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[linux-dvb] Re: Problems with WinTV NOVA-CI



Andrew de Quincey wrote:
On Tuesday 14 Dec 2004 11:23, Werner Hauger wrote:

On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:23:24 +0000, Andrew de Quincey

<adq_dvb@lidskialf.net> wrote:

On Tuesday 14 Dec 2004 09:38, Werner Hauger wrote:

On Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:20:31 +0000, Andrew de Quincey

<adq_dvb@lidskialf.net> wrote:

I also never saw this behaviour when I was developing the budget_ci
driver for the TT Nova-S-CI.
Yes, I know from the mailing list archives that you developed the
budget_ci driver. Thank you for taking the time to make this card
fully supported under Linux. But this also means you would be the best
person to ask about my second problem. I know the CI init code is
still commented out, so what are the reasons/problems ? Did you test
VDR with the CI code ? As stated in my first post, it works fine on
the first channel, but subsequent channels only work when the CAM is
reset after a channel switch. What debugging info can I enable/add in
the driver to help locate the problem ? I get the feeling the CAM does
not respond properly any more after going into the decoding state.
Are you using 2.6? If so, CVS HEAD has had the CAM stuff uncommented for
a long time with various bug fixes for crashes and timeouts.
No, 2.4. I have seen this in the CVS HEAD comments, and applied all
the relevant bug fixes to the 2.4 code. Now the timeout messages are
gone and the link layer failure does not occur any more, but after
switching channel, nothing happens. Screen stays black, no error
messages. Only after a certain time VDR complains : ERROR: no useful
data seen within 10552440 byte of video stream.


When you say reset the cam, what do you mean exactly?
In VDR under the CICAM menu there is a Reset option. Calling that
prints the following line in the logs: dvb_ca: DVB CAM detected and
initialised successfully. This exactly the same message as when the
driver first loads.

I've never actually used VDR myself - the code I use always resets the CAM when changing channel.
AFAIK the ci driver is unlikely to be causing this - all it does is exchange data from the higher layers. The ci driver is analogous to an ethernet driver, and the higher EN50221 layers (in VDR) to a TCP/IP stack.
VDR should probably reset the CAM when changing channels - I'm not quite sure what will happen if it isn't - _very_ likely it will vary from CAM to CAM. The FF cards have a radically different implementation of the CI interface which may be doing this reset automaticaly, which is likely why VDR doesn't do it itself as most people appear to use it with a FF card.

Hmm, or perhaps the CI driver should reset the CAM automatically on a retune... but that might cause other problems. My feeling is it should be up to the userspace application to reset CAMs when appropriate - anyone have any comments?
AFAIK resetting the CAM takes quite a while - I don't think people would like
to wait that long when switching channels...

Klaus




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