James Blackwell

There is a wide variety of video playing software these days -- mplayer, mythtv, and xine just to name a few. Usually the worst sort of problem that people have to deal with is deciding whether they want to corrupt their free software installations with codecs that are often patently challenged (get it? patent) or limited in redistribution.

One of the things that has started to bother more people lately is that some machines, particularly laptops with onboard video such as the Intel i810 (e.g. i845) and ATI drivers, have difficulty coping with video that is up in HD video territory. The problem is complicated enough that I don't have a full grasp of the problem. I think it has something to do with how the bios manages shared memory for the video card from main memory. Various bioses are setting an aperture that is too small to display videos.

I have finally found the solution after having dealt with this myself for a year. The trick is to tell X.org to "allocate more memory for the offscreen allocator". This is done by adding the option:
Option "LinearAlloc" "16000" in the screen section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf. You should be able to now watch live tv with mythtv. :)

There are other nifty options on the i810 man page... Is your spouse or child giving you grief? You can clearly show them what it's like when they turn your life upside down by turning their monitor upsidedown with 'Option the "Rotate" "270"' option.