Any way to force Overlay mode on a Radeon?

[Zod]

I have a Gigabyte Radeon 9250. While setting it up with multiple displays, I was able to set either the primary or secondary display to display "overlay" mode video. However, after I finished setting the system up and disconnected the VGA monitor, all overlay mode options became disabled...I cannot set any overlay options when the only display is the TV-Out display. Does anyone known how to enable overlay video when the only display is TV-Out?

The benefit of overlay is that it seems to bypass most of the graphics adapter processing and filters, resulting in an image much sharper and better saturated, very close to broadcast quality. (I find the non-overlay output to be much softer and desaturated, compared to the broadcast signal). Also, the overlay output does not seem to lose sync with the audio. If I'm watching Live TV in non-overlay mode, the video and audio quickly lose sync.

[stig]

Try here
http://www.omegadrivers.net/
dont know if this will help but
I use these with my ati 9250 and 20in monitor dont know about tv...?

[Zod]

Yeah, I tried the omega drivers, but they didn't give any extra functionality in terms of the TV-Out display options. I'm guessing overlay is disabled for technical reasons, not just "because", but you never know. I'm not sure, but I think it gets disabled whenever there is only one display...I think the ATI drivers actually require multiple displays before the overlay options are enabled.

[Zod]

Ok, so apparently the deal is that Overlay (and the associated Theater Mode features) only works when the video card is in "dual controller clone mode", not while the card is in single or extended display mode. So I guess my question is "how can I force clone mode on a Radeon with only one display attached"? It seems like it's quite technically feasible (they could just do the same thing they would do with two displays attached, but with only one display), but the drivers require detection of a secondary display before they will allow clone mode to be selected. I'm guessing there is no easy way...does anyone have any suggestions? I've already tried attaching a VGA cable to the 15-pin D-Sub connector (it worked for "faking" an attached display on one of my laptops), but it doesn't fool the Radeon.

/cry

[daphatty]

Can't say I'll be of much help. Overlay works fine for me but I'm assuming that is because I'm using DVI to DVI into my HDTV. My radeon probably thinks it's connected to a PC monitor...

[Zod]

About another four hours of research and testing later, I've figured most of it out. (By the way, part of my "research" included installing an archaic 3DFX Monster II card, to see if attaching my video card to it would fake a VGA video display...no joy). Most of the problems I was having were related to my using the standard ATI Control Panel (which comes with the smaller Catalyst driver download package) instead of their "Catalyst Control Center", aka. CCC, available in the larger driver download package. Here's what I learned:

Overlay and Clone Mode

• Overlay mode is only supported in dual-processor clone mode.
  
• Clone mode can only be activated with two attached and detected displays.
  
• To enable clone mode in the ATI Control Panel (not CCC), you need to deactivate the secondary display in Display Properties, select the primary display, then select the Displays tab and activate the secondary display there. Using the little primary/secondary icons in each display section (sometimes shown as "1" and "2"), the primary display should be set to "1" and the secondary to "2". They should not both be the same setting here (a little counter-intuitive, since you're trying to "clone" the primary display on the secondary).
  
• Once the displays are set up in clone mode, you can access the "Theater Mode" options under the Overlay tab, allowing basic setup of overlay functionality. The overlay picture adjustment options (brightness, contrast, saturation, hue, gamma) remain grayed out until something that makes use of the overlay feature is played (again, somewhat counter-intuitive, but it does make sense).
  
• There are no size/position/overscan settings available for overlay mode.
  

Since I cannot practically set up my standalone PVR system with a VGA display in addition to the TV I have attached to it, I did not do any extensive testing with the overlay mode settings and quality, since I can't use them.

Single display Video mode

• Single display Video mode is only available under low resolution settings, generally only with vertical resolutions of 480 pixels. (This explains why I couldn't find this option after I found it once. I never thought about trying 640x480 or 720x480 resolutions again, since both the ATI control panel and the ATI CCC are impossible to use easily at those resolutions, since they are significantly clipped by the screen size.)
  
• To enable single display Video mode, set the primary (and only) display resolution to 640x480 or 720x480, then *somehow* navigate through the control panel or CCC applet to the TV Properties > Adjustments section and enable the boolean value. The easiest way I found to do this was to get the setting up on the screen, then use the task bar applet to set the resolution low enough to activate it. Kudos to ATI for making this "secret feature" so difficult to access.
  
• Enabling Video mode is very similar to enabling Overlay in clone mode, except that there are major problems with interlacing synchronization while watching "Live TV" interlaced video. I'm guessing that the Live TV input interlaced signal is getting re-interlaced for output without ever getting converted to a progressive signal, or something like that. Other than the interlacing sync problem, the colors, saturation, sharpness, and picture size are all as close as you can get to the original broadcast signal through the Radeon adapters. Too bad the interlacing sync problem makes fast moving video unwatchably jumpy, otherwise this would be the best mode for my PVR to use. Playing back recorded files works fine under Video mode, though...no interlacing jumpiness.
  

The best overall option I've found is to simply use the overscan mode of the TV display settings. It still produces a very soft, desaturated picture, but there are no interlacing problems and the picture itself is sized exactly the same as the broadcast signal, filling up the whole television. I'm not sure why, I remember trying this setting before and it zoomed the video in far too much, clipping much more of the picture than the regular broadcast overscan did.