Force 1080i VGA on hdmi output

Question

I have a Pioneer rear projection TV that only allows HD in the form of a VGA connector and ONLY 1080i.

I am going out of the Pi in HDMI into an HDMI to VGA adapter box shown here on amazon.

I have in the config.txt the following:

hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=5
arm_freq=850
core_freq=375
force_turbo=1
disable_overscan=1
gpu_mem=128
start_file=start_x.elf
fixup_file=fixup_x.dat
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
hdmi_drive=2
#hdmi_ignore_hotplug=1

When the pi starts to boot, I see the Logo in what seems to be in 1080i clearly and stable, then as it continues to boot everything goes nuts as if it is going into a resolution that is not supported by my tv.

I then tried to boot with the same config on my samsung plasma and it does indeed start in 1080i, then drops back to 640x480.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

When you connected your samsung plasma, did you connect it to the hdmi->vga converter? If so, try

hdmi_ignore_edid=0xa5000080

in config.txt. Maybe the converter box sends out a wrong edid information to the pi.

(The product rating at amazon is 50% good and 50% bad, maybe you got one of the bad ones.)

Answer 2

Are you using a noobs based install? if so it sounds like you may have the correct video settings in the config.txt on the recovery partition but not in the config.txt on the boot partition for the individual operating system.