[linux-dvb] Re: Drivers for EasyWatch MobileSet PCMCIA DVB-Treceiver

[Andreas Oberritter <obi@linuxtv.org>]

Hi Bertrand,

On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 17:53, Bertrand Mazieres wrote:
> You will find at http://instinct-wp8.no-ip.org/pluto/
> the drivers for the first PCMCIA DVB-T receiver,
> the Easywatch MobileSet retailed in Germany by Citycom and also 
> known as Pluto 2, a product of SCM Microsystems.

Does the hardware allow to record a whole transport stream at once?

> Developed by Dany Salman, as part of his final graduation internship for
> TDF, the French broadcast operator (www.tdf.fr), we would like
> this driver to be included in the future LinuxTV releases.
> 
> Specifically designed for a kernel 2.6, the drivers have been succesfully tested
> under 2.6.7 and should be easily adaptable to 2.4.
> 
> Currently, the following features work:
> - MPEG2 TV with software decoding using players such as mplayer or xine
> - IP over DVB-T reception, using the dvbnet interface
> 
> There is still a minor bug such that some block errors appear every few seconds.
> We do not plan on fixing the bug at this stage and would be very happy
> if someone volunteers to take a look at the problem.
> 
> Dany Salman (salmandany@yahoo.fr) and I remain at your disposal
> for any further details on these drivers.

First, thanks for writing this driver. Some cleanup will be required
before it can be included in future releases:
- It would be very helpful to get a diff -Nru style patch instead of a
tarball that we could apply against our dvb-kernel CVS tree (preferably
the FE_REFACTORING branch created by Andrew de Quincey).
- The drivers still use the dvb_i2c_bus infrastructure. This is an old
interface which won't be used in the future.
- The card driver should make use of the existing tda1004x demod driver
instead of creating a modified copy of it. If there were problems using
it, then we should fix them properly.
- It looks to me, that pluto2.c should use linux' i2c bit-banging driver
instead of re-implementing it.

I like the idea of using a cardbus card for DVB and would really like to
help finishing the driver, but >200 EUR is too expensive for that.

Regards,
Andreas