xrandr causes temporary blanking of external vga/dvi monitor when tv-out is not present

Found a possible workarround:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Ubuntu_6.06.1_on_a_ThinkPad_R60e#Using_xrandr_with_Ubuntu_7.10
"If you see the 'TV disconnected' line but have neither TV connector nor docking station (eg Thinkpad R60e) then add to the Monitor and Device sections of xorg.conf as noted above. This will prevent the external (VGA) flashing off for a few seconds every time xrandr is used. (Newer versions of the intel driver may fix this.)"

Basicly, you have to set xorg to ignore the tv-out.
Don't tested it.

I can confirm this but this only happens if th LVDS isn't deactivated. If you only use the VGA output there is no flickering.
"xrandr --output LVDS --off" disables it.

This sounds like the TV out issue. Can you try this package and see if it fixes the issue?

http://ppa.launchpad.net/kyle/ubuntu/pool/main/x/xserver-xorg-video-intel/

Summary seems wrong now. It's not about the TV-out blanking, it's the external VGA. As suggested, I wrote up xorg.conf to specifically ignore the tv-out, and it suddenly behaves properly.

       Option "monitor-TV" "TV" # in the video device section, plus:

  Section "Monitor"
       Identifier "TV"
       Option "Ignore" "True"
  EndSection

Obviously this isn't ideal, because I do have a tv-out, and I'd like it to work too (haven't tested it at all)

2:2.1.1-0ubuntu10 from kyle's ppa still exhibits this problem once I remove the workaround from xorg.conf.

I can confirm unggnu's observation:

If I have TMDS-1 output to an external monitor, and LVDS disabled, then there's no blanking while Totem (et al) start.

If I have TMDS-1 and LVDS both enabled, there's a long blank while Totem starts.

So this isn't just VGA, it also affects DVI (i.e. TMDS-1) output, with VGA always disabled.

Also, how is the presence/absence of TV output relevant when Totem starts anyway?

I sometimes do this with a TV attached, and all that happens is I get a window as normal, or I can run it full screen on the TV head. It doesn't seen to _do_ anything with the knowledge that there's a TV connected. It behaves exactly the same as any other external display.

So is it just that Totem enumerates the multi-head display properties, the same as running xrandr, and this always causes a full re-detection even though it's not really necessary when no properties are being changed?

I think it would be quite reasonable if starting Totem could just read the info reported by xrandr last time it did a detection. (Similarly, xrandr could do with an option --report-last-values). If you really want to detect or act on changes to what's plugged in, you'll run xrandr or an equivalent tool explicitly anyway.

This bug is still present in Hardy beta.