1 Documentation for dvb-usb-framework module and its devices
2
3 Idea behind the dvb-usb-framework
4 =================================
5
6 In March 2005 I got the new Twinhan USB2.0 DVB-T device. They provided specs and a firmware.
7
8 Quite keen I wanted to put the driver (with some quirks of course) into dibusb.
9 After reading some specs and doing some USB snooping, it realized, that the
10 dibusb-driver would be a complete mess afterwards. So I decided to do it in a
11 different way: With the help of a dvb-usb-framework.
12
13 The framework provides generic functions (mostly kernel API calls), such as:
14
15 - Transport Stream URB handling in conjunction with dvb-demux-feed-control
16 (bulk and isoc are supported)
17 - registering the device for the DVB-API
18 - registering an I2C-adapter if applicable
19 - remote-control/input-device handling
20 - firmware requesting and loading (currently just for the Cypress USB
21 controllers)
22 - other functions/methods which can be shared by several drivers (such as
23 functions for bulk-control-commands)
24 - TODO: a I2C-chunker. It creates device-specific chunks of register-accesses
25 depending on length of a register and the number of values that can be
26 multi-written and multi-read.
27
28 The source code of the particular DVB USB devices does just the communication
29 with the device via the bus. The connection between the DVB-API-functionality
30 is done via callbacks, assigned in a static device-description (struct
31 dvb_usb_device) each device-driver has to have.
32
33 For an example have a look in drivers/media/dvb/dvb-usb/vp7045*.
34
35 Objective is to migrate all the usb-devices (dibusb, cinergyT2, maybe the
36 ttusb; flexcop-usb already benefits from the generic flexcop-device) to use
37 the dvb-usb-lib.
38
39 TODO: dynamic enabling and disabling of the pid-filter in regard to number of
40 feeds requested.
41
42 Supported devices
43 ========================
44
45 See the LinuxTV DVB Wiki at www.linuxtv.org for a complete list of
46 cards/drivers/firmwares:
47
48 http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_USB
49
50 0. History & News:
51 2005-06-30 - added support for WideView WT-220U (Thanks to Steve Chang)
52 2005-05-30 - added basic isochronous support to the dvb-usb-framework
53 added support for Conexant Hybrid reference design and Nebula DigiTV USB
54 2005-04-17 - all dibusb devices ported to make use of the dvb-usb-framework
55 2005-04-02 - re-enabled and improved remote control code.
56 2005-03-31 - ported the Yakumo/Hama/Typhoon DVB-T USB2.0 device to dvb-usb.
57 2005-03-30 - first commit of the dvb-usb-module based on the dibusb-source. First device is a new driver for the
58 TwinhanDTV Alpha / MagicBox II USB2.0-only DVB-T device.
59
60 (change from dvb-dibusb to dvb-usb)
61 2005-03-28 - added support for the AVerMedia AverTV DVB-T USB2.0 device (Thanks to Glen Harris and Jiun-Kuei Jung, AVerMedia)
62 2005-03-14 - added support for the Typhoon/Yakumo/HAMA DVB-T mobile USB2.0
63 2005-02-11 - added support for the KWorld/ADSTech Instant DVB-T USB2.0. Thanks a lot to Joachim von Caron
64 2005-02-02 - added support for the Hauppauge Win-TV Nova-T USB2
65 2005-01-31 - distorted streaming is gone for USB1.1 devices
66 2005-01-13 - moved the mirrored pid_filter_table back to dvb-dibusb
67 - first almost working version for HanfTek UMT-010
68 - found out, that Yakumo/HAMA/Typhoon are predecessors of the HanfTek UMT-010
69 2005-01-10 - refactoring completed, now everything is very delightful
70 - tuner quirks for some weird devices (Artec T1 AN2235 device has sometimes a
71 Panasonic Tuner assembled). Tunerprobing implemented. Thanks a lot to Gunnar Wittich.
72 2004-12-29 - after several days of struggling around bug of no returning URBs fixed.
73 2004-12-26 - refactored the dibusb-driver, splitted into separate files
74 - i2c-probing enabled
75 2004-12-06 - possibility for demod i2c-address probing
76 - new usb IDs (Compro, Artec)
77 2004-11-23 - merged changes from DiB3000MC_ver2.1
78 - revised the debugging
79 - possibility to deliver the complete TS for USB2.0
80 2004-11-21 - first working version of the dib3000mc/p frontend driver.
81 2004-11-12 - added additional remote control keys. Thanks to Uwe Hanke.
82 2004-11-07 - added remote control support. Thanks to David Matthews.
83 2004-11-05 - added support for a new devices (Grandtec/Avermedia/Artec)
84 - merged my changes (for dib3000mb/dibusb) to the FE_REFACTORING, because it became HEAD
85 - moved transfer control (pid filter, fifo control) from usb driver to frontend, it seems
86 better settled there (added xfer_ops-struct)
87 - created a common files for frontends (mc/p/mb)
88 2004-09-28 - added support for a new device (Unkown, vendor ID is Hyper-Paltek)
89 2004-09-20 - added support for a new device (Compro DVB-U2000), thanks
90 to Amaury Demol for reporting
91 - changed usb TS transfer method (several urbs, stopping transfer
92 before setting a new pid)
93 2004-09-13 - added support for a new device (Artec T1 USB TVBOX), thanks
94 to Christian Motschke for reporting
95 2004-09-05 - released the dibusb device and dib3000mb-frontend driver
96
97 (old news for vp7041.c)
98 2004-07-15 - found out, by accident, that the device has a TUA6010XS for
99 PLL
100 2004-07-12 - figured out, that the driver should also work with the
101 CTS Portable (Chinese Television System)
102 2004-07-08 - firmware-extraction-2.422-problem solved, driver is now working
103 properly with firmware extracted from 2.422
104 - #if for 2.6.4 (dvb), compile issue
105 - changed firmware handling, see vp7041.txt sec 1.1
106 2004-07-02 - some tuner modifications, v0.1, cleanups, first public
107 2004-06-28 - now using the dvb_dmx_swfilter_packets, everything
108 runs fine now
109 2004-06-27 - able to watch and switching channels (pre-alpha)
110 - no section filtering yet
111 2004-06-06 - first TS received, but kernel oops :/
112 2004-05-14 - firmware loader is working
113 2004-05-11 - start writing the driver
114
115 1. How to use?
116 1.1. Firmware
117
118 Most of the USB drivers need to download a firmware to the device before start
119 working.
120
121 Have a look at the Wikipage for the DVB-USB-drivers to find out, which firmware
122 you need for your device:
123
124 http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB_USB
125
126 1.2. Compiling
127
128 Since the driver is in the linux kernel, activating the driver in
129 your favorite config-environment should sufficient. I recommend
130 to compile the driver as module. Hotplug does the rest.
131
132 If you use dvb-kernel enter the build-2.6 directory run 'make' and 'insmod.sh
133 load' afterwards.
134
135 1.3. Loading the drivers
136
137 Hotplug is able to load the driver, when it is needed (because you plugged
138 in the device).
139
140 If you want to enable debug output, you have to load the driver manually and
141 from withing the dvb-kernel cvs repository.
142
143 first have a look, which debug level are available:
144
145 modinfo dvb-usb
146 modinfo dvb-usb-vp7045
147 etc.
148
149 modprobe dvb-usb debug=<level>
150 modprobe dvb-usb-vp7045 debug=<level>
151 etc.
152
153 should do the trick.
154
155 When the driver is loaded successfully, the firmware file was in
156 the right place and the device is connected, the "Power"-LED should be
157 turned on.
158
159 At this point you should be able to start a dvb-capable application. I'm use
160 (t|s)zap, mplayer and dvbscan to test the basics. VDR-xine provides the
161 long-term test scenario.
162
163 2. Known problems and bugs
164
165 - Don't remove the USB device while running an DVB application, your system
166 will go crazy or die most likely.
167
168 2.1. Adding support for devices
169
170 TODO
171
172 2.2. USB1.1 Bandwidth limitation
173
174 A lot of the currently supported devices are USB1.1 and thus they have a
175 maximum bandwidth of about 5-6 MBit/s when connected to a USB2.0 hub.
176 This is not enough for receiving the complete transport stream of a
177 DVB-T channel (which is about 16 MBit/s). Normally this is not a
178 problem, if you only want to watch TV (this does not apply for HDTV),
179 but watching a channel while recording another channel on the same
180 frequency simply does not work very well. This applies to all USB1.1
181 DVB-T devices, not just the dvb-usb-devices)
182
183 The bug, where the TS is distorted by a heavy usage of the device is gone
184 definitely. All dvb-usb-devices I was using (Twinhan, Kworld, DiBcom) are
185 working like charm now with VDR. Sometimes I even was able to record a channel
186 and watch another one.
187
188 2.3. Comments
189
190 Patches, comments and suggestions are very very welcome.
191
192 3. Acknowledgements
193 Amaury Demol (ademol@dibcom.fr) and Francois Kanounnikoff from DiBcom for
194 providing specs, code and help, on which the dvb-dibusb, dib3000mb and
195 dib3000mc are based.
196
197 David Matthews for identifying a new device type (Artec T1 with AN2235)
198 and for extending dibusb with remote control event handling. Thank you.
199
200 Alex Woods for frequently answering question about usb and dvb
201 stuff, a big thank you.
202
203 Bernd Wagner for helping with huge bug reports and discussions.
204
205 Gunnar Wittich and Joachim von Caron for their trust for providing
206 root-shells on their machines to implement support for new devices.
207
208 Allan Third and Michael Hutchinson for their help to write the Nebula
209 digitv-driver.
210
211 Glen Harris for bringing up, that there is a new dibusb-device and Jiun-Kuei
212 Jung from AVerMedia who kindly provided a special firmware to get the device
213 up and running in Linux.
214
215 Jennifer Chen, Jeff and Jack from Twinhan for kindly supporting by
216 writing the vp7045-driver.
217
218 Steve Chang from WideView for providing information for new devices and
219 firmware files.
220
221 Michael Paxton for submitting remote control keymaps.
222
223 Some guys on the linux-dvb mailing list for encouraging me.
224
225 Peter Schildmann >peter.schildmann-nospam-at-web.de< for his
226 user-level firmware loader, which saves a lot of time
227 (when writing the vp7041 driver)
228
229 Ulf Hermenau for helping me out with traditional chinese.
230
231 André Smoktun and Christian Frömmel for supporting me with
232 hardware and listening to my problems very patiently.
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