Configuring Xorg on a Brix Mini PC to work with the Mitsubishi WS-55513 HD1080 rear projection TV

I recently bought a barebones mini PC system with the intent of setting it up as a video game and video streaming server. After a lot of searching and reading of reviews, I settled on an AMD based Brix PC from Gigabyte, the Gigabyte AMD A8-5545M. Unfortunately, by the time I was ready to purchase it, the AMD Brix was out of stock. That's how I ended up with the Gigabyte GB-BXI3-4010.

After successfully getting Manjaro Linux on a USB drive and installing it, I booted up the Brix box with my Dell monitor connected. As video output was fine with my monitor I assumed all was well with this installation. Intending to hook this up to our old Mitsubishi DLP TV—a Mitsubishi WS-55513 HD1080—I took the Brix box downstairs, connected it to the TV. However, after started it I saw ... nothin'. For some reason I couldn't get video output to the TV.

After much searching on the internets and, one HDMI cable switch, I eventually got video from the Brix box to output video to my TV. I also had to use some custom modelines for Xorg to get rid of some massive overscan¹. The modeline that finally worked was ModeLine "in1080i" 74.5 1760 1888 2096 2208 960 1012 1028 1126 -hsync -vsync interlace . I found this info on the MythTV wiki.

I also found myself at the Gentoo Wiki Archives site which provided these 1080i modelines, along with the 1760 modeline that I found worked.

#ModeLine "My1080i2" 74.52 1920 1952 2016 2208 1080 1084 1096 1126 -hsync -vsync interlace
#ModeLine "Another1080i" 74.250 1920 1960 2008 2200 1080 1084 1096 1126 interlace -hsync -vsync
#Modeline "My1920x1080_i" 74.52 1920 1952 2016 2208 1080 1084 1096 1126 -HSync -VSync Interlace
#Modeline "in1080_i" 74.52 1760 1888 2096 2208 960 1012 1028 1126 -HSync -VSync Interlace
#Modeline "1920x1080_59i" 76.11 1920 1952 2240 2272 1080 1104 1110 1135 interlace
#Modeline "1920x1080_60i" 77.60 1920 1952 2240 2272 1080 1104 1110 1135 interlace
#Modeline "1920x1080_61i" 79.08 1920 1952 2248 2280 1080 1104 1110 1135 interlace
#Modeline "1776x1000_60i" 65.91 1776 1808 2056 2088 1000 1023 1028 1051 interlace

Finding the proper Modeline was half the battle though. I now had to add this information to the Xorg configuration file to get it used. I added this information to the "Monitor" and "Screen" sections of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf file which you can see below.

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier "Mitsubishi"
        ModelName "MEUSPTV1"
        VendorName "MEL"
        # Monitor Manufactured week 12 of 2003
        # EDID version 1.3
        # Digital Display
        # Display Physical Size not given. Normal for projectors.
        # Gamma 2.20
        # Option "DPMS" "true"
        # Maximum pixel clock is 80MHz
        # Option "ModeDebug" "TRUE"
        Option       "PreferredMode" "in1080i"

        ModeLine "in1080i" 74.5 1760 1888 2096 2208 960 1012 1028 1126 -hsync -vsync interlace
        Modeline "My1920x1080_i" 74.52 1920 1952 2016 2208 1080 1084 1096 1126 -HSync -VSync Interlace
        #Modeline "1920x1080i" 74.250 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1094 1124 interlace +hsync +vsync
        Modeline "720x480@59" 27.00 720 736 798 858 480 486 495 525 -hsync -vsync
        #Modeline "in1080_i" 74.52 1760 1888 2096 2208 960 1012 1028 1126 -HSync -VSync Interlace
        #Modeline "1920x1080_59i" 76.11 1920 1952 2240 2272 1080 1104 1110 1135 interlace
        #Modeline "1920x1080_60i" 77.60 1920 1952 2240 2272 1080 1104 1110 1135 interlace
        #Modeline "1920x1080_61i" 79.08 1920 1952 2248 2280 1080 1104 1110 1135 interlace
        #Modeline "1776x1000_60i" 65.91 1776 1808 2056 2088 1000 1023 1028 1051 interlace
EndSection

Section "Screen"
   Identifier "Screen1"
   Device     "Device0"
   Monitor    "Mitsubishi"
   DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection             "Display"
        Depth              16
        Modes              "in1080i" "My1920x1080_i" "1920x540@60" "720x480@59" #Choose the resolution
    EndSubSection
    SubSection             "Display"
        Depth              24
        Modes              "in1080i" "My1920x1080_i" "1920x540@60" "720x480@59" #Choose the resolution
    EndSubSection
EndSection

After adding this information to my Xorg config I was able to get the TV to switch to those different resolutions. Of course, only the in_1080i resolution was any good. There were many resources used to figure this out so I'll just list them here ²,³,⁴,⁵,⁶,⁷.

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