TV-Out on Mac Mini (i945GM)

[Stephen Williams]

I'm currently struggling to get any usable output to a standard
definition PAL TV (i.e. with only S-Video or SCART input!) from an
i945GM. I'm using Fedora 7 with the 2.0.0 intel driver. If anybody has
any suggestions or has managed his feat I would be very interested.

Initially I tried using the S-Video output, this was detected
correctly but I only ever get a black and white picture. Note that the
same S-Video connection works fine using Mac OS X. Has anybody got
colour output using S-Video to a PAL TV?

Ideally (from a picture quality point of view) I would use my existing
VGA to RGB SCART converter  (see
http://www.nexusuk.org/projects/vga2scart/) as previously used with an
Nvidia card. There are a number of hurdles to this route:

1. It requires an interlaced modeline. Whilst the driver currently
accepts interlaced modelines they do not appear to function correctly
(I get a picture that looks like it has lost horizontal sync). There
was some sample code posted by Krzysztof Halasa back in January
(http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-January/021402.html)
that was moving in this direction but I haven't seen any further
progress. I would like to help test out this code, could anybody tell
me if there is a Fedora-esque way of building the intel driver?

2. The ideal PAL modeline (1024x576) has a pixel clock of just 19.7
MHz, however the driver rejects any modelines with a clock rate under
25 MHz. Is this an actual hardware limitation (comments in other parts
of the driver code suggest that rates as low as 9.5 Mhz are
achievable)? It would be nice if it was possible to override the
minimum pixel clock check.

Any help / advice / suggestions would be greatly appreciated before I
have to resort to buying a new TV with VGA or DVI input!

Thanks in advance,
Stephen Williams