OS X 10.5.5 update causes EyeTV to display green/purple video

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	OS X 10.5.5 update causes EyeTV to display green/purple video

Solution After the OS X 10.5.5 Update, a few users have found that EyeTV, Apple DVD Player, and other applications now display video with a green and purple cast.

This is an extremely rare issue, that seems to only happen to users with a PowerMac G5 tower (single or multiple processor), with a ATI Radeon X1900 Graphics Card (256MB).

Currently, we don't have an explanation as to why this is happening, but it seems to be due to the latest version of OpenGL that was included in OS X 10.5.5. EyeTV and other applications use OpenGL for video and other graphics. This is an OS level issue, that doesn't seem to happen with other Macs and graphic cards.

We do have a workaround.

1) Quit EyeTV
2) Open the Applications folder, and find the Utilities folder
3) Find and open the Terminal application
4) Type in the following:

defaults write com.elgato.eyetv "use OpenGL" -bool NO

5) Press the Return key to activate the change
6) Start EyeTV again

This change will disable EyeTV's use of OpenGL, and EyeTV will use QuickTime instead. This change will not solve the problem in other applications like the Apple DVD Player.

To turn OpenGL usage back on:

defaults write com.elgato.eyetv "use OpenGL" -bool YES

QuickTime playback isn't as efficient as EyeTV's engine, so this may cause slightly reduced performance, particularly with HD images.

Even if we are able to find out the true cause of this issue, it may require adjustments in OS X or in the graphic card drivers to fix.

Article Details

Article ID:

3097

Created On:

18 Sep 2008 05:37 PM