Sundtek
Sundtek is a German manufacturer/software engineering company which provides USB Touchpanel solutions, and analog and digital TV Products.
Sundtek provides their own, closed source, commercially bundled framework and drivers for DVB and V4L.They state that their solution has support for both the S2-API as well as the Legacy DVBv3 API and Video4Linux1/2, and that they have a very high backward compatibility and provide for very easy installation because of independence from kernel drivers.
Apparently they use a user space application to emulate the API that usually is provided by the v4l and dvb framework by using the kernel's userspace USBFS interface.
Their installer currently has support for following Architectures
- x86-32bit
- x86-64bit
- PowerPC32
- PowerPC64
- MIPS
- MIPSel
- ARM (eabi4)
- ARM (oabi)
- SH4 (SuperH)
Due its flexible architecture the same driver package is available for:
- Linux
- FreeBSD
- MacOSX
- Solaris / Opensolaris / Illumos
Supported (tested) Settopboxes with DVB:
- Dreambox 800HD
- Dreambox 800SE
- Dreambox 8000
- Dreambox 500HD
- Clarke Tech ET9000
- VU+ Duo
- WDTV Live
- Western Digital My Book (Network attached Storage)
- Globalscale Sheevaplug
- Globalscale Guruplug
All Linux Kernels starting from 2.6.15 are supported, due the independence of the Kernel versions the driver only needs to be installed once, kernelupgrades will not affect or require to reinstall the driver.
They also provide a bundled video player with channel scanning ability which supports H264/AAC as well as multiple character sets.
Sundtek claims to adhere to the LinuxDVB, Video4Linux1/2 API Specifications as far as possible.
They also state out that their driver includes a deinterlacing and easy to use on screen display engine for analog Video (Composite/S-video/Analog TV)
The drivers also support bridging/streaming via W-LAN. It's popular for Sheevaplug Plug Computers and allows to use the device on a remote PC as if it would be connected locally. Network Howto their USB based DVB-T, DVB-C, DVB-S/S2, ATSC and ISDB-T devices have a so called network mode in order to stream the TV to a remote host. This can be used with Linux based routers, NAS (network storage) and other embedded devices which provide a USB port to act as a network based TV server.
All devices are supported by a single driver, and support deep standby to cool down completely after 15 seconds inactivity
| Device | Description | Bus | Binary-only driver | Open source driver | Vendor's User Forum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sundtek MediaTV Pro | DVB-C, DVB-T, AnalogTV, Composite, S-Video, FM-Radio Solution | USB 2.0 | yes | no | German English |
| Sundtek MediaTV Pro ( MiniPCIe ) | DVB-C, DVB-T, AnalogTV (all standards), Composite, S-Video, FM-Radio Solution | MiniPCIe | yes | no | German English |
| Sundtek SkyTV Ultimate | DVB-S/S2 | USB 2.0 | yes | no | German |
| Sundtek MediaTV Gold (additional Mac support) | DVB-C, DVB-T, AnalogTV, Composite, S-Video, FM-Radio Solution | USB 2.0 | yes | no | German English |
| Sundtek MediaTV HD ATSC | ATSC/QAM64/QAM256, Analog TV (NTSC-M), Composite, S-Video, FM-Radio Solution | USB 2.0 | yes | no | English |
| Sundtek MediaTV HD ATSC ( MiniPCIe ) | ATSC/QAM64/QAM256, Analog TV (NTSC-M), Composite, S-Video, FM-Radio Solution | MiniPCIe | yes | no | English |
| Sundtek DualHD ATSC | Dual ATSC Solution (ATSC/QAM256/QAM) | USB 2.0 | yes | no | (available uppon request) |
| Sundtek ISDB-T Fullseg Hybrid (Brazil/Japan) | USB Analog TV, Composite, S-Video, ISDB-T (support for crypted TS stream for Japan, regulation requirement) | USB 2.0 | yes | no | (available uppon request) |
| Sundtek MediaTV DVB-T/DAB/FM | USB DVB-T, DAB, FM-Radio | USB 2.0 | yes | no | (available uppon request) |
| Sundtek MediaTV Digitizer | S-Video/Composite | USB 2.0 | yes | no | German English |
| Sundtek MediaTV Virtual Demo Driver | emulates virtual Analog TV only | None | yes | no | German English |
The driver is available as precompiled closed source package, an acceleration module for embedded devices is completely available under opensource license.