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d72

Member

Registered: 2013-07-06

Posts: 8

"Invalid Format" on LG TV with Nvidia

Hi,
I have my PC connected to an LG 32LG3000 TV with a GeForce GTX 560.  I have nvidia 331.38-2 and linux 3.12.9-1, Cinnamon desktop.

I recently started to use the HDMI connection on my graphics card rather than the DVI, I set 1360x768 as my resolution in the nvidia settings utility, this was the default resolution.  The majority of things work fine, it's games that I have problems with when going into fullscreen mode, I get "Invalid Format" on the TV when entering fullscreen.  One example from today is zsnes, many Steam games are also affected, I can't launch Killing Floor because I get this when launching it.

I'm guessing there's an incompatibility with the resolution that these games are trying to run in when in fullscreen and with many games I could change the settings to avoid this but is there any way to do it on a system-wide basis rather than per-application?  How else would I go about diagnosing what the problem is?

henk

Member

From: Weert, Netherlands

Registered: 2013-01-01

Posts: 334

Re: "Invalid Format" on LG TV with Nvidia

Although you use one monitor, it is possible( I'm guessing here) the HDMI output is seen as a second screen.
If that should be the case this section of Multihead could be of help for you.

d72

Member

Registered: 2013-07-06

Posts: 8

Re: "Invalid Format" on LG TV with Nvidia

I just had a look, it seems that everything is running on Screen0, Device0, Monitor0

Here are the ServerLayout and Screen sections from my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"
    Option         "metamodes" "1360x768 +0+0"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Maybe this will help too:

$ xrandr                
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1360 x 768, maximum 16384 x 16384
DVI-I-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-I-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 connected primary 1360x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 700mm x 390mm
   1360x768       59.8*+
   1920x1080      60.0     59.9     50.0     30.0     25.0     24.0     60.0     50.0  
   1280x1024      60.0  
   1280x768       60.4  
   1280x720       59.9     59.7     50.0  
   1024x768       75.0     70.1     60.0  
   800x600        75.0     60.3  
   720x576        50.0     50.1  
   720x480        59.9     60.1  
   640x480        75.0     60.0     59.9     59.9  
DVI-I-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

I might have a look at setting up another layout later but I'd rather not have to open it with a startx command like that each time, ideally I'd like to just launch games from Steam without messing around too much.

I've been trying out screen resolutions on the desktop, many of them give this same error, here are my results:

640x480 - Invalid Format
720x480 - Works
720x576 - Works
800x600 - Invalid Format
1024x768 - Invalid Format
1280x720 - Works
1280x768 - Works - Usable
1280x1024 - Works
1360x768 - Works - Looks best
1920x1080 - Works

Out of all of these, only 1280x768 and 1360x768 are really usable, the others don't fit on the screen or look stretched in odd ways.

So, one program that I've had problems with was the mednafen emulator, when going fullscreen I got the Invalid Format error, so I went into the config, changed the fullscreen res to 1360x768, ran the emulator, went to fullscreen and it worked :).  I tried to do the same thing with Killing Floor by editing the Default.ini, this hasn't worked, this is why I don't want to have to do this per-application is possible.