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New Linux Set-Top Project
An anonymous reader says
"Linux4.TV is the official open-source website for interactive set-top box technologies based on the National Semiconductor Geode? SC1200 integrated processor and SP1SC10 development platform." Looks to be an interesting project, although since they require registration to download stuff, I'll never know.
First thing I noticed when I access this site.. "site launched Aug 22, 9:00 AM MDT". It's currently 8:50 MDT, so technically this site isn't available for another 10 min.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Linux combined with a TV...now there are even fewer excuses for the average lard-ass open source hacker to get outside and away from staring at a screen. Although...being able to watch an episode of Buffy while StarOffice starts up could be useful...
Another cool Linux hardware project, some how I think I'll be hacking the X-box before this thing ever hit's the shelve's.
Note my optimisim, I actually think it might come out.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. - Albert Camus
I hear their mailing lists require registration as well. Those bastards!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
a) Your clock is off.
b) Their clock is off.
c) It's an honest mistake.
d) It's a conspriracy involving time travel - since you've discovered it you may be marked for elimination.
BlackNova Traders
Right, but you'll send thousands of your closest friends over to check it out. Way to stand by your principles.
On a less serious note, is Linux 4 TV anything like AOLTV?
Perhpas we can get the GNU people to scream at these morons for requiring registration, Hello? GPL VIOLATION!
just imagine the redhat boxes will be tuned to nickelodeon all day, debian boxes to a mixture of simpsons and the science channel and slackware boxes will only work will black and white low res (but fast and powerful) 1920's bmovies. Of course the *BSD version will be hard to find and the MacOSX box will be so user freindly that u never lose the remote.
an xp version will only show adverts and will crash after excess channel hopping (patch to follow)!
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
What with the recent proliferation in alternative hardware for future Linux platforms (I'm thinking here of PS2, Xbox) this sounds like a further extrapolation towards the consumer IT device. Surely the end-user expectation is to just plug the thing in and get on with it. Issues such as DHCP, Broadband / PPP etc will have to work very well, particularly in all target areas in which they hope to sell this stuff (e.g. regional differences).
In what way do you think the Linux.4TV platform will simplify configuration and updates for the end user? With an environment that revs as frequently as Linux, a purely automated system that keeps the kit up to date would be a major boon, and very much at odds with the normal end-user expectation for electrical devices - they're great for a few months but before you know it, they're yesteryear's technology and the only option is to junk them.
Will these guys be paying attention to security, too? An automated "keep it current, keep it secure" mechanism a la Ximian Red Carpet would be another major selling point.
Aegilops
I hear that some sourceforge projects also require that you be registered with them before you can contribute. They even require a login! I say we boycott every site that uses sourceforge for developement, in protest of this trampling upon our rights!
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It looks like National Semiconductor is trying to sell their hardware by getting Open Source programmers to write software for it. National Semiconductor wants to sell its hardware to resellers who can brand it and worry about bundling software with it so that it actually does something. Resellers will want to do this because they don't have worry about paying for software, since it will all be available for free.
On the one hand, I have no choice but to applaud National Semiconductor and the linux4.tv people for coming up with such an ingenious way to leverage the open source community to make a buck. On the other hand, it bothers me that they plan to use freely donated software to make their product more appealing. It's one thing for companies like RedHat and Mandrake to charge you for the physical version of their linux distros, but somehow it feels wrong to me for a company to set up a situation where people will want to essentially write their software for them for free. It feels like they're setting a trap for programmers and baiting it with the increased acceptance and use of linux.
I guess the bottom line is just whether or not they can save enough money buy getting free software to make their product cheaper than everyone else's, without having to use buggy code.
Random thought: Since all the software is free, I suppose you could just buy a blank, unbranded model and install everythign yourself. Now that's an appealing idea, and truer to the ideas behind the open source movement.
Mr. Spey
Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.
They seem pretty set on using the SC1200 semi, but never really say why...I mean, there are a lot of chips to choose from, and I would be interested to know why the SC1200 is the one to use. Oh...okay. I get it: National Semiconductor is one of the sponsors.
But that's not bad, though. Personally I've had good experiences ordering parts from National. I wonder, when they get this done, could you choose to get the schematics and parts lists and build it yourself? Or maybe just get the printed circuit boards and key components as a kit?
I read something yesterday that said that TiVo (http://www.tivo.com) used GPLed code in their set-top system, and released the source code to the public. I am looking around on their site right now and haven't found it yet, but I would think that Linux4tv would be silly not to try to use it, if possible.
Their web site doesn't give a whole heck of a lot of information on it, but I'll give them some slack, seeing as it only launched "officially" twelve minutes ago.
I like the .TV TLD, though. Wonder if it was a bargain or if they had to pay a premium? And why the heck do you have to register to download?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The black box shown on their site looks like a PC to me. I wouldn't like to try balancing it on a TV, especially not a dinky European TV. Now before someone points out that the picture is the development platform, this begs the question of what the target STB will be like. Consumer electronics has to be living room and family friendly, not some big black technophile status symbol. Reminds me of the Xbox - try lugging that around to your friends house on a pushbike.
Looks to be an interesting project, although since they require registration to download stuff, I'll never know.
To me, this is a childish and silly reason to not get involved in a project and just shows the pig-headed mentality of Taco and those like him.
I don't want to drive a car, because that would mean giving my address to the government so I can get a license! Sounds pretty stupid, huh? Yep.
One more post on the journey to negative Karma history!
I'm sure that SOMEONE will take care of that registration for you so that you won't have to.
"You've got mail!"
Just compare http://www.linux4.tv and http://embedded.censoft.com/. Seems like the guys at Century Software are trying to get someone to program software for free so they can sell their set-top boxes later.
BTW, simliar projects have been around over here in Europe for quite a while - and those require no registration to download software and specs. Just have a look at http://dbox2.elxsi.de/ or http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/ ;-)
As someone who developes specifications for hardware and software for the cable industry, there are several issues that are not immediately addressed on the web site, but perhaps are addressed after registering for their various groups and getting the download files. The first is that for cable, interactive set top boxes require that have reverse channels, require a hightly optimised OS that can handle perhaps a couple of hundred different types of interrupts. Additionally, for cable systems, conditional access is an absolute requirement. For retail boxes, this will come in the form of removable PCMCIA devices that are specific to the particular cable operator.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Damn near every open source/free software project requires some sort of registration before you can contribute, and many require it before you can download. Thus, my tongue in cheek post.
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From linux4.tv:
:o)
"The Overlay subsystem API is used to do hardware overlay of video data on graphics data. This is mainly used to display video coming to the frame buffer through the Video Input Port (VIP) in the SC1200/SC1210 Geode Multimedia Processor. The input to the VIP can be from the TV tuner, or an MPEG decoder. Along with overlay, this subsystem can also do alpha blending of video data with graphics data.
Quite usefull for a settop
Looks to be an interesting project, although since they require registration to download stuff, I'll never know.
C'mon, Taco. These things would probably make a kick-ass MP3 jukebox. They'll sit right by the stereo and use a remote with more buttons than a Macintosh's mouse.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
(This ripped mercilessly from the above URL.)
It's got IDE support, PCI, serial and parallel, video capture. Quite an impressive device. I wonder if once the Linux4tv guys get a distribution for it, whether it would be possible to buy a few and create a low-cost parallel processing array. Of course, I haven't seen a price on it yet...
Thanks for the info on the TiVO GPLed code, maroberts.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The latter seems supported by a wide variety of companies.
So how difficult/expensive is it to get a hold of one of those SP1SC10 development platforms? Say for an individual interested in hacking with some cool hardware, as opposed to a company developing a commercial product. I didn't really see anything on the website other than "contact a representative".
A little bit of everything, It has a integrated 32bit X86 compatible with MMX support(but how fast is it?? the pdf @ national.com(the sc1200 one) says it runs up to 266mhz), named GX1. GX1 has a integrated : 2D graphics controller, a 64Bit DRAM interface, PCI controller.
Besides the GX1, the SC1200 features: a integrated videoprocessor(blending/overlaying, scaling, filtering, TV encoding) , a IDE interface (ATA33 though), CCIR-656 video input port(kinda cool), USB, Power management, IO contr(IR, parallel, serial), audio features, and a clock!
Check this info out:
SC1200
GX1
Look,
Usually it is mostly "Plug and Pray"
BUT
You buy a new DVD set wich can do on the fly VCR, frame grabs, DVD, MP3.
You also are a White American with an IQ averaging 85.
YOU DON'T WANT THE END USER TO MESS WITH THE SOFT !
'cause most ot them are Morons when it comes to computers...AND it will boost your support costs if 1 out of 3 customers opens the box and fiddles!
They know how to take it out of the pack (as in Beer 8) plug it to 2 devices (power AND tv) and then laborously decipher the doc...to start at "Push START") =>
SOFT HAS TO BE BUNDLED TO ACHIEVE SALES
SOFT HAS TO BE OPEN, so your 14'old will come and Bash into it 8)
If the soft is free, it cannot be resold if under some specific licences...maybe here is the thing devs could do.
Personnaly, It took me 2 weeks, some friends and a brand new Hair Set to get a BAD, FewOptions, No Fast Forward DVD hooked on TV with Linux / PII 350 / DVD Card / Creative Labs / TNT2 Ultra
To be noted I am not that good in Linux. I prefer windows 3.11 8) (flamebait. Okay. But You know.... you used it too 8)
Now I am W98 + Power DVD + Winamp. And you know what ? IT WORKS !!! With Cordless mouse / Kb 8)
Which is all I ask. I can see ripped Divx, DVDs, VCD, MP3, CD + Internet Access...
Of course stability of 98 rarely exceeds 5 days... But if I can't see it in 5 days, I probably never will
Then OMS (http://www.linuxvideo.org/oms/) will someday work and I will happily load it and cry softly over all those losts Hairs.
Information Wants To be Free !!! But first you have to be able to read it somewhere...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
There, you can buy the bare machines in bulk...
Realize, however, that a Geode isn't a speed demon- never was.
National has yet to sell any set-top solution and most of the set-top vendors have yet to make a dent in things.
Why?
Because the software's nothing like a PC- even though people don't want a PC, they want the Web to look and act like the PC on the box. It's also because they've been using underpowered chips like the Geode to save on costs (The bill of materials on most Geode based boards is ~$100US.)
That's about to change...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
So I guess I have to ask, "So, what's new?" This has been going on at Linux-Hacker.net for over a year. And they have a link to GCT-Allwell who offer a number of links to completed projects.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Well, see, the only people who are going to buy in because of the cute penguin on the box are us (who know what we're getting) and stupid VCs (who think, or thought, that Linux=$$$).
/Brian
Agreed. If this was a troll, it was a damned good one :-) Perhaps it had something to do with this?
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
If it's a digital video feed, a la digital cable (DVB format, etc.), they've got DVB cards that will handle everything except the conditional access part; that would be handled by a smartcard reader on board with the decryption keys- just like for DirecTV and Dish Network.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Problem is there isn't any 8vsb (Read HDTV) support in the platform yet. Which makes me question the long term vision of the project.
Right now most of the current crop of 8VSB computer hardware is based on the TeraLogic Janus platform. While the platform is certainly offers nice features and would be easy to integrate with any open source STB I doubt it will never see the light of day in Linux. Two years ago Teralogic was all over Linux. They sent mail to various lists, offered sample cards. Times have changed. Asking about linux drivers or even docs gets curt responces from the devel team. [Insert standard MPAA rant here].
So, while an actual opensource platform is a cool idea, certainly giving more features than Tivo or WebTV, long term, I just don't know if it's worth while.
There have been many set top boxes based off of Linux code that have failed. This is nothing new and will prolly fail as well since no set top boxes in development will make it.
What would you want in such a box?
"No User Serviceable Parts Inside". The end user doesn't open the box. This is TV, not PC.
So no PCI slots. PCMCIA slots, maybe.
Several disk drive bays, with disks installable by non-technical end users. (Device Bay, the packaging spec for plug-in 1394-compatible drives, would have been great for this if anybody used it.)
Set-top-box form factor. Slim, not PCI board height.
Well-shielded tuner section. Must work in fringe areas with poor antennas. (VCRs have this now, but most tuner cards for PCs don't do it well.)
No matter what, it always boots up. If a disk gets corrupted, or a hard drive crashes, you can still watch TV, even if you can't record. The base software belongs in a PCMCIA ROM card.
(OK, developers can use a flash card.)
and if they are not practicing what they preach, I'd be the first one taking my readership elsewhere.
They aren't. You won't.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Imagine a flight attendant offering you a inflight movie while you were sitting in an airport with a 5 hour delay. A great service, with nowhere to implement it.
Remember those cool AT@T commercials, where those cute kids pushed a button on their TV screen and out pops "Star Wars" immediately, on demand?
Have you ever
That was 7 years ago. I don't have any illusions about all these cool new ideas. I know exactly where they are heading w/out the infrastructure to support them. Cool idea heaven, somewhere is Vaporville.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
No one wants it. Cables operators won't be carrying it becuase it costs them more $ and takes up several standard channels. When the dealine hits and 0.01% of all televisions are HDTV capable, the deadline will be put off indefinately.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
That's nice. but not the same thing... not even close.
This is for the integrated demo development platform device. not a pc with a special sattelite reciever card that is useless in the states. two very different projects. with two very different levels of quality. The project talked about here is worlds apart from the linuxtv.org it's useable, can actually be purchased (unlike that sat card for linuxtv.org, I think I found a distributor in germany that might send me one if they can understand my request correctly.) and is a total solution instead of a hack. nothing to dog their work, it's cool and great. but when you do amazing things on hardware that noone can get..... you're pretty much making it a members only club.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hate to burst your bubble but to my knowledge the whole world with the exception of the US has switched mostly if not entirely to metric. Somehow I doubt we're all sign painters. Of course, Americans like to be different and I applaud that, but when billion dollar NASA projects do dumbass things because people still do calculations in Imperial (which is the name of the system you use in that non-imperial democratic republic of yours) then convert to metric (badly), some changes need to be considered.
Anyway, my apologies for the rant. I agree with you regarding HDTV though here in Canada we still have no sign of it from cable companies. Ours has said that they estimate 5 years before they even attempt at HDTV support.
I send you this message in order to have your advice.
Funny comment, but his point is valid. Why is it so damn nessessary to register for every goddamn thing that some one publishes on the fucking net for godsakes? After registering for every little piss-assed spot of print on the thing I admit I'm a bit jaded myself.
I don't want to come off as a prick, but you didn't burst my bubble. But you're wrong on both counts. One, the US was not the only country that didn't switch to Metric. For example, the UK still has good old MPH on the speed limit signs. And no, we do not use the Imperial system. For instance, an imperial gallon in the UK not the same size as an US gallon.
Although Cable in your part of Canada may be behind, the DBS system in Canada is actually ahead of the game. Even better than US DBS systems actually. You can get the big three US networks in HD, as well as showtime, HBO, etc.