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HDTV Reception Now Available on Linux
-tji writes "A new company, www.pchdtv.com, has just released the first digital TV receiver card for Linux. Along with the Linux drivers, they have also modified xine to support HD playback and add XvMC support for MPEG2 hardware acceleration with some video cards. This has great potential for integration into PVR apps, like freevo and mythtv. There is also another project to reverse engineer drivers for the Teralogic TL880 based DTV cards. The one active developer has done a great job, but could use some help."
kill -9 JerrySpringer
when those irritating twats show up every morning.
According to their website they distribute with the card the sources for the V4L driver and the modified version of xine they talk about. Although they do talk about optionaly using NVidia cards to accelerate things, so they may encourage the use of NVidia's binary drivers. But either way, those are optional optimizations so...
Looks like a very nice card... If I had HDTV service I'd definately think about buying one.
Now if we get support for the HDTV outputs on the Radeon 9800, I will have the perfect DVR to go with my 61" HDTV!
/.ing...
Site's already slow....
Probably won't survive the
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
This is really interesting- I know I'll be buying one within a year or two, to go along with my wonderful new LCD screens and system. Linux-compatible from the ground up. Got RH 9 on it right now (Mandrake choked on it last time for some odd reason- never did figure that out)
...and mucho more HD space...no, not for pr0n, but for timeshifting the shows...let's see you beat that, RIAA. *Wonders if a lawsuit could ensue for people trying to timeshift, but not being able to...hmmmm....*
/. *Sigh*.
Now...just to find a cheap big lcd screen...
On a side note, out of 14 posts (when I first viewed page) only 1 was actually relevant. The sad status of
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Both drivers and extensive patches to Xine are open source and already available.
I tell you, it's darn difficult watching things in standard definition once you've gotten used to Jennifer Gartner on Alias in her glorious 1920 by 1080 pixels with a full color gamut.
;-)
Timeshifting her is the hard part. For that, I've resorted to the MyHD card with its Windows drivers sitting on a system with an IDE-based RAID array. Yes, it works. But it's Windows. Need I say more to a Slashdot crowd?
But does anyone know what the status of v4l is in the 2.6 series? I went from 2.4.21 to 2.6.0-test3 (and now test4) as the HPT370 controller is iffy on Linux with APIC (this is an Epox EP-D3VA)... 2.6.0 completely solved all the APIC and SMP issues, but now V4L's not quite there. :-)
Ahh, the bleeding edge...
This is the first card specifically for HDTV, but:
For a while now, DVB cards have been available with software for Linux that have been able to recieve and process HDTV satalite signals. The 'other' PVR app that doesn't seem to catch on in the US is VDR, located at http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr This is a full featured, open source PVR application that does work with DVB cards to show HDTV.
I suppose I could go without food for a few days. =-)
-- Up to no good and lovin' it!
Not every company is willing to open source all their software and make it free. If we want many of the commercial software companies to take Linux seriously, we have to convey the message that we find it acceptable to pay for some software that will run in Linux.
Until then, they will continue to develop only for OSes like Windows and MacOS.
That's a pretty big "if".
I am not convinced at all that we need the commercial software companies so badly that we sell our ideals for it.
http://www.pchdtv.com/faq.php#faq0000007
Isn't that a bit low for the average piece of hardware in a PC? I bought an ancient (used) ISA sound card for an even more ancient PC and I still got 180 days of warranty for it...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
1. Users will continually update drivers and eventually absorb them into vareous Linux projects taking support off your hands permenently.
2. Free advertsing on Freshmeat as your drivers are announced then again as projects absorb your drivers.
3. Free adveritsing on Slashdot.
4. Slimmer marketshare means greater sales amoung Linux users.
Reasons to NOT provide offical Linux drivers
1. If your suffering on the Windows side a quick throw in to support Linux will not save you.
2. It'll piss off Microsoft.
3. Your website will be slashdotted.
4. There is a lose lose factor on your drivers. If your drivers are too good users may not improve them if they suck to much users won't buy your product.
Your best bet is to always supply unoffical drivers directly into open source projects so that users will always look to the open source projects for support and not you while at the same time the open source projects give you free advertsing and they get slashdotted not you.
I don't actually exist.
There have been digital TV cards with open source Linux support for years. This may be the first card for the ATSC standard and doesn't even have an MPEG decoder, or why would the need xine.
Do they support the Linux DVB API, or at least the parts that are common in ATSC and DVB?
Are the drivers open source?
For more information on linux and digital TV see
LinuxTV
Metzlerbros
and links on those sites.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I've read a lot here about the possible recording limitations. Does this (slashdotted) company mean no more timeshifting problems?
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
we have to convey the message that we find it acceptable to pay for some software that will run in Linux.
What you meant to say was:
We need to communicate that we are willing to give up our freedom and put up with binary crapware, just as long as we can use our leet new toys.
Some of us care more about freedom than HDTV. We need to encourage hardware companies to open their specs. Linux is not alone in the world as an alternative OS, and I sure as fuck hope that something better does come along some day. I don't think we want to be stuck emulating shifting Linux kernel interfaces to use some hardware on our shiny new EROS boxes ( yeah, right) in 2010.
I find that very acceptable. But you made a magic mistake.
driver!=software
I for one write just as OSS as proprietary (both for Linux). The only real need in being open is to be open to correct extent.
If drivers are proprietary and company goes to drain, your hardware goes with company too. Just look at older TV Tuners under XP. No drivers no fun. But if drivers are made as OSS someone might continue to support your hardware even then.
As far as I was talking about sotware needing to be open to the correct extent. Take two this as example.
Accounting software >> can be proprietary, the only thing that must be open are correctly documented tables and their relations.
Software for editing some type of file >> Make a complete specification of document type.
There are points that company must revise.
1. What will happen if they go down with their customers, I was there and to tell you the truth as a customer I didn't liked it. That's why I had to drag one machine running Win3.1 until a year ago, It was the only possibility to access documents that were made.
2. Let's take something more simple now. You're the one man band and you're administering servers on companies. You die in a car crash. Do customers have to break in to continue to work. Or would it be more simple to use an envelope, write password in and protect it to be used just in case.
As far as paying, my customers were paying me when I was making Win software, and they are paying me now. Where's the difference?
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
I'm a core Freevo developer and I have something to say:
Recently we won an Epia and Hauppage PVR-250 and they will be better supported than others, just because we can test it.
If you like the idea and want to be supported, contact us via developers list (freevo: freevo-devel@lists.sourceforge.net)
Thanks, GustavoIf we want many of the commercial software companies to take Linux seriously, we have to convey the message that we find it acceptable to pay for some software that will run in Linux.
I'm willing to pay for software, just not when it's proprietary. I'll only play for Free Software.
GOD, that's nice to see for once!!
Justin
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
Do any cards exist that can decode digital cable tv without having to go through the digital cable tv box? I'm not looking to get channels I'm not paying for. I just want a PVR that can act like my VCR did when I had analog cable. I used to be able to easily record shows on different channels. Tivo solves the problem by changing the channel on the Digital Cable TV box which isn't the optimal solution and prevents me from watching one show and recording another.
Just because they would deliver the source code with their product doesn't make it "Free", unless they specifically relinquish redistribution rights to the user of the software. That may or may not fit within their business model and is their choice to make. However, depriving the user of the source code is to maintain control over the user.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I have one of these and it is basically as
advertised. I use it to capture streams on Linux,
though I still play them back on my Windows-based
card which has component video support.
However, the xine patches work OK.
It is still a hacker's delight, though, and will
continue to be until all of the modifications
make it into the xine and v4l trees; and into at
least the Debian Unstable package system. The
software works, but takes some effort to get
installed and running.
I am quite satisfied with my purchase!!! Everyone
who supports Linux should buy one, if only to
support the business model.
Mark
You can download the contents of the CDROM from
their web site. It includes full GPL source for
the driver and Xine.
Research first, then post your inane complaints.
This is pretty neat, but it appears to fall short of being able to just capture the ATSC stream and play it back unmodified to the TV.
Not everyone needs mad power hardware or cards to decode the MPEG2 stream and output it. Some HD tuners, like those included in the Mitsubishi HD sets, have FireWire jacks that are capable of feeding the transport stream to something (typically a D-VHS deck) and accepting a transport stream back from a device.
Apple has released a sample application with their FireWire SDK for MacOS X called VirtualDVHS that I've been playing with. My notes on it are here. The FireWire enabled tuner does all the work, including sending start/stop commands to the device, and on Mits sets, timer recordings.
It's a great little program, and since it's a SDK, you get all the source code for it and the FireWire drivers. The TV's remote control works (commands sent via the FireWire interface) and here's the best part: it works on a dead slow stock CPU G3 266. This computer can't even play simple QuickTime movies properly, yet it works like a charm because all it does is capture and stream back the MPEG2 transport stream. The tuner's decoder does all the hard work.
Okay, so it isn't a PVR with nifty features and whatnot, nor will it work if you don't have a tuner with FireWire jacks. But I don't care too much about the PVR features for the moment because there isn't enough OTA HD programming yet. All I need it to do is time shift a few programs each week when I'll have to be at work, or busy with school, or whatnot.
VirtualDVHS may be a ghetto program, but it gives you a glimpse of what you can do with MPEG2 streams. No special ATSC cards required. And hey, you get the source: make it do more of what you want and tell people about it, or write your own.
this is my sig
Pre-orders have begun for the pcHDTV HD-2000 card and the cards will start to ship this week. Several lucky people who have contacted me (or pcHDTV) already have the card and have been enjoying HDTV on Linux. My part is HDTV/Linux that I have been working on support for the card in MythTV for the last month, but due to my very busy schedule all features are not complete (seeking and handling low HDTV signals). I invite anyone who is interested in HDTV and MythTV to come by #mythtv on the freenode irc network and talk with me (bbeattie). The largest problem right now is obtaining a HDTV program schedule as xmltv does not provide this.
Also, I have written a Linux HTPC how-to that talks about the card and other Linux HTPC like issues at www.sllug.org/how-to/linux-htpc/introduction.html . It will be very useful for anyone wanting to do HDTV or HTPC like features with Linux.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Hello, I'm the developer of that TL880 driver linked to in the story. It would be really nice if everyone who owns such a card (MyHD, HiPix, WinTV-HD, AccessDTV) came on over and subscribed to the mailing list, and played with some of the software for a few minutes. The latest effort is to map the card's registers. A preliminary map that has nearly every register listed, but only detailed descriptions for enough registers to get the card displaying color bars, is located here. Also, as -tji mentioned in another post, ATI's set top box division is unwilling to provide any help to anyone not buying a minimum $25000 annual volume. So, if everyone who owns such a card could e-mail their card's manufacturer (i.e. Hauppauge, Telemann, MIT), as suggested on the How To Help page, asking them to try to arrange for help with the I2C-connected chips on the card, it would be great.
Thanks.
As for the PCHDTV, I just ordered an upgrade for my sytem from an Athlon XP1800+ to 2600+ with 333MHz FSB, and a Geforce FX 5200 for motion compensation, and I'll probably be ordering the PCHDTV soon. The useful parts of the code for the TL880 driver are the Oren VSB demodulator interface and the modified tuner.c which includes support for the dual input Philips NTSC/ATSC tuner. It's really annoying that the tuner and msp3400 modules in the kernel only attach to bttv drivers, rather than providing a generic interface that any new driver can hook to.
A solution to the problem with music today