HDTV and Channel Lineups

[sub]

We basically have to wait until Microsoft and the device manufacturers agree on how QAM should work with BDA drivers. Currently this is not defined, so the manufacturers that do QAM, use a proprietary mechanism (unknown to me) to tell their drivers to tune QAM. If anyone has a contact they can ask about this at dvico, I'm happy to look into adding support for it if they can share the info.

[dutch]

A couple of things:

a) If we knew how to do this, is it possible to add this as a plug-in, or would it have to be core?

b) Does gbpvr currently support tuning analog cable with this card?

c) What about my idea of looking at the linux driver and seeing how they're doing this?

[sub]

a) If we knew how to do this, is it possible to add this as a plug-in, or would it have to be core?

It'd need to be a change in the core code, but I'd be happy to do it if dvico would provide information on the private tuning interface in their BDA drivers.

b) Does gbpvr currently support tuning analog cable with this card?

GB-PVR only supports analog device devices with MPEG2 encoders (like PVR150 etc). The analog portion of this device isnt supported, and I have no plans to add support in the future. You *might* be able to get the analog portion working with this plugin: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=2753

c) What about my idea of looking at the linux driver and seeing how they're doing this?

No, this wont help. The linux drivers are not BDA drivers, and things are done entirely differently.

[zed]

dutch...

Some links to the AVS forums that daphatty mentioned...

Here's a thread about the Fusion 5 cards: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=545967

Here's a LONG one about the bundled software: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=588032

The home page: http://www.avsforum.com/

[daphatty]

Thanks zed. I've been dying to post those all day but I'd lose access to the forums once our internet police found out about this place. I can look but I can't touch... *sob*

[dutch]

I hate to beat a horse and hate beating a dead one even more. But, it just seems to me that if the linux folk can get this card to tune QAM, then we ought to be able to look at how, and do the same thing. Now, I recognize that I don't know what BDA does to this equation, and I know that linux does QAM through DVB (but, isn't QAM the same as DVB-T in the US?) so I'm sure I'm wrong, but it just seems that a) the HW can do it and b) the linux people know how to make it do so. Sorry to be annoying, just interested in adding to this.

[sub]

The significant difference is that on linux they have developed their own drivers for this device. These drivers are capable of instructing the device to tune QAM channels.

On Windows, we are using dvico's drivers. Their drivers do not (publically) expose a mechanism for to tune QAM channels.

Your only options are:
a) hope that dvico enhance their drivers to offer QAM tuning (or make info available about how it can be done using existing private interfaces which are hidden within the drivers)
b) develop our own drivers that support QAM. I'm certainly not going take this task on. I dont own one of these devices, and the country I live in doesnt use ATSC HTDV (and I dont really care about it that much). If you want to take on the task, and manage to get it working, I'm sure there would be a few happy users. I'd recommend you need previous experience developing device drivers on Windows to take this task on - its not for the faint hearted.

But, it just seems to me that if the linux folk can get this card to tune QAM, then we ought to be able to look at how, and do the same thing.

This would only help you if you were doing option B from above.

In summary, the hardware is capable of tuning QAM, but the drivers dont provide a mechanism to do this.

[dutch]

But, I'm watching MNF in HDTV via digital cable / QAM right now through their FusionHDTV software which I'm assuming uses their driver. Any reason to think this means their driver doesn't support it? More likely is that it does, but they don't tell us what the secret handshake is - correct? I'd be willing to take on this driver development but wouldn't expect much as I've never written a drive before. Do you have any resources for BDA driver dev specs?

[sub]

Yes, this is where the "(publically)" and "(or make info available about how it can be done using existing private interfaces which are hidden within the drivers)" comments from my previous reply comes into play.

Do you have any resources for BDA driver dev specs?

They all available as part of the Microsoft DDK.

[-stattik-]

Dutch,

Perhaps you could persuade DVICO to publish the way to enable QAM tuning in the BDA drivers. It would seem to only help them as they would have more people buying their hardware for apps like GBPVR.