Just one more question: is there any way for me to set the xv output size? Can I set it to full-screen? I seem to have missed this in the docs.
you can send a "fullscreen" message to pdp_xv / pdp_glx. however this doesn't seem to work correctly with all window managers. it works with fvwm and fluxbox. it doesn't work with twm, kwm and wmaker (they still display borders), though wmaker has a fullscreen maximization attribute you can use to do fullscreen display.
if you have a second screen, you can run X without window manager.
tom