        -t --tvactive   [Experimental] turns tv-out on (1) or off (0)


  Source and binary (7k)