[ydl-gen] Video modes on the PS3

[Warren Nagourney]

I have done some investigation of the various video modes on the PS3  
(in Linux) and find that one is not very badly compromised when using  
a standard computer monitor.

First, there are at least 3 VESA modes which are the same as standard  
computer modes (at 60 Hz):

Mode 11  -  1280x768
Mode 12  -  1280x1024
Mode 13  -  1920x1200

I am considering trying numbers >13 to see what happens. After all,  
the RSX is a modified NVIDIA GPU and they probably support lots of  
modes in addition to the published ones. All I need is a working  
"ps3videomode" command - it was not installed with the standard YDL5  
installation (nor was "emacs", "locate" and a host of other nice  
commands - does anyone know an easy way to get them all without  
installing the RPMs individually?)

These three modes work on my Samsung 940B (using the digital port)  
whose native resolution is 1440x900. I was blown away that the  
1920x1200 worked, though the monitor put up a little message  
complaining about it. Of course, they were all scaled and looked more  
or less fuzzy (actually the 1920x1200 was best, but I got a headache  
from the fuzziness using it for any time). I believe that using a DVI- 
VGA adaptor should allow the monitor to avoid scaling at the expense  
of a small dark border (on modes 11 and 12).

By the way, the Samsung monitor is HDCP compliant, but I find it hard  
to believe that this matters for anything except (possibly) playing a  
BlueRay movie. I am pretty sure it doesn't matter in Linux.

The bottom line is that one can get good video using a fairly cheap  
1280x1024 LCD monitor (I have seen them for $150 or less). Video  
acceleration is another matter...

-wn