1 Documentation for dib3000mb frontend driver and dibusb device driver
2 ====================================================================
4 Copyright (C) 2004 Patrick Boettcher (patrick.boettcher@desy.de),
6 dibusb and dib3000mb/mc drivers based on GPL code, which has
8 Copyright (C) 2004 Amaury Demol for DiBcom (ademol@dibcom.fr)
10 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
11 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
12 published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2.
15 Supported devices USB1.1
16 ========================
18 Produced and reselled by Twinhan:
19 ---------------------------------
20 - TwinhanDTV USB-Ter DVB-T Device (VP7041)
21 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_3.asp
23 - TwinhanDTV Magic Box (VP7041e)
24 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_4.asp
26 - HAMA DVB-T USB device
27 http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId*110620/action*2598
29 - CTS Portable (Chinese Television System) (2)
30 http://www.2cts.tv/ctsportable/
32 - Unknown USB DVB-T device with vendor ID Hyper-Paltek
35 Produced and reselled by KWorld:
36 --------------------------------
37 - KWorld V-Stream XPERT DTV DVB-T USB
38 http://www.kworld.com.tw/en/product/DVBT-USB/DVBT-USB.html
40 - JetWay DTV DVB-T USB
41 http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/product/lcd-tv/DVT-USB/dtv-usb.htm
43 - ADSTech Instant TV DVB-T USB
44 http://www.adstech.com/products/PTV-333/intro/PTV-333_intro.asp?pid=PTV-333
49 - Ultima Electronic/Artec T1 USB TVBOX (AN2135, AN2235, AN2235 with Panasonic Tuner)
50 http://82.161.246.249/products-tvbox.html
52 - Compro Videomate DVB-U2000 - DVB-T USB (2)
53 http://www.comprousa.com/products/vmu2000.htm
56 http://www.grand.com.tw/
58 - Avermedia AverTV DVBT USB (2)
59 http://www.avermedia.com/
61 - DiBcom USB DVB-T reference device (non-public)
64 Supported devices USB2.0
65 ========================
66 - Twinhan MagicBox II (2)
67 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_7.asp
70 http://www.globalsources.com/si/6008819757082/ProductDetail/Digital-TV/product_id-100046529
72 - Typhoon/Yakumo/HAMA DVB-T mobile USB2.0 (1)
73 http://www.yakumo.de/produkte/index.php?pid=1&ag=DVB-T
75 - Artec T1 USB TVBOX (FX2) (2)
77 - DiBcom USB2.0 DVB-T reference device (non-public)
79 1) It is working almost.
80 2) No test reports received yet.
84 2004-01-13 - moved the mirrored pid_filter_table back to dvb-dibusb
85 - first almost working version for HanfTek UMT-010
86 - found out, that Yakumo/HAMA/Typhoon are predessors of the HanfTek
87 2004-01-10 - refactoring completed, now everything is very delightful
88 - tuner quirks for some weird devices (Artec T1 AN2235 device has sometimes a
89 Panasonic Tuner assembled). Tunerprobing implemented. Thanks a lot to Gunnar Wittich.
90 2004-12-29 - after several days of struggling around bug of no returning URBs fixed.
91 2004-12-26 - refactored the dibusb-driver, splitted into separate files
93 2004-12-06 - possibility for demod i2c-address probing
94 - new usb IDs (Compro,Artec)
95 2004-11-23 - merged changes from DiB3000MC_ver2.1
96 - revised the debugging
97 - possibility to deliver the complete TS for USB2.0
98 2004-11-21 - first working version of the dib3000mc/p frontend driver.
99 2004-11-12 - added additional remote control keys. Thanks to Uwe Hanke.
100 2004-11-07 - added remote control support. Thanks to David Matthews.
101 2004-11-05 - added support for a new devices (Grandtec/Avermedia/Artec)
102 - merged my changes (for dib3000mb/dibusb) to the FE_REFACTORING, because it became HEAD
103 - moved transfer control (pid filter, fifo control) from usb driver to frontend, it seems
104 better settled there (added xfer_ops-struct)
105 - created a common files for frontends (mc/p/mb)
106 2004-09-28 - added support for a new device (Unkown, vendor ID is Hyper-Paltek)
107 2004-09-20 - added support for a new device (Compro DVB-U2000), thanks
108 to Amaury Demol for reporting
109 - changed usb TS transfer method (several urbs, stopping transfer
110 before setting a new pid)
111 2004-09-13 - added support for a new device (Artec T1 USB TVBOX), thanks
112 to Christian Motschke for reporting
113 2004-09-05 - released the dibusb device and dib3000mb-frontend driver
115 (old news for vp7041.c)
116 2004-07-15 - found out, by accident, that the device has a TUA6010XS for
118 2004-07-12 - figured out, that the driver should also work with the
119 CTS Portable (Chinese Television System)
120 2004-07-08 - firmware-extraction-2.422-problem solved, driver is now working
121 properly with firmware extracted from 2.422
122 - #if for 2.6.4 (dvb), compile issue
123 - changed firmware handling, see vp7041.txt sec 1.1
124 2004-07-02 - some tuner modifications, v0.1, cleanups, first public
125 2004-06-28 - now using the dvb_dmx_swfilter_packets, everything
127 2004-06-27 - able to watch and switching channels (pre-alpha)
128 - no section filtering yet
129 2004-06-06 - first TS received, but kernel oops :/
130 2004-05-14 - firmware loader is working
131 2004-05-11 - start writing the driver
134 NOTE: This driver was developed using Linux 2.6.6.,
135 it is working with 2.6.7 and above.
137 Linux 2.4.x support is not planned, but patches are very welcome.
139 NOTE: I'm using Debian testing, so the following explaination (especially
140 the hotplug-path) needn't match your system, but probably it will :).
142 The driver is included in the kernel since Linux 2.6.10.
146 The USB driver needs to download a firmware to start working.
148 You can either use "get_dvb_firmware dibusb" to download the firmware or you
149 can get it directly via
152 http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-5.0.0.11.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
154 for USB1.1 (AN2235) (a few Artec T1 devices)
155 http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-an2235-1.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
158 http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-6.0.0.5.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
162 Since the driver is in the linux kernel, activating the driver in
163 your favorite config-environment should sufficient. I recommend
164 to compile the driver as module. Hotplug does the rest.
166 1.3. Loading the drivers
168 Hotplug is able to load the driver, when it is needed (because you plugged
171 If you want to enable debug output, you have to load the driver manually and
172 from withing the dvb-kernel cvs repository.
174 first have a look, which debug level are available:
177 modinfo dib3000-common
181 modprobe dib3000-common debug=<level>
182 modprobe dib3000mb debug=<level>
183 modprobe dib3000mc debug=<level>
184 modprobe dvb-dibusb debug=<level>
188 When the driver is loaded successfully, the firmware file was in
189 the right place and the device is connected, the "Power"-LED should be
192 At this point you should be able to start a dvb-capable application. For myself
193 I used mplayer, dvbscan, tzap and kaxtv, they are working. Using the device
194 in vdr (at least the USB2.0 one) is working.
196 2. Known problems and bugs
200 2.1. Adding support for devices
202 It is not possible to determine the range of devices based on the DiBcom
203 reference designs. This is because the reference design of DiBcom can be sold
204 to thirds, without telling DiBcom (so done with the Twinhan VP7041 and
207 When you think you have a device like this and the driver does not recognizes it,
208 please send the ****load*.inf and the ****cap*.inf of the Windows driver to me.
210 Sometimes the Vendor or Product ID is identical to the ones of Twinhan, even
211 though it is not a Twinhan device (e.g. HAMA), then please send me the name
212 of the device. I will add it to this list in order to make this clear to
215 If you are familar with C you can also add the VID and PID of the device to
216 the dvb-dibusb.h-file and create a patch and send it over to me or to
217 the linux-dvb mailing list, _after_ you have tried compiling and modprobing
220 2.2. USB1.1 Bandwidth limitation
222 Most of the current supported devices are USB1.1 and thus they have a
223 maximum bandwidth of about 5-6 MBit/s when connected to a USB2.0 hub.
224 This is not enough for receiving the complete transport stream of a
225 DVB-T channel (which can be about 16 MBit/s). Normally this is not a
226 problem, if you only want to watch TV (this does not apply for HDTV),
227 but watching a channel while recording another channel on the same
228 frequency simply does not work. This applies to all USB1.1 DVB-T
229 devices, not only dibusb)
231 A special problem of the dibusb for the USB1.1 is, that the USB control
232 IC has a problem with write accesses while having MPEG2-streaming
233 enabled. When you set another pid while receiving MPEG2-TS it happens, that
234 the stream is disturbed and probably data is lost (results in distortions of
235 the video or strange beeps within the audio stream). DiBcom is preparing a
236 firmware especially for Linux which perhaps solves the problem.
238 Especially VDR users are victoms of this bug. VDR frequently requests new PIDs
239 due the automatic scanning (introduced in 1.3.x, afaik) and epg-scan. Disabling
240 these features is maybe a solution. Additionally this behaviour of VDR exceeds
241 the USB1.1 bandwidth.
244 For the USB1.1 and VDR some work has been done (patches and comments are still
245 very welcome). Maybe the problem is solved in the meantime because I now use
246 the dmx_sw_filter function instead of dmx_sw_filter_packet. I hope the
247 linux-dvb software filter is able to get the best of the garbled TS.
251 Patches, comments and suggestions are very very welcome
254 Amaury Demol (ademol@dibcom.fr) and Francois Kanounnikoff from DiBcom for
255 providing specs, code and help, on which the dvb-dibusb, dib3000mb and
258 David Matthews for identifying a new device type (Artec T1 with AN2235)
259 and for extending dibusb with remote control event handling. Thank you.
261 Alex Woods for frequently answering question about usb and dvb
262 stuff, a big thank you
264 Bernd Wagner for helping with huge bug reports and discussions.
266 Some guys on the linux-dvb mailing list for encouraging me
268 Peter Schildmann >peter.schildmann-nospam-at-web.de< for his
269 user-level firmware loader, which saves a lot of time
270 (when writing the vp7041 driver)
272 Ulf Hermenau for helping me out with traditional chinese.
274 André Smoktun and Christian Frömmel for supporting me with
275 hardware and listening to my problems very patient