HDMI Output issues

Starcruiser

Hi guys! I’ve been troubleshooting this for a while so this is going to be an unfortunately long post, please hear me out as I’ve tried a lot of different fixes.

I’m having problems outputting via HDMI to a TV. I have tried this with two different TVs and different HDMI cables and the behavior is identical across every combination. I’m also running Mint off of the same device and it has zero problems outputting with the same method. The laptop I’m using runs discrete nvidia graphics with drivers and prime enabled in .config.

So the issue: leaving the output method on Auto will not display to the TV, regardless of if the cable is connected before or after system bootup. Batocera has no issue detecting the output which is listed as HDMI-1-0. Flicking over to HDMI-1-0 in the GUI results in no output at all - both screens go black and a reboot with the HDMI disconnected is required to fix this.

I have been able to force output to the TV both with xterm and via SSH, both of the following commands work:

export DISPLAY=:0.0
batocera-resolution setOutput HDMI-1-0   OR   xrandr --output HDMI-1-0 --preferred

This code will give me a normal display on the TV in xterm and the f1 file browser, which is great. When returning to Emulation Station, however, it will confine the display to the top left quarter of the screen, and when launching a game, no display will be output at all, just a black screen.

I have tried many possible solutions over the past week to troubleshoot this, using both batocera-resolution and xrandr commands. Curiously enough, I’ve found that ‘batocera-resolution’ commands when used via SSH will break the display connection and prevent me from making further changes - ‘Cannot open DISPLAY=:0.0’, whilst issuing the same commands via xterm works completely fine. Xrandr seems to be more SSH friendly, so I’ve spent more time exploring it’s options. I haven’t however, been able to make any progress unfortunately.

All of the meaningful changes I’ve explored result in completely black displays, requiring either a reboot, or if I’m using xrandr via SSH, a command to revert the change and restore the display.

I’ve tried changing to other EDID modes and setting new resolutions using both xrandr and batocera-resolution, and in Xrandr specifically I’ve played with a bunch of other flags: –fb, –fbmm, –scale, –size; all of them result in either no change or a completely black display.

I’ve been trying to create and apply a new mode and have ran into errors when attempting to add a mode to an output, such as:

xrandr --newmode "mynewmode" ****insert whatever I captured using gpt/cvt via copy and paste****
xrandr --addmode HDMI-1-0 "mynewmode"

X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes) Major opcode of failed request: 153 (RANDR) Minor opcode of failed request: 18 (RRAddOutputMode) Serial number of failed request: 29 Current serial number in output stream: 30

I’ve tried different modelines with different names and consistently returned this or a very similar error.

I have some ideas to work around this, such as looking into the ‘AllowNonEdidModes’ flag that allegedly exists, and manually inserting nvidia provided modelines into xorg.conf, but I haven’t tried this yet.

I’ve tried a few other fixes. I’ve read through https://wiki.batocera.org/display_issues and attempted the custom boot script under the ’My TV isn’t respecting that!', which results in a black display after boot. I’ve tried a recommendation I found from dmanlfc suggesting a custom xorg config under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-gpu.conf with the following code:

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "layout"
    Screen 0 "nvidia"
    Inactive "intel"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "nvidia"
    Driver      "nvidia"
    BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "nvidia"
    Device "nvidia"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "intel"
    Driver      "intel"
    BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "intel"
    Device "intel"
EndSection

This results in a completely black display and I have to remount the boot partition and delete the 10-gpu.conf file to get a display black.

Currently my Batocera install is updating to 36 beta, because I figured it was worth trying and I’m a bit burned out on the troubleshooting.

A few other details: my build is dual boot Mint and Batocera and has taken I’d guess around 30 hours to this point. I was completely new to Batocera when I started, it’s been a journey.

I’d hugely appreciate any ideas guys :)

Atari

Sorthious es.resolution=max-1920×1080 is the default setting, if none is specified. So, kind of doing nothing here.

Starcruiser What happens if you run xrandr in the terminal? Could you show the exact output? You can do this via SSH, if you export your parameters first.

Sorthious

Starcruiser I have been able to force output to the TV both with xterm and via SSH, both of the following commands work:

export DISPLAY=:0.0
batocera-resolution setOutput HDMI-1-0 OR xrandr –output HDMI-1-0 –preferred

This code will give me a normal display on the TV in xterm and the f1 file browser, which is great. When returning to Emulation Station, however, it will confine the display to the top left quarter of the screen, and when launching a game, no display will be output at all, just a black screen.

Starcruiser Flicking over to HDMI-1-0 using batocera-resolution seems to disable eDP-1, but in this case I get perfect output and display in File Manager, a black display in ES, and then no signal output at all in game.

EDIT: Given the output settings of the File Manager are absolutely perfect, and ES is entirely non functional, a good thing to investigate would be if there is a config for displaying file manager that I could copy and apply elsewhere

@Starcruiser says he is able to get his HDMI-1-0 to work in the GUI(F1), using batocera-resolution commands, but, upon exiting the GUI, the ES display goes black. So, somewhere between the F1 Menu, and the ES GUI, some display setting seems to be changing. The question is, what is changing, where is it being changed.

Starcruiser

An update, Batocera 36 had zero effect on the behaviour I’m seeing.

Any ideas would be super, super appreciated guys.

Sorthious

Starcruiser

I have a similar problem running on a Lenovo ThinkPad. The splash video will only play on the laptop, then, when it hits the screen for loading, it switches over to the TV. I think this is just due to the order that init.d is executed and also, when certain device drivers are loaded. After that, I had issues with forcing audio over HDMI, which I resolved by just messing around with the audio settings(I don’t recall exactly what I did to fix that issue. Anyway, not sure if this will make a difference, but have you went into the bios and tried setting your display to just the TV? Maybe there is something about having both screens going that is causing an issue, especially if it’s a duplicated screen and it’s causing a formatting issue. If for some reason you need the laptop screen back, you should be able to just unplug the HDMI and regain the screen. If that doesn’t work, just reboot with the HDMI unplugged. I just reread your post and it sounds like your issue lies solely in Emulation Station. There is a config file for ES that will allow you to force a resolution, I can’t recall it offhand and I’m not near my machine. I will try to find it again tomorrow. Also running Mint here, but not dual booting! I have 2-laptops for my arcade machine. One running Batocera, the other a Marquee. It took me forever to get the marquee working the way I wanted.

Sorthious

@Starcruiser , I found the file: /boot/batocera-boot.conf

You could try adding: es.resolution=max-1920×1080 to the script

You’ll need to unmount the batocera drive to make changes to the file, or it will just get overwritten after a reboot.

Modifying Batocera while it’s running

I found this in, /usr/bin/emulationstation-standalone(don’t forget to use batocera-save-overlay when you’re done modifying screen settings):

#####################
    ## CUSTOMISATIONS ###
    # to customize your display, you can create the file /userdata/system/custom-es-config
    # including this kind of commands
    # rotate the screen
    # xrandr -o left
    # xrandr -o right
    # xrandr -o inverted

    # change the resolution
    # xrandr -s 640x480

    # change the resolution and the Hz
    # xrandr -s 640x480 -r 60
    #####################

Starcruiser

Sorthious Hey Sorthious, thanks for your input. I do really appreciate any ideas. I’ve toyed around with your suggestions and they don’t seem to have any effect unfortunately. It’s very strange behaviour, I thought forcing ES to display at 3840×2160 would improve things, but the behaviour appears to be exactly the same - my Laptop’s output eDP-1 displays in 1920×1080 and whilst my HDMI output is actually running at 3840×2160, it will only display in the top right corner of the screen.

I have a couple of new theories. Firstly, I’m noticing that when I batocera is displaying to both outputs, file manager will display correctly at 3840×2160 via HDMI, and eDP1 (which is a 1080p screen) will show a quarter of the output. This is what I’d expect as it is a quarter of the ‘size’ of 2160p. If I could get this behaviour in ES I’d be happy, but it seems ES is pushing the 1080p output to both displays even though xrandr says HDMI is using 3840×2160, which is why it’s only showing on a quarter of the screen. If I could get batocera/ES to somehow ignore eDP-1 maybe this issue would be fixed? Currently I’ve been unable to, I’ve used xrandr to turn off eDP-1, but the output to HDMI remains the same.

Second thought is that I’ve tracked down the xorg.log file and noticed that whilst it pulls modelines from eDP-1, it won’t pull anything from HDMI-1-0. There are however ‘failed to recognise device, ignoring’ calls spread throughout the log. Perhaps batocera is struggling to pull EDID and other info (even though it is displaying mode/EDID data in xrandr?) Or perhaps this is a driver/output device issue (NVIDIA/Intel/Nouveau)?

I’m incredibly confused to be honest, I suppose I don’t understand how batocera and its components output at all. I’ve sunk so many hours into this and I’ll persist though.

Sorthious

Atari

Starcruiser

Ah ok. Then, it kind of makes sense that ES is pushing 1080p to both displays, especially if your HDMI-1 display is mirroring your laptop’s screen. Have you tried to disable eDP-1 in your computer’s Bios? It might help isolate, or resolve, the problem if only one screen is active; the HDMI-1.

Starcruiser

Atari Sure, here’s my Xrandr output:

[root@BATOCERA /userdata/system]# export DISPLAY=:0.0

[root@BATOCERA /userdata/system]# xrandr

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3840 x 2160, maximum 16384 x 16384

eDP-1 connected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

   1920x1080     59.93 +  39.99

   1680x1050     59.95    59.88

   1400x1050     59.98

   1600x900      59.95    59.82

   1280x1024     60.02

   1400x900      59.96    59.88

   1280x960      60.00

   1368x768      59.88    59.85

   1280x800      59.97    59.81    59.91

   1280x720      59.99    59.86    59.74

   1024x768      60.04    60.00

   960x720       60.00

   928x696       60.05

   896x672       60.01

   1024x576      59.95    59.96    59.90    59.82

   960x600       59.93    60.00

   960x540       59.96    59.99    59.63    59.82

   800x600       60.00    60.32    56.25

   840x525       60.01    59.88

   864x486       59.92    59.57

   700x525       59.98

   800x450       59.95    59.82

   640x512       60.02

   700x450       59.96    59.88

   640x480       60.00    59.94

   720x405       59.51    58.99

   684x384       59.88    59.85

   640x400       59.88    59.98

   640x360       59.86    59.83    59.84    59.32

   512x384       60.00

   512x288       60.00    59.92

   480x270       59.63    59.82

   400x300       60.32    56.34

   432x243       59.92    59.57

   320x240       60.05

   360x202       59.51    59.13

   320x180       59.84    59.32

HDMI-1-0 connected 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 708m                                                                                                                                                             m x 398mm

   3840x2160     30.00\*+  29.97    25.00    23.98

   1920x1080     60.00    60.00    59.94    50.00    23.98    60.05    60.00                                                                                                                                                                 50.04

   1680x1050     59.95

   1280x1024     60.02

   1280x960      60.00

   1280x800      59.81

   1280x720      60.00    59.94    50.00

   1024x768      60.00

   800x600       60.32    56.25

   720x576       50.00

   720x480       59.94

   640x480       59.94    59.93

  1680x1050 (0x45) 146.250MHz -HSync +VSync

        h: width  1680 start 1784 end 1960 total 2240 skew    0 clock  65.29KHz

        v: height 1050 start 1053 end 1059 total 1089           clock  59.95Hz

  1280x1024 (0x4a) 108.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width  1280 start 1328 end 1440 total 1688 skew    0 clock  63.98KHz

        v: height 1024 start 1025 end 1028 total 1066           clock  60.02Hz

  1280x960 (0x4d) 108.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width  1280 start 1376 end 1488 total 1800 skew    0 clock  60.00KHz

        v: height  960 start  961 end  964 total 1000           clock  60.00Hz

  1280x800 (0x51) 83.500MHz -HSync +VSync

        h: width  1280 start 1352 end 1480 total 1680 skew    0 clock  49.70KHz

        v: height  800 start  803 end  809 total  831           clock  59.81Hz

  1024x768 (0x57) 65.000MHz -HSync -VSync

        h: width  1024 start 1048 end 1184 total 1344 skew    0 clock  48.36KHz

        v: height  768 start  771 end  777 total  806           clock  60.00Hz

  800x600 (0x66) 40.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width   800 start  840 end  968 total 1056 skew    0 clock  37.88KHz

        v: height  600 start  601 end  605 total  628           clock  60.32Hz

  800x600 (0x67) 36.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width   800 start  824 end  896 total 1024 skew    0 clock  35.16KHz

        v: height  600 start  601 end  603 total  625           clock  56.25Hz

  640x480 (0x73) 25.175MHz -HSync -VSync

        h: width   640 start  656 end  752 total  800 skew    0 clock  31.47KHz

        v: height  480 start  490 end  492 total  525           clock  59.94Hz

[root@BATOCERA /userdata/system]# [root@BATOCERA /userdata/system]# export DISPLAY=:0.0

   400x300       60.32    56.34

   432x243       59.92    59.57

   320x240       60.05

   360x202       59.51    59.13

   320x180       59.84    59.32

HDMI-1-0 connected 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 708m                                                                                                                                                             m x 398mm

   3840x2160     30.00\*+  29.97    25.00    23.98

   1920x1080     60.00    60.00    59.94    50.00    23.98    60.05    60.00                                                                                                                                                                 50.04

   1680x1050     59.95

   1280x1024     60.02

   1280x960      60.00

   1280x800      59.81

   1280x720      60.00    59.94    50.00

   1024x768      60.00

   800x600       60.32    56.25

   720x576       50.00

   720x480       59.94

   640x480       59.94    59.93

  1680x1050 (0x45) 146.250MHz -HSync +VSync

        h: width  1680 start 1784 end 1960 total 2240 skew    0 clock  65.29KHz

        v: height 1050 start 1053 end 1059 total 1089           clock  59.95Hz

  1280x1024 (0x4a) 108.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width  1280 start 1328 end 1440 total 1688 skew    0 clock  63.98KHz

        v: height 1024 start 1025 end 1028 total 1066           clock  60.02Hz

  1280x960 (0x4d) 108.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width  1280 start 1376 end 1488 total 1800 skew    0 clock  60.00KHz

        v: height  960 start  961 end  964 total 1000           clock  60.00Hz

  1280x800 (0x51) 83.500MHz -HSync +VSync

        h: width  1280 start 1352 end 1480 total 1680 skew    0 clock  49.70KHz

        v: height  800 start  803 end  809 total  831           clock  59.81Hz

  1024x768 (0x57) 65.000MHz -HSync -VSync

        h: width  1024 start 1048 end 1184 total 1344 skew    0 clock  48.36KHz

        v: height  768 start  771 end  777 total  806           clock  60.00Hz

  800x600 (0x66) 40.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width   800 start  840 end  968 total 1056 skew    0 clock  37.88KHz

        v: height  600 start  601 end  605 total  628           clock  60.32Hz

  800x600 (0x67) 36.000MHz +HSync +VSync

        h: width   800 start  824 end  896 total 1024 skew    0 clock  35.16KHz

        v: height  600 start  601 end  603 total  625           clock  56.25Hz

  640x480 (0x73) 25.175MHz -HSync -VSync

        h: width   640 start  656 end  752 total  800 skew    0 clock  31.47KHz

        v: height  480 start  490 end  492 total  525           clock  59.94Hz

Sorthious

My Bios unfortunately doesn’t have the display options required.

Flicking over to HDMI-1-0 using batocera-resolution seems to disable eDP-1, but in this case I get perfect output and display in File Manager, a black display in ES, and then no signal output at all in game.

EDIT: Given the output settings of the File Manager are absolutely perfect, and ES is entirely non functional, a good thing to investigate would be if there is a config for displaying file manager that I could copy and apply elsewhere.

Atari

For HDMI-0: 1920x1080 59.93 + what a weird mode… and there’s no listed 60 hz mode for 1080p either. That might be the cause of the problem with the automatic settings failing (attempts to use 1080p @ 60hz, but since it’s not there, behaviour fails).

For HDMI-1: you are using a low-version HDMI cable that is not capable of high resolutions. It is at least lower than HDMI 1.4. This may also be a limitation of the port you are using. Either way, Batocera should not be attempting to use a 4K resolution by default, but here it is saying that it is. So what happens if you simply attempt to use the 1920×1080 resolution with xrandr?

xrandr --output HDMI-1-0 --mode 1920x1080 --rate 60

And then if that doesn’t work, use the alternate timing:

xrandr --output HDMI-1-0 --mode 1920x1080 --rate 59.94

You also have custom modes defined. They may be interfering.

Starcruiser

Atari Thanks for your feedback, I really appreciate all the help I can get. I gave it a whack and:

Attempts via SSH:
[root@BATOCERA /userdata/system]# xrandr --output HDMI-1-0 --mode 1920x1080 --rate 60 X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

[root@BATOCERA /userdata/system]# xrandr --output HDMI-1-0 --mode 1920x1080 --rate 59.94 X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

This is entirely consistent with the behavior I’ve been getting. This also pushes the output to show ‘No Signal’

I also pushed these commands via xterm and I get the same ‘No Signal’ behavior.

You also mentioned custom modes - I did not define any of these custom modes myself. I can try to remove them and see how that goes, when I did try to define modes some weeks ago I didn’t have any luck with it.

I may try switching out the HDMI cable again if you think that may be an issue, will keep you posted.

Atari

Starcruiser Well that’s something, xrandr is failing to use those modes. Unfortunately, I don’t know what to make of those error messages. You may want to file a proper issue report about this.

Starcruiser You also mentioned custom modes - I did not define any of these custom modes myself.

That is weird then, because afaik they wouldn’t appear like that by default. It should just be the automatically generated modes as specified by your EDID.

If you didn’t add them yourself, don’t try to remove them. Who knows what kind of damage that could cause. All I was saying is that it’s likely your xrandr settings have been tampered with, which could be causing the interference.

Sorthious

Atari , The thing is that the xrandr settings appear to be different between Emulation Station and that file explorer like screen accessed with F1. @Starcruiser is able to have a screen that behaves as expected when in the F1 menu, but not in the ES screen. I don’t know a lot about Batocera, but, I would think, if we could find, in the scripts/config files, where the settings are being changed, we can compare the difference between them, and change the ES settings to reflect the F1 Menu settings. I hope that makes sense.

Atari

changed? I’m not sure what you’re talking about. In summary, the way Batocera boots is “check batocera-boot.conf for a resolution mode… if not then use 1080p by default if available, if not available then use whatever xrandr/the display server wants to use by default”.

If the problem is fundamentally that a resolution mode is being presented, but doesn’t work, then that is the problem which needs to be addressed.

Atari

It’s the same, though. Like, that’s fundamentally how it works. ES itself does not change the resolution, it uses what the system has it set to.

Could it be simply that ES has crashed behind the scenes, and a simple press of F4 on the keyboard in that state would fix it?

Sorthious

Atari

Yeah, I suppose something about the settings aren’t working right with ES, but works fine inside the file manager. The only other thing I can think to do would be to try using a different TV/Monitor and see if it’s just the TV @Starcruiser is using, or if the problem persists on other displays. Maybe it has something to do with the drivers being used? I think maybe something is confusing ES, with regards to which screen EDID to use, eDP-1 or HDMI-1-0; The xrandr output shows eDP-1 as the primary display. Because of this, maybe the refresh rate that ES is trying to use for the TV is wrong.

Redpodge

Hi all,

I’m wondering if you’ll managed to resolve this issue or find a work around?

I’m no where near as technical, but have tried the ideas you mention in the posts and just can’t get my output via HDMI with the Nvidia GPU.

I tried dmanlfc solution, but that didn’t work for me either, got stuck on a blank screen, that took a bit of unwinding to get my laptop display back.

I’m running a Predator Helios 300 with NVIDIA RTX 2060.

Currently on 36 Beta, upgraded from 35 to see if it helped.

As I’ve hit a wall on this I’m wondering if you had any success?

Any help will be much appreciated.

Thanks

nts

Hi all.

First of all thanks so much for this amazing project! I love it. I want to attach to this thread cause I have the exact same issues and already spent hours troubleshooting it.

I am running batocera v35 stable on a dual GPU laptop (AMD onboard+nvidia 3070 mobile). My laptop HDMI plug is only powered by the nvidia gpu afaik, so in order to use it I need to enable nvidia drivers and set it as my primary GPU (which works fine on fedora desktop for example).

My batocera.conf includes “radeon-prime=true” as well as “nvidia-driver=true”. My primary output is set to HDMI-1-0 via GUI.

All works good running batocera on my eDP (notebook display). Now the strange thing is: All works good if connecting a HDMI display with Full HD. BUT I have a blackscreen as soon as I connect a WQHD or 4K TV to my HDMI output. I ran xrandr and verified supported modes and rates and included them in a custom-es-config but it did not work. I manually ran batocera-resolution setOutput HDMI-1-0 without success too. I manually ran various xrandr commands without any luck as well.

After having read the thread I pressed F1 and in a xterm session ran batocera-resolution setOutput HDMI-1-0 and voila it switched to my externally connected monitor (not fullscreen though, the output is shrinked to full-hd it seems, but ok, thats something at least). But when I run any game it turns to a black screen again.

If I plug my batocera stick (the exact same one) into another laptop having only one AMD GPU everything works well, FHD / WQHD and even 4K TV.

Any help is so much appreciated. Thanks in advance+regards.

Sorthious

nts ,

In your bios, have you set the Nvidia 3070 as your Primary Display? If possible, you may want to also disable the iGPU for the laptop. I had a similar issue, which I couldn’t resolve, where the splash video would only play on the laptop screen. No matter what I did I couldn’t fix it. I’m now using a desktop computer, with no iGPU and everything works fine. Hopefully switching the primary display and disabling your intergrated graphics will work.

Redpodge

Hi @Starcruiser @Atari,

Did you guys ever find out a way to get this to work?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks