Cannot select 60hz on my TV

rabcor · 2014-02-04 02:01:15

In Windows I can select 60Hz refresh rate for my TV, however in Linux I can only select 50Hz; 50Hz is the default refresh rate of the TV but not the highest refresh rate (It's the default in Windows too, I have to manually set it to 60hz from Nvidia's control panel)

This applies to both "nvidia-settings" and KDE's Display & Monitor Settings. I assume it'll also affect Xrandr.

This is kind of bad because since I really like to use Vsync, it caps the FPS of both monitors to 50, whereas my other monitor is 60hz (I don't mind having the TV set to 50hz to be honest, it's my main monitor's FPS that I care about here)

How do I work around this issue?

the_shiver · 2014-02-04 03:01:21

have you tried adding a custom mode with xrandr?

rabcor · 2014-02-04 04:34:54

Nope; Silly me for not trying that one, I should've figured that out.

I ended up on Enlightenment 18, and figured that I don't actually need the TV on linux at all since I'm using it as a work environment, and it's no problem to boot into windows when I need the TV, so I disabled it.

The bigger reason why I don't bother making it work is that i'm not up for dealing with alsa's funkiness, whenever I use the TV I'll want to use another soundcard than I normally do, and while that part is all good and fine (I could just adjust the media player to use the specific soundcard) the problem lies in that I need to upconvert all sound on my default soundcard from 2.0 to 5.1, which would leave my TV with fragmented sound. This means I'd have to configure alsa to use a different configuration for this soundcard than my default one, and as far as I know it can't do that, but if it can it's bound to be a pain to set up D:

Either way, I suspect a custom xrandr mode would solve this for me. If I ever change my mind and want to make the TV work, I'll come back here and post my results.

Last edited by rabcor (2014-02-04 04:35:36)

ewaller · 2014-02-04 05:27:07

Just out of curiosity, is it an LCD TV? The reason I ask is that LCDs behave much differently than the old CRT systems. CRTs were capable of running at different refresh rates, and they would flicker. Running them at higher refresh rates would minimize the flicker. Photographing them was difficult because the camera shot was asynchronous to the vsync of the CRT, and the exposure time is generally not an integer multiple of the refresh rate.

LCDs are a different beast. First, they do not flicker. The lack of flicker alleviates the need to run at higher refresh rates. Second, LCD panels (typically) only run at one vertical rate - ever. The TV may accept 50 Hz or 60 Hz video, but the panel itself will still be run at its native rate. The TV will do frame rate conversion using one of several methods. Frame doubling, frame dropping, or some kind of interpolation. The point is, unless you are providing video at the native rate of the panel, then the TV has to perform some compromise.

So, what is the native rate of the panel?

rabcor · 2014-02-04 08:06:06

It's a pretty recent LED, so yeah it's an LCD.

I'm guessing since it defaults to 50 on both operating systems that that would be the native rate.

Last edited by rabcor (2014-02-04 08:07:10)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-02-04 02:01:15

Cannot select 60hz on my TV

#2 2014-02-04 03:01:21

Re: Cannot select 60hz on my TV

#3 2014-02-04 04:34:54

Re: Cannot select 60hz on my TV

#4 2014-02-04 05:27:07

Re: Cannot select 60hz on my TV

#5 2014-02-04 08:06:06

Re: Cannot select 60hz on my TV

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