Documentation for dib3000mb frontend driver and dibusb device driver ==================================================================== Copyright (C) 2004 Patrick Boettcher (patrick.boettcher@desy.de), dibusb and dib3000mb/mc drivers based on GPL code, which has Copyright (C) 2004 Amaury Demol for DiBcom (ademol@dibcom.fr) This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2. Supported devices USB1.1 ======================== Produced and reselled by Twinhan: --------------------------------- - TwinhanDTV USB-Ter DVB-T Device (VP7041) http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_3.asp - TwinhanDTV Magic Box (VP7041e) http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_4.asp - HAMA DVB-T USB device http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId*110620/action*2598 - CTS Portable (Chinese Television System) http://www.2cts.tv/ctsportable/ - Unknown USB DVB-T device with vendor ID Hyper-Paltek Produced and reselled by KWorld: -------------------------------- - KWorld V-Stream XPERT DTV DVB-T USB http://www.kworld.com.tw/en/product/DVBT-USB/DVBT-USB.html - JetWay DTV DVB-T USB http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/product/lcd-tv/DVT-USB/dtv-usb.htm - ADSTech Instant TV DVB-T USB http://www.adstech.com/products/PTV-333/intro/PTV-333_intro.asp?pid=PTV-333 Others: ------- - Ultima Electronic/Artec T1 USB TVBOX (AN2135 and AN2235) http://82.161.246.249/products-tvbox.html - Compro Videomate DVB-U2000 - DVB-T USB http://www.comprousa.com/products/vmu2000.htm - Grandtec USB DVB-T http://www.grand.com.tw/ - Avermedia AverTV DVBT USB http://www.avermedia.com/ - DiBcom USB DVB-T reference device (non-public) Supported devices USB2.0 ======================== - Twinhan MagicBox II http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_7.asp - Yakumo DVB-T mobile http://www.yakumo.de/produkte/index.php?pid=1&ag=DVB-T - DiBcom USB2.0 DVB-T reference device (non-public) 0. NEWS: 2004-12-06 - possibility for demod i2c-address probing - new usb IDs (Compro,Artec) 2004-11-23 - merged changes from DiB3000MC_ver2.1 - revised the debugging - possibility to deliver the complete TS for USB2.0 2004-11-21 - first working version of the dib3000mc/p frontend driver. 2004-11-12 - added additional remote control keys. Thanks to Uwe Hanke. 2004-11-07 - added remote control support. Thanks to David Matthews. 2004-11-05 - added support for a new devices (Grandtec/Avermedia/Artec) - merged my changes (for dib3000mb/dibusb) to the FE_REFACTORING, because it became HEAD - moved transfer control (pid filter, fifo control) from usb driver to frontend, it seems better settled there (added xfer_ops-struct) - created a common files for frontends (mc/p/mb) 2004-09-28 - added support for a new device (Unkown, vendor ID is Hyper-Paltek) 2004-09-20 - added support for a new device (Compro DVB-U2000), thanks to Amaury Demol for reporting - changed usb TS transfer method (several urbs, stopping transfer before setting a new pid) 2004-09-13 - added support for a new device (Artec T1 USB TVBOX), thanks to Christian Motschke for reporting 2004-09-05 - released the dibusb device and dib3000mb-frontend driver (old news for vp7041.c) 2004-07-15 - found out, by accident, that the device has a TUA6010XS for PLL 2004-07-12 - figured out, that the driver should also work with the CTS Portable (Chinese Television System) 2004-07-08 - firmware-extraction-2.422-problem solved, driver is now working properly with firmware extracted from 2.422 - #if for 2.6.4 (dvb), compile issue - changed firmware handling, see vp7041.txt sec 1.1 2004-07-02 - some tuner modifications, v0.1, cleanups, first public 2004-06-28 - now using the dvb_dmx_swfilter_packets, everything runs fine now 2004-06-27 - able to watch and switching channels (pre-alpha) - no section filtering yet 2004-06-06 - first TS received, but kernel oops :/ 2004-05-14 - firmware loader is working 2004-05-11 - start writing the driver 1. How to use? NOTE: This driver was developed using Linux 2.6.6., it is working with 2.6.7, 2.6.8.1, 2.6.9 . Linux 2.4.x support is not planned, but patches are very welcome. NOTE: I'm using Debian testing, so the following explaination (especially the hotplug-path) needn't match your system, but probably it will :). 1.1. Firmware The USB driver needs to download a firmware to start working. You can either use "get_dvb_firmware dibusb" to download the firmware or you can get it directly via for USB1.1 (AN2135) http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-5.0.0.11.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain for USB1.1 (AN2235) (a few Artec T1 devices) http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-an2235-1.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain for USB2.0 (FX2) http://linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/dvb-kernel/firmware/dvb-dibusb-6.0.0.5.fw?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain 1.2. Compiling Since the driver is in the linux kernel, activating the driver in your favorite config-environment should sufficient. I recommend to compile the driver as module. Hotplug does the rest. 1.3. Loading the drivers Hotplug is able to load the driver, when it is needed (because you plugged in the device). If you want to enable debug output, you have to load the driver manually and from withing the dvb-kernel cvs repository. first have a look, which debug level are available: modinfo dib3000mb modinfo dvb-dibusb modprobe dib3000mb debug= modprobe dvb-dibusb debug= should do the trick. When the driver is loaded successfully, the firmware file was in the right place and the device is connected, the "Power"-LED should be turned on. At this point you should be able to start a dvb-capable application. For myself I used mplayer, dvbscan, tzap and kaxtv, they are working. Using the device as a slave device in vdr, was not working for me. Some work has to be done (patches and comments are very welcome). 2. Known problems and bugs TODO: - signal-quality and strength calculations 2.1. Adding support for devices It is not possible to determine the range of devices based on the DiBcom reference designs. This is because the reference design of DiBcom can be sold to thirds, without telling DiBcom (so done with the Twinhan VP7041 and the HAMA device). When you think you have a device like this and the driver does not recognizes it, please send the ****load*.inf and the ****cap*.inf of the Windows driver to me. Sometimes the Vendor or Product ID is identical to the ones of Twinhan, even though it is not a Twinhan device (e.g. HAMA), then please send me the name of the device. I will add it to this list in order to make this clear to others. If you are familar with C you can also add the VID and PID of the device to the dvb-dibusb.h-file and create a patch and send it over to me or to the linux-dvb mailing list, _after_ you have tried compiling and modprobing it. 2.2. USB1.1 Bandwidth limitation Most of the current supported devices are USB1.1 and thus they have a maximum bandwidth of about 5-6 MBit/s when connected to a USB2.0 hub. This is not enough for receiving the complete transport stream of a DVB-T channel (which can be about 16 MBit/s). Normally this is not a problem, if you only want to watch TV, but watching a channel while recording another channel on the same frequency simply does not work. This applies to all USB1.1 DVB-T devices. A special problem of the dibusb for the USB1.1 is, that the USB control IC has a problem with write accesses while having MPEG2-streaming enabled. When you set another pid while receiving MPEG2-TS it happens, that the stream is disturbed and probably data is lost (results in distortions of the video or strange beeps within the audio stream). DiBcom is preparing a firmware especially for Linux which perhaps solves the problem. Especially VDR users are victoms of this bug. VDR frequently requests new PIDs due the automatic scanning (introduced in 1.3.x, afaik) and epg-scan. Disabling these features is maybe a solution. Additionally this behaviour of VDR exceeds the USB1.1 bandwidth. 2.3. Comments Patches, comments and suggestions are very very welcome 3. Acknowledgements Amaury Demol (ademol@dibcom.fr) and Francois Kanounnikoff from DiBcom for providing specs, code and help, on which the dvb-dibusb and dib3000mb are based. David Matthews for identifying a new device type (Artec T1 with AN2235) and for extending dibusb with remote control event handling. Thank you. Alex Woods for frequently answering question about usb and dvb stuff, a big thank you Bernd Wagner for helping with huge bug reports and discussions. Some guys on the linux-dvb mailing list for encouraging me Peter Schildmann >peter.schildmann-nospam-at-web.de< for his user-level firmware loader, which saves a lot of time (when writing the vp7041 driver) Ulf Hermenau for helping me out with traditional chinese. André Smoktun and Christian Frömmel for supporting me with hardware and listening to my problems very patient