[linux-dvb] Re: Writing a DVB driver and some newbie stuff

[Mark Watson <markw@cus.org.uk>]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Holger Waechtler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Mark Watson wrote:
>
> maybe you want to take a look on the cinergyT2 driver.
I'll take a look thanks.


> >All I want from the frontend is to provide enough so that most DVB
> >software things it is talking to a real frontend. Possibly later I want to
> >let it know which transponders are available and get a call to request
> >transponder change. Is that possible?
> >
> Tuning ioctls make only sense if you are able to tune, not? The
> available transponders are listed in the NIT tables in the MPEG2 stream.

I am able to tune, kind of. See what the hardware is below for details.


> >Would I be best off just writing a driver on the adaptor0/frontend0
> >major/minor to reply to the standard ioctls?
> >
>
> Can you please elaborate a little more in detail what your hardware is
> able to do? The "frontend" is basically the thing that fetches the
> signal from air or a network -- the frontend device is used to configure
> it. A simple MPEG2-Stream-Sniffer has nothing to set up, so you don't
> really need a frontend device.

The hardware is taking a stream from a "digital interface" port on a
Satellite STB. I had to do this since the DVB cards are not able to
descramble the signal here:-( I can get the STB to tune to another
transponder by sending commands to the box to change channel via LIRC.

I can easily just use LIRC commands directly to retune the box. It would
probably be neater to do it via the frontend device though. However the
_real_ reason the frontend is useful is that almost all DVB software seems
to expect it. i.e they can't handle having the demux/stream only. So if I
could get the dummy device going that would do for now.

Many thanks for the help.

Thanks again,

Mark