BeagleV - HDMI video out, is it really 30 frames per second?

In the available documentation via the web, the video output from the HDMI connector is listed as;

  • 1 x HDMI support up to 1080P@30FPS

Is this correct?

Some computer monitors won’t do 30 frames per second. For example, my older ViewSonic monitor is limited to 50 - 76 frames per second. Thus, the BeagleV board would not work on it.

That said, this looks like a wonderful board, and one I will follow it’s progress.

Hi Arwen,

That smells like the old wiki for the "BeagleBone"... The HDMI spec's
of the "BeagleV" has not been officially released yet. :wink:

Regards,

In the available documentation via the web, the video output from the HDMI connector is listed as;

1 x HDMI support up to 1080P@30FPS

Where is this so I can fix it. It should be 1080p60.

Is this correct?

Some computer monitors won’t do 30 frames per second. For example, my older ViewSonic monitor is limited to 50 - 76 frames per second. Thus, the BeagleV board would not work on it.

That said, this looks like a wonderful board, and one I will follow it’s progress.

Hi Arwen,

That smells like the old wiki for the “BeagleBone”… The HDMI spec’s
of the “BeagleV” has not been officially released yet. :wink:

Sure, but we can check with the design and designers. I think it could be higher in the production version. The primary limitation is the use of a parallel LCD interface and an HDMI framer device, a TDA19988. Now do you know why the limitation sounds familiar? :wink:

The DSI can output 4K@30fps.

I checked with the designers and tweeted about this at:

https://twitter.com/Jadon/status/1349403122599387136

I’ll try to send our first FAQ e-mail out to this list in a week or two and will make sure this is included.

This is the web page that I am referring to;

https://beaglev.seeed.cc/

It clearly states 30 frames per second as;

• 1 x HDMI support up to 1080P@30FPS

That’s the encoder/decoder ip block, not the actual hdmi output…

Thanks.

Looks like the other web site has slightly different information;

http://beagleboard.org/beaglev

• 1 x HDMI 1.4 support up to 1080P@60fps

This is more hopeful. That was one of the things that would have stopped me from buying one.

The other site, has @30fps

https://beaglev.seeed.cc/

This is the web page that I am referring to;

https://beaglev.seeed.cc/

It clearly states 30 frames per second as;

• 1 x HDMI support up to 1080P@30FPS

It is correct. I verified with the hardware engineer in charge. The LCD+framer output is limited to 1080P@30fps.

The DSI output will be at 4K@30fps.

So, I was wrong.

First off, thank you for your work and engagement to Jason and/or any others involved who may read this. The BeagleV is looking fantastic.

Now, a small issue: The sites still mismatch substantially when it comes to clock speeds and video output. To really clarify what Arwen found, see the two following screencaps (with red lines added):

The top screencap was taken from BeagleBoard.org - BeagleV says “60fps” (and “HDMI 1.4”):
both

The lower screencap taken from https://beaglev.seeed.cc/ says “30FPS”:

Additionally, a couple of other things mismatch, most significantly the U74 clock speed.
1.0GHz according to BeagleBoard. org, while seeed.cc says 1.5GHz.

I don’t know the right answer, but I hope that pointing it out is some help. Please excuse the messy formatting - I’m under “new user” limits, so just one image and just two links.

If you would like a detailed list of differences and which sites list the incorrect information, do ask and I’ll do a bit of a manual scrape.

All the best,
Caesar

I will followup with StarFive to get clarification on the FPS.

The clock rate difference is to due to there being a test SoC called the JH7100 (2x SiFive U74 cores) and the production SoC called the JH7110 (4x SiFive U74 cores plus PCIe and GPU).

There is more information in this FAQ: Getting Started with BeagleV™ - StarLight - Seeed Wiki

2 Likes

Hi Drew, I have the same query. I have one of these dope development boards and enjoying working on it to the fullest! I recently bought a new dell monitor which has a resolution of 1920x1080@60fps. Unfortunately, when i flashed the latest fedora image 2021-July-7:Fedora-riscv64-vic7100-xfce-dev-Rawhide-20210707.n.0-sda.raw.zst, and connected the board to the monitor via HDMI, my monitor complains that framebuffer driver in this fedora image supports only 1920x1080@30fps and the fedora GUI won’t come. But when i tried the same image on my android tv hooked up via HDMI, it is working correctly and i am getting the GUI. To find a fix i digged deep into the starfive framebuffer driver and also the tda19988 driver and datasheet and it looks like the chip supports 1920x1080@60fps. Any workarounds for the same? I am trying to find a way to add 60fps support in the FB driver. As i purchased this monitor for BeagleV particularly, let me know if you have any suggestions.

@michael.zhu @Jack.Zhu @tekkamanninja any guidance you can give to @Pratik_farkase?

Oh, i see that there has been already a detailed discussion on this topic in this thread https://forum.beagleboard.org/t/hdmi-displays-compatible-list/29665. You can add Dell s2421hn display in the list of unsupported HDMI Monitors.

Yup, we are try to set framerate to 60fps but failed, still debugging

I Will help you debug this Michael. Let’s see if i get any solution.

yeah, we can reach it up to 1080p@45fps and it’s probably a performance limitation of the JH7100. we are internal testing now. hopefully we could release it in next two weeks.