On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 08:29:19PM +0200, Clemens Kirchgatterer wrote:
Georg Acher acher@in.tum.de wrote:
- Don't use a HDMI transmitter and ignore the market demand.
the market never "demanded" an encrypted data stream on the HDMI cable,
From a technical view this is right, but with just a component output you
can't sell a HDTV decoder card nowadays. And HDMI is not only about encryption but also contains audio encapsulation. And that is an argument for HDMI vs. DVI... HDCP on a open Linux system is useless anyway.
and it is clearly the only reason they are picky about their secrets within that driver. THEY want their chips be supported in linux
The driver contains not much more than you would get with I2C-snooping. But if you want to buy the chip, you need to sign the NDA first...
because that means they get an stable and well performing OS at zero cost for their embedded designes what makes these chips sell better.
So what? Wasn't it idea of free Software to get it without paying for it? Or is there a newly inserted paragraph about hardware vendors to pay something if they use free SW?
hardware venders should start to obey to the rules of the game, when they want our money.
Overall, all this (IMO useless) discussion is only about the HDMI driver part which is currently (accidently) implemented in the kernel. I can't see that it's getting any "better" from an OSS standpoint when it's a closed-source user space program. Get real...
The usual practical "anti-binary" arguments for a PC platform (new mainboard requires new kernel) don't count here, it's an embedded system. You can't simply switch the kernel anyway, as it has many additions for the V4L-stuff.
- Use a HDMI transmitter, care about the NDA and deliver binary
modules for controlling it.
why not use [Free|Net|Open]BSD on the card? that whould not mean the consumer has any advantage but at least no license violation happens.
Well, you don't have to buy the card if you would wake up in cold sweat every once in a while because of the small binary-only part in the kernel.
But IMO you can wait until the end of time for a full open source HDTV card with HDMI output. If you have the time... ;-)