Linux drivers for HDTV tuner cards

[Matt Porter]

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 12:12:49PM -0800, Christopher Bardin wrote:
> Seems to me that the output to the computer from any
> TV tuner card, whether NTSC or HDTV, has to be
> digital.  To the computer the main difference between
> the two would be data rate and formatting.

Erm, and the register set of the ATSC/decoder chip that
is completely different from the BTxxx parts on older
Hauppage, STB, ATI, etc etc etc cards.
 
> Hauppauge used to have a Linux driver for their NTSC
> PCI TV tuner card on their website.  With a little
> tweaking it might work for their HD card, and if not
> you could probably get a head start on an HDTV driver
> by trying to make it work.

Well, the _basic_ operation of capturing the raw video and
then bus mastering it into the video card memory is the
same, but the TL880 chipset that is on all of these currently
available ATSC cards is different from the BT848/878/etc.
 
The video4linux bttv driver cannot be simply modified to work
with a TL880-based card since it is specific to the BTxxx
register set.  A new driver must be created either by obtaining
the appropriate programming information or by reverse engineering.

My request to Teralogic (now Oak Technology) is unanswered as
well as several others that have requested the same info.
(according to the video4linux and linuxtv mailing lists).
Of course, something may have changed in the last few weeks
if somebody has woken up at Teralogic. :)

> Just out of curiosity, how big a chunk will a two-hour
> HDTV program take out of a hard drive?

8.7GB/hour of 1080i ATSC broadcast.

Regards,
-- 
Matt Porter
porter@cox.net
This is Linux Country. On a quiet night, you can hear Windows reboot.