[linux-dvb] Re: A LOT of newbie questions

["Henning Holtschneider" <hh@holtschneider.com>]

> How to add IR support? Do I need an IrDA dongle or is there some cheaper
> way to do it? Can I use any remote controller? I have a learning remote
> controller, can I teach it codes that I can use with VDR?

There are several options:

1. Use the IR receiver of the DVB card. Hauppauge now ships the cards (at
the the satellite version) with an IR receiver and a small remote control
which has just enough buttons for VDR. A driver for LIRC is part of the DVB
driver CVS tree. The driver will only work with RC-5 compatible remote
controls. RC-5 is a common IR coding scheme used by many manufacturers. I
don't think there are any learing remote controls that do *not* support RC-5
codes.

2. Use an LIRC-compatible serial receiver. More information is available on
the LIRC homepage (http://www.lirc.org). Pro: you can make the receiver fit
exactly to your needs (i.e. build it into the PC case, use a long cable to
place the receiver far away from the PC). Con: you will have to do some
soldering work unless you find a company that ships a prebuilt receiver to
Finland.

3. Use Klaus Schmidinger's circuit
(http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/remote.htm) which includes a
four-digit channel display. It only works with VDR.

4. Use the IrDA port of your PC. This is probably the easiest way in terms
of hardware availability but the range of the IR receiver is usually limited
to 1-2 meters.

> scrambling hacks. The season card was cool at that time. It looked like
> the scrambling methods were really poor, I mean you could implement a

The CA (Conditional Access) system used in DVB systems is pretty well
designed and it's not possible to use brute force attacks to recover the
unscrambled stream on a PC. The CIMs cannot easily be "modified" but the
smartcards are the weak point of the system and content providers are not
consequently using the methods available to prevent abuse.

Anyway, there are problems with the current driver which prevent most CI
modules from working with the DVB card. So, no matter if you've got a hacked
card or a regular subscription, you might not be able to watch a crypted
program anyway ;-)

hh



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