[linux-dvb] Re: Which DVB-S card ?

[Denis Cheong <denis@denisandyuki.net>]

This is very interesting information, and was not apparent from any 
documentation I've seen for the budget-ci card or any other mailing list!

I do of course know that it hasn't been released officially - it is only 
in the CVS of course.  And as I said I do acknowledge the hard work of 
the developers to get the drivers to this stage.

The card in my case is a Technotrend (which is the same as the Nova - 
but is this a chicken-and-egg thing?) but looking at the source code, 
there isn't enough documentation to figure out what's going on and find 
out where it's bombing out (well it doesn't really bomb out, just 
doesn't work).

This being all said, I've seen it actually work and decode a significant 
amount of video, but why it doesn't work any more I still can't figure 
out ...

Still, and all things and hard work acknowledged, what I originally 
stated remains the case - if you are after a card that will decrypt 
using a CAM under linux, then you are well-advised to steer clear of the 
budget-ci cards for the time being.

Irek Defee wrote:

> The CI driver in fact was never released officially. And the 
> difference with full feature card is that there CI software is 
> in the card.
>
> I don't know if the Linux driver developers can be blamed for this. They
> are extremely bright and they would surely do it. Or maybe they even 
> have done this for themselves already.
>
> But as I heard from the mailing list one of the main problems in
> implementing CI software for NOVA was that the CAM control software is
> not done according to the standard, there are proprietary parts. This
> requires cooperation with the system owners (e.g. Iredto) to implement
> it. And system owners are not willing to cooperate since they don't want
> to release the 
> software to the public domain. Trying to find out the way to 
> communicate with CAM might be illegal. This is why everything works in
> Windows and in FF card but not in NOVA.
>
> Irek
>