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."

Re:Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha-ha. Very funny. You know perfectly well what I mean.

If I can't see the source code, it's not going on my system because of both ethical (buying binary only drivers encourages code hoarding) and security reasons. That's why I don't buy NVidia GFX cards and neither should you.

Great news

[tzanger]

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...

Re:Drivers

[toddestan]

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.

Re:Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

If we want many of the commercial software companies to take Linux seriously

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.

Re:Drivers

[listen]

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 [eros-os.org] boxes ( yeah, right) in 2010.

Re:Drivers

[justsomebody]

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?

Re:Reasons to make offical Linux drivers

[Nucleon500]

Of course, the most important thing is completely open standards, without which any third party drivers are bound to suck, if they work at all. And why not, anyway? I've heard two reasons.

First, for "Win-" hardware, like controllerless modems and printers, companies are afraid if their driver was open-source, it would be simple for their competitors to use, reducing their software development costs. Two solutions: one, the company could GPL it, so at least they'd get any improvements. Or (more likely), someone should make a GPL driver core, which could be attached to similar dumb hardware, even of different brands. Then, with open specs, it would be easy to bind the hardware to the core to the kernel, and the company may even find it cheaper to adapt the open version for all OSs. (Aside: would Microsoft sign drivers with GPL cores?)

The other problem is that companies fear open-source drivers won't honor the evil bit, for example, WiFi cards with hacked drivers operating on forbidden frequencies, or video cards not honoring MacroVision signals. For starters, it's almost as easy to hack binary drivers, so it's no protection. Another solution is to make the hardware only accept register sets signed by the manufacturer's private key. This was proposed for WiFi cards, is better protection anyway, and can be used by open-source projects.

Re:Digital Cable Card

[diatonic]

If you want to watch one show and record another, use the analog cable signal that should co-exist on the coax with the digital signal. Run your digital cable box to a S-Video or Composite in on your TV-tuner card, and use a serial cable to change channels on the external tuner. Then you should be able to use the tuner to watch the 70-80 channels offered on the analog cable signal. Or you could always go for 2 digital cable recievers. .:diatonic:.