LinuxTV MPEG2 Encoder

[Ralph Metzler <rjkm@convergence.de>]

Hi Chris,

Chris O'Donovan writes:
 > I've been looking at your page about hardware MPEG encoders. After looking
 > at VisionTech's web site, www.visiontech-dml.com, I see that their
 > hardware is available from several other manufacturers. The Hauppage
 > WinTV-PVR includes their MPEG encoder hardware and a TV tuner for ~$US250,
 > which is more interesting than the BMK-Elektronik offering.
 > 
 > Furthermore, the VisionTech page at
 > 
 > 	http://www.visiontech-dml.com/kfir_rdk.html
 > 
 > states that their reference design comes with "Win NT/98/2000/Linux
 > Drivers and APIs in source form."
 > 
 > I have written to VisionTech asking for pricing/availability information
 > of their reference design. I also asked if they would send their driver
 > package to me to inspect.
 > 
 > I have no idea what sort of license their source comes with but it would,
 > perhaps, be an invaluable resource to the linux community in making this
 > type of hardware work with linux.

Regarding the Hauppauge card see below. 
The reference design on the Visionteh page is the one for the new
KFir2 chip. The BMK card is exactly the reference design for the KFir1
chip. 
Since Visiontech seemed a little less Linux friendly in the past few
months (took their own linux driver from their ftp site in November, 
made problems with microcode distribution with Linux driver, ...) I
don't know how easily Kfir2 documentation will be available.

 > I have no experience with this type of coding (I do computer modeling of
 > electronic systems) but I would be willing to help. I'm certainly willing
 > to buy some hardware but I would prefer something with an integrated TV
 > tuner.

The problem with the Hauppauge card is that additional information
from Hauppauge would be necessary to make this work easily (without
reverse engineering). The maintainer of ther FreeBSD Bt848 driver
claimed on the Video4Linux mailing list that he is in contact with
them regarding the PVR card. I don't know how far he got with that.

Regards,
Ralph Metzler