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)
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 and AN2235)
50 http://82.161.246.249/products-tvbox.html
52 - Compro Videomate DVB-U2000 - DVB-T USB
53 http://www.comprousa.com/products/vmu2000.htm
56 http://www.grand.com.tw/
58 - Avermedia AverTV DVBT USB
59 http://www.avermedia.com/
61 - DiBcom USB DVB-T reference device (non-public)
64 Supported devices USB2.0
65 ========================
67 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_7.asp
70 http://www.yakumo.de/produkte/index.php?pid=1&ag=DVB-T
72 - DiBcom USB2.0 DVB-T reference device (non-public)
76 2004-12-06 - possibility for demod i2c-address probing
77 - new usb IDs (Compro,Artec)
78 2004-11-23 - merged changes from DiB3000MC_ver2.1
79 - revised the debugging
80 - possibility to deliver the complete TS for USB2.0
81 2004-11-21 - first working version of the dib3000mc/p frontend driver.
82 2004-11-12 - added additional remote control keys. Thanks to Uwe Hanke.
83 2004-11-07 - added remote control support. Thanks to David Matthews.
84 2004-11-05 - added support for a new devices (Grandtec/Avermedia/Artec)
85 - merged my changes (for dib3000mb/dibusb) to the FE_REFACTORING, because it became HEAD
86 - moved transfer control (pid filter, fifo control) from usb driver to frontend, it seems
87 better settled there (added xfer_ops-struct)
88 - created a common files for frontends (mc/p/mb)
89 2004-09-28 - added support for a new device (Unkown, vendor ID is Hyper-Paltek)
90 2004-09-20 - added support for a new device (Compro DVB-U2000), thanks
91 to Amaury Demol for reporting
92 - changed usb TS transfer method (several urbs, stopping transfer
93 before setting a new pid)
94 2004-09-13 - added support for a new device (Artec T1 USB TVBOX), thanks
95 to Christian Motschke for reporting
96 2004-09-05 - released the dibusb device and dib3000mb-frontend driver
98 (old news for vp7041.c)
99 2004-07-15 - found out, by accident, that the device has a TUA6010XS for
101 2004-07-12 - figured out, that the driver should also work with the
102 CTS Portable (Chinese Television System)
103 2004-07-08 - firmware-extraction-2.422-problem solved, driver is now working
104 properly with firmware extracted from 2.422
105 - #if for 2.6.4 (dvb), compile issue
106 - changed firmware handling, see vp7041.txt sec 1.1
107 2004-07-02 - some tuner modifications, v0.1, cleanups, first public
108 2004-06-28 - now using the dvb_dmx_swfilter_packets, everything
110 2004-06-27 - able to watch and switching channels (pre-alpha)
111 - no section filtering yet
112 2004-06-06 - first TS received, but kernel oops :/
113 2004-05-14 - firmware loader is working
114 2004-05-11 - start writing the driver
117 NOTE: This driver was developed using Linux 2.6.6.,
118 it is working with 2.6.7, 2.6.8.1, 2.6.9 .
120 Linux 2.4.x support is not planned, but patches are very welcome.
122 NOTE: I'm using Debian testing, so the following explaination (especially
123 the hotplug-path) needn't match your system, but probably it will :).
127 The USB driver needs to download a firmware to start working.
129 You can either use "get_dvb_firmware dibusb" to download the firmware or you
130 can get it directly via
133 http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-5.0.0.11.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
135 for USB1.1 (AN2235) (a few Artec T1 devices)
136 http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-an2235-1.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
139 http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-6.0.0.5.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
143 Since the driver is in the linux kernel, activating the driver in
144 your favorite config-environment should sufficient. I recommend
145 to compile the driver as module. Hotplug does the rest.
147 1.3. Loading the drivers
149 Hotplug is able to load the driver, when it is needed (because you plugged
152 If you want to enable debug output, you have to load the driver manually and
153 from withing the dvb-kernel cvs repository.
155 first have a look, which debug level are available:
160 modprobe dib3000mb debug=<level>
161 modprobe dvb-dibusb debug=<level>
165 When the driver is loaded successfully, the firmware file was in
166 the right place and the device is connected, the "Power"-LED should be
169 At this point you should be able to start a dvb-capable application. For myself
170 I used mplayer, dvbscan, tzap and kaxtv, they are working. Using the device
171 as a slave device in vdr, was not working for me. Some work has to be done
172 (patches and comments are very welcome).
174 2. Known problems and bugs
177 - signal-quality and strength calculations
179 2.1. Adding support for devices
181 It is not possible to determine the range of devices based on the DiBcom
182 reference designs. This is because the reference design of DiBcom can be sold
183 to thirds, without telling DiBcom (so done with the Twinhan VP7041 and
186 When you think you have a device like this and the driver does not recognizes it,
187 please send the ****load*.inf and the ****cap*.inf of the Windows driver to me.
189 Sometimes the Vendor or Product ID is identical to the ones of Twinhan, even
190 though it is not a Twinhan device (e.g. HAMA), then please send me the name
191 of the device. I will add it to this list in order to make this clear to
194 If you are familar with C you can also add the VID and PID of the device to
195 the dvb-dibusb.h-file and create a patch and send it over to me or to
196 the linux-dvb mailing list, _after_ you have tried compiling and modprobing
199 2.2. USB1.1 Bandwidth limitation
201 Most of the current supported devices are USB1.1 and thus they have a
202 maximum bandwidth of about 5-6 MBit/s when connected to a USB2.0 hub.
203 This is not enough for receiving the complete transport stream of a
204 DVB-T channel (which can be about 16 MBit/s). Normally this is not a
205 problem, if you only want to watch TV, but watching a channel while
206 recording another channel on the same frequency simply does not work.
207 This applies to all USB1.1 DVB-T devices.
209 A special problem of the dibusb for the USB1.1 is, that the USB control
210 IC has a problem with write accesses while having MPEG2-streaming
211 enabled. When you set another pid while receiving MPEG2-TS it happens, that
212 the stream is disturbed and probably data is lost (results in distortions of
213 the video or strange beeps within the audio stream). DiBcom is preparing a
214 firmware especially for Linux which perhaps solves the problem.
216 Especially VDR users are victoms of this bug. VDR frequently requests new PIDs
217 due the automatic scanning (introduced in 1.3.x, afaik) and epg-scan. Disabling
218 these features is maybe a solution. Additionally this behaviour of VDR exceeds
219 the USB1.1 bandwidth.
223 Patches, comments and suggestions are very very welcome
226 Amaury Demol (ademol@dibcom.fr) and Francois Kanounnikoff from DiBcom for
227 providing specs, code and help, on which the dvb-dibusb and dib3000mb are
230 David Matthews for identifying a new device type (Artec T1 with AN2235)
231 and for extending dibusb with remote control event handling. Thank you.
233 Alex Woods for frequently answering question about usb and dvb
234 stuff, a big thank you
236 Bernd Wagner for helping with huge bug reports and discussions.
238 Some guys on the linux-dvb mailing list for encouraging me
240 Peter Schildmann >peter.schildmann-nospam-at-web.de< for his
241 user-level firmware loader, which saves a lot of time
242 (when writing the vp7041 driver)
244 Ulf Hermenau for helping me out with traditional chinese.
246 André Smoktun and Christian Frömmel for supporting me with
247 hardware and listening to my problems very patient