[linux-dvb] Re: is twinhan dvbs-ci supported?

[Ralph Metzler <rjkm@metzlerbros.de>]

Holger Waechtler writes:
 > Ralph Metzler wrote:
 > > Am Dienstag, 21. Januar 2003 11:13 schrieb Ralph Metzler:
 > > 
 > >>a.schinkel@vosschemie.de writes:
 > >> > hi ppl!
 > >> > 
 > >> > does one know if this one is supported? i donīt know which chipset is on it.
 > >> > 
 > >> > http://www1.alternate.de/html/nodes_info/jk-w01.html
 > >>
 > >>
 > >>No, the twinhan card is not supported.
 > > 
 > > 
 > > 
 > > OK, at least the Linux drivers written by Twinhan seem to be 
 > > publically available now at http://www.usa-x.org/down/index.php
 > > 
 > > But they are using their own API and are not open sourced (only some
 > > applications which come with it).
 > > Furthermore, a short disassembly and comparison of strings reveals
 > > that at least some parts of the driver contain code from BTTV, the
 > > Bt8x8 Linux driver.
 > 
 > have you tried estimate how many work would be required to modifiy our 
 > driver for bt878-based cards to get the Twinhans working?
 >
 > Peter Hettkamp wrote this driver initialy for Pinnacle's PCTV cards a 
 > while ago and Florian Schirmer ported it to the 2.5 tree last weeks. He 
 > also added support for bt878 based Nebula DVB-T cards.


I don't know how long it would take. I haven't looked at that new bt878
driver yet.

Twinhan use a microcontroller on their card which controls the whole
frontend. A few months ago I was in contact with Twinhan (initiated by 
somebody who wanted to pay us for writing a driver at that time).
They declined to give out any information on the proprietary protocol 
they use to talk to the microcontroller.
Now that their Linux driver seems to be available publically I decided to take
a closer look and found the GPL violations I reported above.

So, while they have a problem with giving out some information 
on some bytes protocol they use to talk to the MC, they have no
problem to take code from GPLed projects and put it in their
binary drivers.
The protocol is not hard to reverse engineer. I also had a look 
at that part of the binary. But I am not really inclined to support
a driver for their card anymore.
There are other cheap budget cards. The upcoming Flyvideo DVB card
e.g. is easy to support. Maybe there also is some really good
competition for the big TT cards very soon ...


Ralph


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