[linux-dvb] Re: Software Implementation of /video and /audio

["Rene Bartsch" <ML@Bartschnet.de>]

On Mo, 1.11.2004, 17:53, Chris Steel sagte:
> Hi,
>
> I've got my NovaT card working, and found that the
> /dev/dvb/adapter0/video0 and /dev/dvb/adapter0/audio0 don't really exist
> unless I have hardware support in my DVB card.
>
> This suggests that if I want to write an application, I can't use the
> /video and /audio devices as anyone who is using a budget card (like a
> NovaT) will get a run time error.
>
> Since the /video and /audio interfaces are actually quite nice, and
> provide a significant gain if a hardware MPEG decoder is present, has
> anyone made a software implementation of the /video and /audio devices?
> Since this API seems to be aimed at the embedded market (for STBs) aswell
> as PCs, it seems like a software implementation would be useful to allow
> STB applications to be developed on cheap desktop PCs with a budget DVB
> card?
>

This has been discussed several times, but it seems no one did it. The
main problem will be syncing audio/video.

But for generating a video device you could use a proggie which tunes the
DVB-card and gets the TS, streams it through a replexer to get the streams
needed, then through a mpeg decoder to a virtual video device.

An approach to create a virtual video device can be found at
http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/VideoFourLinuxLoopbackDevice.

Rene