Certain Matrox cards are capable of S-Video/composite TV-out. They use a framebuffer of PAL or NTSC resolution with interlacing to avoid scaling, and allow field synchronisation of interlaced video with the output, so quality is very high without the need for a particularly powerful CPU. The disadvantages are overscan (picture too large so that the edges can't be seen) and that to make good use of it requires DirectFB instead of X, which can make setting up the software more difficult. MPlayer supports it very well; VDR's softdevice plugin works well with it too, albeit with some A/V sync issues, and Freevo can make use of it provided the SDL library has been compiled with the DirectFB driver.

The Parhelia and newer cards are probably best avoided for Linux, due to Matrox not releasing programmers' information for them. I am not sure about the G200 and G400, but it appears that the G400's TV-out is compatible with Linux and at http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/2993?do=post_view_threaded there is a discussion about how to get a similar facility with a G200. The best bet though is with a G450 or G550. They can be bought cheaply from eBay etc and their second head connected to a TV via an adaptor. You can make your own adaptor using the schematic at http://forum.matrox.com/mga/viewtopic.php?t=4385 or order a ready-made one from Matrox's online shop. The price of the item itself is reasonable, it's good quality, and although the delivery cost is high, I found them to be prompt, at least in the UK, and I think you would have to be fairly frugal to be willing to take on such a fiddly soldering job. It's also difficult to buy lengths of "raw" double-screened cable suitable for S-Video, so if you must make one yourself it's probably more practical to sacrifice a ready-made S-Video lead.

There is also a schematic for making an RGB SCART lead for a G450 at http://forum.matrox.com/mga/viewtopic.php?t=4383. DirectFB users have reported success with this; my understanding is that it works on the second head in the same way as S-Video, but higher picture quality may be expected. The wiring is fairly similar to that for ATI cards, the composite sync connection being the biggest difference. I don't know whether it works on other models besides the G450.

There are two main HOWTOs for setting up one of these cards with Linux. http://www.bglug.ca/matrox_tvout/g450_tvout_howto.html is mainly concerned with using a TV to display an X desktop, while http://www.sci.fi/~syrjala/directfb/matrox-tv-out-howto is for using DirectFB for viewing TV and video etc via the DirectFB library. The latter is a more practical use for TV-out, and Matrox cards have the advantages of supporting several acceleration functions and allowing interlaced TV programmes (see above) to be shown correctly (for example with MPlayer's fieldparity=top sub-option).

DirectFB's source tree includes some kernel patches. Most of them are not applicable for 2.6 kernels, but you may find that the matroxfb-full-memory patch (the 2.6 version is currently only available in DirectFB CVS) helps. I find that DirectFBCreate fails intermittently, and that the patch reduces the frequency of the failures.

I don't think any of the kernel patches in either HOWTO are applicable to recent 2.6 kernels, although the fusion patches for DirectFB are optional (use of fusion is discouraged for certain applications such as VDR). Pekka Tiittanen and Ville Syrjala's HOWTO is a little outdated: the latest release of DirectFB is now 0.9.24 and the major number for the fusion devices has changed from 253 to 252.

There are some additional directfb options you may need if you're using the PC without a console and don't want to have to run DirectFB applications as root:

and/or

Additionally, MPlayer may need the noinput sub-option to -vo eg: -vo dfbmga:frameparity=top:noinput if you are not using the host machine's keyboard. See also the disable-module options in directfbrc.