| Documentation for dvb-usb-framework module and its devices | |
| Idea behind the dvb-usb-framework | |
| ================================= | |
| In March 2005 I got the new Twinhan USB2.0 DVB-T device. They provided specs and a firmware. | |
| Quite keen I wanted to put the driver (with some quirks of course) into dibusb. | |
| After reading some specs and doing some USB snooping, it realized, that the | |
| dibusb-driver would be a complete mess afterwards. So I decided to do it in a | |
| different way: With the help of a dvb-usb-framework. | |
| The framework provides generic functions (mostly kernel API calls), such as: | |
| - Transport Stream URB handling in conjunction with dvb-demux-feed-control | |
| (bulk and isoc are supported) | |
| - registering the device for the DVB-API | |
| - registering an I2C-adapter if applicable | |
| - remote-control/input-device handling | |
| - firmware requesting and loading (currently just for the Cypress USB | |
| controllers) | |
| - other functions/methods which can be shared by several drivers (such as | |
| functions for bulk-control-commands) | |
| - TODO: a I2C-chunker. It creates device-specific chunks of register-accesses | |
| depending on length of a register and the number of values that can be | |
| multi-written and multi-read. | |
| The source code of the particular DVB USB devices does just the communication | |
| with the device via the bus. The connection between the DVB-API-functionality | |
| is done via callbacks, assigned in a static device-description (struct | |
| dvb_usb_device) each device-driver has to have. | |
| For an example have a look in drivers/media/usb/dvb-usb/vp7045*. | |
| Objective is to migrate all the usb-devices (dibusb, cinergyT2, maybe the | |
| ttusb; flexcop-usb already benefits from the generic flexcop-device) to use | |
| the dvb-usb-lib. | |
| TODO: dynamic enabling and disabling of the pid-filter in regard to number of | |
| feeds requested. | |
| Supported devices | |
| ======================== | |
| See the LinuxTV DVB Wiki at www.linuxtv.org for a complete list of | |
| cards/drivers/firmwares: | |
| http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_USB | |
| 0. History & News: | |
| 2005-06-30 - added support for WideView WT-220U (Thanks to Steve Chang) | |
| 2005-05-30 - added basic isochronous support to the dvb-usb-framework | |
| added support for Conexant Hybrid reference design and Nebula DigiTV USB | |
| 2005-04-17 - all dibusb devices ported to make use of the dvb-usb-framework | |
| 2005-04-02 - re-enabled and improved remote control code. | |
| 2005-03-31 - ported the Yakumo/Hama/Typhoon DVB-T USB2.0 device to dvb-usb. | |
| 2005-03-30 - first commit of the dvb-usb-module based on the dibusb-source. First device is a new driver for the | |
| TwinhanDTV Alpha / MagicBox II USB2.0-only DVB-T device. | |
| (change from dvb-dibusb to dvb-usb) | |
| 2005-03-28 - added support for the AVerMedia AverTV DVB-T USB2.0 device (Thanks to Glen Harris and Jiun-Kuei Jung, AVerMedia) | |
| 2005-03-14 - added support for the Typhoon/Yakumo/HAMA DVB-T mobile USB2.0 | |
| 2005-02-11 - added support for the KWorld/ADSTech Instant DVB-T USB2.0. Thanks a lot to Joachim von Caron | |
| 2005-02-02 - added support for the Hauppauge Win-TV Nova-T USB2 | |
| 2005-01-31 - distorted streaming is gone for USB1.1 devices | |
| 2005-01-13 - moved the mirrored pid_filter_table back to dvb-dibusb | |
| - first almost working version for HanfTek UMT-010 | |
| - found out, that Yakumo/HAMA/Typhoon are predecessors of the HanfTek UMT-010 | |
| 2005-01-10 - refactoring completed, now everything is very delightful | |
| - tuner quirks for some weird devices (Artec T1 AN2235 device has sometimes a | |
| Panasonic Tuner assembled). Tunerprobing implemented. Thanks a lot to Gunnar Wittich. | |
| 2004-12-29 - after several days of struggling around bug of no returning URBs fixed. | |
| 2004-12-26 - refactored the dibusb-driver, splitted into separate files | |
| - i2c-probing enabled | |
| 2004-12-06 - possibility for demod i2c-address probing | |
| - new usb IDs (Compro, Artec) | |
| 2004-11-23 - merged changes from DiB3000MC_ver2.1 | |
| - revised the debugging | |
| - possibility to deliver the complete TS for USB2.0 | |
| 2004-11-21 - first working version of the dib3000mc/p frontend driver. | |
| 2004-11-12 - added additional remote control keys. Thanks to Uwe Hanke. | |
| 2004-11-07 - added remote control support. Thanks to David Matthews. | |
| 2004-11-05 - added support for a new devices (Grandtec/Avermedia/Artec) | |
| - merged my changes (for dib3000mb/dibusb) to the FE_REFACTORING, because it became HEAD | |
| - moved transfer control (pid filter, fifo control) from usb driver to frontend, it seems | |
| better settled there (added xfer_ops-struct) | |
| - created a common files for frontends (mc/p/mb) | |
| 2004-09-28 - added support for a new device (Unknown, vendor ID is Hyper-Paltek) | |
| 2004-09-20 - added support for a new device (Compro DVB-U2000), thanks | |
| to Amaury Demol for reporting | |
| - changed usb TS transfer method (several urbs, stopping transfer | |
| before setting a new pid) | |
| 2004-09-13 - added support for a new device (Artec T1 USB TVBOX), thanks | |
| to Christian Motschke for reporting | |
| 2004-09-05 - released the dibusb device and dib3000mb-frontend driver | |
| (old news for vp7041.c) | |
| 2004-07-15 - found out, by accident, that the device has a TUA6010XS for | |
| PLL | |
| 2004-07-12 - figured out, that the driver should also work with the | |
| CTS Portable (Chinese Television System) | |
| 2004-07-08 - firmware-extraction-2.422-problem solved, driver is now working | |
| properly with firmware extracted from 2.422 | |
| - #if for 2.6.4 (dvb), compile issue | |
| - changed firmware handling, see vp7041.txt sec 1.1 | |
| 2004-07-02 - some tuner modifications, v0.1, cleanups, first public | |
| 2004-06-28 - now using the dvb_dmx_swfilter_packets, everything | |
| runs fine now | |
| 2004-06-27 - able to watch and switching channels (pre-alpha) | |
| - no section filtering yet | |
| 2004-06-06 - first TS received, but kernel oops :/ | |
| 2004-05-14 - firmware loader is working | |
| 2004-05-11 - start writing the driver | |
| 1. How to use? | |
| 1.1. Firmware | |
| Most of the USB drivers need to download a firmware to the device before start | |
| working. | |
| Have a look at the Wikipage for the DVB-USB-drivers to find out, which firmware | |
| you need for your device: | |
| http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_USB | |
| 1.2. Compiling | |
| Since the driver is in the linux kernel, activating the driver in | |
| your favorite config-environment should sufficient. I recommend | |
| to compile the driver as module. Hotplug does the rest. | |
| If you use dvb-kernel enter the build-2.6 directory run 'make' and 'insmod.sh | |
| load' afterwards. | |
| 1.3. Loading the drivers | |
| Hotplug is able to load the driver, when it is needed (because you plugged | |
| in the device). | |
| If you want to enable debug output, you have to load the driver manually and | |
| from within the dvb-kernel cvs repository. | |
| first have a look, which debug level are available: | |
| modinfo dvb-usb | |
| modinfo dvb-usb-vp7045 | |
| etc. | |
| modprobe dvb-usb debug=<level> | |
| modprobe dvb-usb-vp7045 debug=<level> | |
| etc. | |
| should do the trick. | |
| When the driver is loaded successfully, the firmware file was in | |
| the right place and the device is connected, the "Power"-LED should be | |
| turned on. | |
| At this point you should be able to start a dvb-capable application. I'm use | |
| (t|s)zap, mplayer and dvbscan to test the basics. VDR-xine provides the | |
| long-term test scenario. | |
| 2. Known problems and bugs | |
| - Don't remove the USB device while running an DVB application, your system | |
| will go crazy or die most likely. | |
| 2.1. Adding support for devices | |
| TODO | |
| 2.2. USB1.1 Bandwidth limitation | |
| A lot of the currently supported devices are USB1.1 and thus they have a | |
| maximum bandwidth of about 5-6 MBit/s when connected to a USB2.0 hub. | |
| This is not enough for receiving the complete transport stream of a | |
| DVB-T channel (which is about 16 MBit/s). Normally this is not a | |
| problem, if you only want to watch TV (this does not apply for HDTV), | |
| but watching a channel while recording another channel on the same | |
| frequency simply does not work very well. This applies to all USB1.1 | |
| DVB-T devices, not just the dvb-usb-devices) | |
| The bug, where the TS is distorted by a heavy usage of the device is gone | |
| definitely. All dvb-usb-devices I was using (Twinhan, Kworld, DiBcom) are | |
| working like charm now with VDR. Sometimes I even was able to record a channel | |
| and watch another one. | |
| 2.3. Comments | |
| Patches, comments and suggestions are very very welcome. | |
| 3. Acknowledgements | |
| Amaury Demol (ademol@dibcom.fr) and Francois Kanounnikoff from DiBcom for | |
| providing specs, code and help, on which the dvb-dibusb, dib3000mb and | |
| dib3000mc are based. | |
| David Matthews for identifying a new device type (Artec T1 with AN2235) | |
| and for extending dibusb with remote control event handling. Thank you. | |
| Alex Woods for frequently answering question about usb and dvb | |
| stuff, a big thank you. | |
| Bernd Wagner for helping with huge bug reports and discussions. | |
| Gunnar Wittich and Joachim von Caron for their trust for providing | |
| root-shells on their machines to implement support for new devices. | |
| Allan Third and Michael Hutchinson for their help to write the Nebula | |
| digitv-driver. | |
| Glen Harris for bringing up, that there is a new dibusb-device and Jiun-Kuei | |
| Jung from AVerMedia who kindly provided a special firmware to get the device | |
| up and running in Linux. | |
| Jennifer Chen, Jeff and Jack from Twinhan for kindly supporting by | |
| writing the vp7045-driver. | |
| Steve Chang from WideView for providing information for new devices and | |
| firmware files. | |
| Michael Paxton for submitting remote control keymaps. | |
| Some guys on the linux-dvb mailing list for encouraging me. | |
| Peter Schildmann >peter.schildmann-nospam-at-web.de< for his | |
| user-level firmware loader, which saves a lot of time | |
| (when writing the vp7041 driver) | |
| Ulf Hermenau for helping me out with traditional chinese. | |
| André Smoktun and Christian Frömmel for supporting me with | |
| hardware and listening to my problems very patiently. |