TV Out color problems -- is my hardware defective?

[jgoerzen]

Hello,

I am having trouble with the TV out feature. My TV picture is exhibiting severe flickering, but only in parts that use color. Black regions, white regions, or any part of the screen that is gray looks excellent.

Colors, though, flicker horribly, and appear to be flickering between color and black and white. No other distortion is visible.

I have tried the latest driver update, updated my BIOS, and adjusted every thing I can think of in the display properties/advanced box. Nothing helps it, even the flicker filter. The problem is visible even before Windows loads (color stuff during the POST / bootloader also flickers).

The problem also exhibits itself in Linux using nvidia's drivers there. I have tried different S-VIDEO cables, TVs, and even tried running the signal through my VCR. The problem persisted across all of these things.

I have a Biostar M7NCG 400 motherboard with an on-board GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU. I have dedicated 32MB for framebuffer. I have an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ CPU (1.8GHz) and 256MB of system RAM. I am not overclocking anything and do not believe there is any ventilation problem.

So, here's the question: is my TV encoder defective? This motherboard is brand new, and it would be annoying to have to return it, but that's what it's looking like may happen.

Any suggestions would be *greatly* appreciated. Thanks!

[Headbust]

wtf did you buy a mobo with onboard video?

[jgoerzen]

Ah yes. I see that I was right to post here indeed, with responses like that.

Not that it should matter, but I'm building a MythTV PVR box. It needs to be as small as possible, as quiet as possible, and as cheap as possible. Given that micro ATX motherboards with onboard fideo can go for around $60, it makes sense to do that. The performance is far more than is needed to play video at 800x600@60Hz and, aside from the TV out, no special features are required. For instance, I have no need for 3D *at all*.

With my chosen case, there are also a limited number of available AGP/PCI slots at the back. I will need all or almost all of them for the rest of the components on the system.

Now, why is it that somebody that would choose to have integrated video should be treated like that? Simply because I have different requirements than you does not seem to me to justify such derision.