[linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Devin Heitmueller]

For those of you waiting for Linux support for the Pinnacle 80e, I
have some bad news:  it's not going to happen.

After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding support
for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux tda18271 driver,
incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver source, and doing all
the testing, Micronas has effectively killed the project.  They
decided that their intellectual property was too valuable to make
available their reference driver code in source code form.  Even
worse, because I've seen the sources I am effectively prevented from
writing any sort of reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.

Obviously, I would have preferred they told me this *before* I spent
all the time doing the work, but there's not a whole lot I can do
about that now....

I figured I should let those of you know who have been waiting for
this support (in particular those I told that support was completed
and just waiting on Micronas's legal department).

I wouldn't suggest buying any devices that make use of the drx-j,
drx-k, or drx-d devices under the expectation that support for those
chipsets will be available under Linux at some point.  In terms of
Pinnacle products, stick with the 801e (or the 800e or 801e-se).

It's worth noting that the people at Pinnacle have been great in their
supporting me in my efforts to add Linux support for their products.
They provided sample hardware, engineering level support, and
connected me with the right people at the chipset vendors.  The fact
that this device cannot be supported is in no way their fault.

Also, I would like to take a minute and express my thanks to Michael
Krufky in particular for taking the time to help me work through
numerous issues such as getting that first tuning lock on the
tda18271.

I wish I had better news, but that's the status.

Devin

-- 
Devin J. Heitmueller
http://www.devinheitmueller.com
AIM: devinheitmueller

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Markus Rechberger]

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Devin Heitmueller
<devin.heitmueller@gmail.com> wrote:
> For those of you waiting for Linux support for the Pinnacle 80e, I
> have some bad news:  it's not going to happen.
>
> After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding support
> for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux tda18271 driver,
> incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver source, and doing all
> the testing, Micronas has effectively killed the project.  They
> decided that their intellectual property was too valuable to make
> available their reference driver code in source code form.  Even
> worse, because I've seen the sources I am effectively prevented from
> writing any sort of reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.
>

Not so fast, even though I wasn't involved at knocking this down.
We have a custom player now which is capable of directly interfacing the
I2C chips from those devices. Another feature is that it supports all the
features of those devices, there won't be any need of different applications
anymore. There's also the thought about publishing an SDK, most applications
have problems of detecting all corresponding devicenodes which are required
for those devices anyway. i2c-dev is an already available and accepted
kernel interface
to userland just as usbfs is.

best regards,
Markus Rechberger

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Devin Heitmueller]

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Markus Rechberger <mrechberger@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Devin Heitmueller
> <devin.heitmueller@gmail.com> wrote:
>> For those of you waiting for Linux support for the Pinnacle 80e, I
>> have some bad news:  it's not going to happen.
>>
>> After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding support
>> for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux tda18271 driver,
>> incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver source, and doing all
>> the testing, Micronas has effectively killed the project.  They
>> decided that their intellectual property was too valuable to make
>> available their reference driver code in source code form.  Even
>> worse, because I've seen the sources I am effectively prevented from
>> writing any sort of reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.
>>
>
> Not so fast, even though I wasn't involved at knocking this down.
> We have a custom player now which is capable of directly interfacing the
> I2C chips from those devices. Another feature is that it supports all the
> features of those devices, there won't be any need of different applications
> anymore. There's also the thought about publishing an SDK, most applications
> have problems of detecting all corresponding devicenodes which are required
> for those devices anyway. i2c-dev is an already available and accepted
> kernel interface
> to userland just as usbfs is.

Hello Markus,

Yeah, I saw the screenshots for Empia eeeTV on your website a few days
ago - it looks like a neat application and there is certainly a place
for a well written application to watch TV.

For those of you not familiar, Markus is working on his own dedicated
TV watching application for Linux and BSD:
http://mcentral.de/wiki/index.php5/ISDB-T

I agree that it is certainly true that a closed-source application
could be used with the Pinnacle 80e (since such application would be
able to accommodate the Micronas binary-only licensing), however this
approach does restrict access to those devices to that specific
application and is not a more general solution that would work with
whatever application the user wants to use (such as MythTV, Kaffeine,
mplayer, etc).

So for many people, this could be a viable approach.

Regards,

Devin

-- 
Devin J. Heitmueller
http://www.devinheitmueller.com
AIM: devinheitmueller

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Markus Rechberger]

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 12:21 AM, Devin Heitmueller
<devin.heitmueller@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Markus Rechberger <mrechberger@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Devin Heitmueller
>> <devin.heitmueller@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> For those of you waiting for Linux support for the Pinnacle 80e, I
>>> have some bad news:  it's not going to happen.
>>>
>>> After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding support
>>> for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux tda18271 driver,
>>> incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver source, and doing all
>>> the testing, Micronas has effectively killed the project.  They
>>> decided that their intellectual property was too valuable to make
>>> available their reference driver code in source code form.  Even
>>> worse, because I've seen the sources I am effectively prevented from
>>> writing any sort of reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.
>>>
>>
>> Not so fast, even though I wasn't involved at knocking this down.
>> We have a custom player now which is capable of directly interfacing the
>> I2C chips from those devices. Another feature is that it supports all the
>> features of those devices, there won't be any need of different applications
>> anymore. There's also the thought about publishing an SDK, most applications
>> have problems of detecting all corresponding devicenodes which are required
>> for those devices anyway. i2c-dev is an already available and accepted
>> kernel interface
>> to userland just as usbfs is.
>
> Hello Markus,
>
> Yeah, I saw the screenshots for Empia eeeTV on your website a few days
> ago - it looks like a neat application and there is certainly a place
> for a well written application to watch TV.
>
> For those of you not familiar, Markus is working on his own dedicated
> TV watching application for Linux and BSD:
> http://mcentral.de/wiki/index.php5/ISDB-T
>
> I agree that it is certainly true that a closed-source application
> could be used with the Pinnacle 80e (since such application would be
> able to accommodate the Micronas binary-only licensing), however this
> approach does restrict access to those devices to that specific
> application and is not a more general solution that would work with
> whatever application the user wants to use (such as MythTV, Kaffeine,
> mplayer, etc).
>
> So for many people, this could be a viable approach.
>

that for the plan of the SDK exists, which can easily be adapted.

Markus

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[BOUWSMA Barry]

On Tue, 2 Dec 2008, Devin Heitmueller wrote:

> Obviously, I would have preferred they told me this *before* I spent
> all the time doing the work, but there's not a whole lot I can do

Let me personally extend my gratitude and thanks to you for
any and all work you've done, and I'm sure that others feel
the same way.  And that goes for anyone else too who
contributes, no matter whether I can leech from your hard
labour or not.


> I wouldn't suggest buying any devices that make use of the drx-j,
> drx-k, or drx-d devices under the expectation that support for those
> chipsets will be available under Linux at some point.  In terms of

I've just spent quite a bit of time kicking myself rather
mercilessly around the face and groin area, and I must say,
it's rather painful.  Oh well, you lose some and I lose
some.


Which brings me to ask, in case someone out there might
know -- is anyone familiar with the
Pinnacle PCTV Quatro 73A, DVB-T/DVB-C/analog, USB 2.0
device, recently introduced, primarily in german-speaking
areas of europe and nearby?

Would this be yet another Empia+Micronas product, similar
to the other two I've asked about?


thanks
barry bouwsma
wanders off muttering about how dissatisfying it is to
throw a USB stick out the window; oh how I miss being able
to hurl a rack filled with valves (tubes for you wrong-
pondians) and chokes and real transformers leaking oily
PCBs down to the parking lot below.  I mean, I could fill
the hole made there by Real Equipment with dozens of these
unsupported USB sticks.  And usually I could just clamp
a bus-bar back onto the Real Equipment and pass a few
hundred amperes through it like new, after hauling it back
up the twenty flights of stairs.  mutter grumble

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Andy Walls]

On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 01:32 +0100, BOUWSMA Barry wrote:

> barry bouwsma
> wanders off muttering about how dissatisfying it is to
> throw a USB stick out the window; oh how I miss being able
> to hurl a rack filled with valves (tubes for you wrong-
> pondians) and chokes and real transformers leaking oily
> PCBs down to the parking lot below.

Don't forget about the mercury in those smashed tubes, um, valves.

Man, it's been years since I've seen the blue glow of a *real* diode.

Regards,
Andy



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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Simon Kenyon]

Devin Heitmueller wrote:
> After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding support
> for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux tda18271 driver,
> incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver source, and doing all
> the testing, Micronas has effectively killed the project.  They
> decided that their intellectual property was too valuable to make
> available their reference driver code in source code form.  Even
> worse, because I've seen the sources I am effectively prevented from
> writing any sort of reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.
>   
do we have a list of all the cards that have micronas hardware in them
if so we should put it on the wiki and advise people to choose other 
hardware

the days of closed-source are over
--
simon

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Nico Sabbi]

On Wednesday 03 December 2008 00:21:08 Devin Heitmueller wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Markus Rechberger 
<mrechberger@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Devin Heitmueller
> >
> > <devin.heitmueller@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> For those of you waiting for Linux support for the Pinnacle 80e,
> >> I have some bad news:  it's not going to happen.
> >>
> >> After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding
> >> support for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux
> >> tda18271 driver, incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver
> >> source, and doing all the testing, Micronas has effectively
> >> killed the project.  They decided that their intellectual
> >> property was too valuable to make available their reference
> >> driver code in source code form.  Even worse, because I've seen
> >> the sources I am effectively prevented from writing any sort of
> >> reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.
> >
> > Not so fast, even though I wasn't involved at knocking this down.
> > We have a custom player now which is capable of directly
> > interfacing the I2C chips from those devices. Another feature is
> > that it supports all the features of those devices, there won't
> > be any need of different applications anymore. There's also the
> > thought about publishing an SDK, most applications have problems
> > of detecting all corresponding devicenodes which are required for
> > those devices anyway. i2c-dev is an already available and
> > accepted kernel interface
> > to userland just as usbfs is.
>
> Hello Markus,
>
> Yeah, I saw the screenshots for Empia eeeTV on your website a few
> days ago - it looks like a neat application and there is certainly
> a place for a well written application to watch TV.
>
> For those of you not familiar, Markus is working on his own
> dedicated TV watching application for Linux and BSD:
> http://mcentral.de/wiki/index.php5/ISDB-T
>
> I agree that it is certainly true that a closed-source application
> could be used with the Pinnacle 80e (since such application would
> be able to accommodate the Micronas binary-only licensing), however
> this approach does restrict access to those devices to that
> specific application and is not a more general solution that would
> work with whatever application the user wants to use (such as
> MythTV, Kaffeine, mplayer, etc).
>
> So for many people, this could be a viable approach.
>
> Regards,
>
> Devin

what makes Micronas believe that in order to have the High Privilege
of using their products bought with their money people are willing to
sacrifice their freedom and hope that someone will adapt
existing players? I can tell you with absolute certainty that mplayer
will never adapt and I will reject any (unlikely to come) patch to
support that library

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Darren Salt]

I demand that BOUWSMA Barry may or may not have written...

[snip]
> wanders off muttering about how dissatisfying it is to throw a USB stick
> out the window; oh how I miss being able to hurl a rack filled with valves
> (tubes for you wrong-pondians) and chokes and real transformers leaking
> oily PCBs down to the parking lot below.

ITYM "down to the car park below". ;-)

(OTOH, at least we know to avoid these devices. And who to avoid when the
pointy-haired ones interfere, as I presume has happened here...)

[snip]
-- 
| Darren Salt    | linux or ds at              | nr. Ashington, | Toon
| RISC OS, Linux | youmustbejoking,demon,co,uk | Northumberland | Army
| + Buy less and make it last longer.         INDUSTRY CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING.

If you prepare for something that can go wrong, something else will instead.

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Christophe Thommeret]

Le mercredi 3 décembre 2008 11:23:14 Nico Sabbi, vous avez écrit :
> On Wednesday 03 December 2008 00:21:08 Devin Heitmueller wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 6:10 PM, Markus Rechberger
>
> <mrechberger@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 11:55 PM, Devin Heitmueller
> > >
> > > <devin.heitmueller@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> For those of you waiting for Linux support for the Pinnacle 80e,
> > >> I have some bad news:  it's not going to happen.
> > >>
> > >> After investing over 100 hours doing the driver work, adding
> > >> support for the Empia em2874, integrating with the Linux
> > >> tda18271 driver, incorporating the Micronas drx reference driver
> > >> source, and doing all the testing, Micronas has effectively
> > >> killed the project.  They decided that their intellectual
> > >> property was too valuable to make available their reference
> > >> driver code in source code form.  Even worse, because I've seen
> > >> the sources I am effectively prevented from writing any sort of
> > >> reverse engineered driver for the drx-j.
> > >
> > > Not so fast, even though I wasn't involved at knocking this down.
> > > We have a custom player now which is capable of directly
> > > interfacing the I2C chips from those devices. Another feature is
> > > that it supports all the features of those devices, there won't
> > > be any need of different applications anymore. There's also the
> > > thought about publishing an SDK, most applications have problems
> > > of detecting all corresponding devicenodes which are required for
> > > those devices anyway. i2c-dev is an already available and
> > > accepted kernel interface
> > > to userland just as usbfs is.
> >
> > Hello Markus,
> >
> > Yeah, I saw the screenshots for Empia eeeTV on your website a few
> > days ago - it looks like a neat application and there is certainly
> > a place for a well written application to watch TV.
> >
> > For those of you not familiar, Markus is working on his own
> > dedicated TV watching application for Linux and BSD:
> > http://mcentral.de/wiki/index.php5/ISDB-T
> >
> > I agree that it is certainly true that a closed-source application
> > could be used with the Pinnacle 80e (since such application would
> > be able to accommodate the Micronas binary-only licensing), however
> > this approach does restrict access to those devices to that
> > specific application and is not a more general solution that would
> > work with whatever application the user wants to use (such as
> > MythTV, Kaffeine, mplayer, etc).
> >
> > So for many people, this could be a viable approach.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Devin
>
> what makes Micronas believe that in order to have the High Privilege
> of using their products bought with their money people are willing to
> sacrifice their freedom and hope that someone will adapt
> existing players? I can tell you with absolute certainty that mplayer
> will never adapt and I will reject any (unlikely to come) patch to
> support that library

Ack.
Anyway, such a lib will never get its way in Linux distributions.
There is lots of good hardware with linuxtv drivers around.
Maybe someone should tell Micronas that what they are looking for is called 
microsoft.

Giving a reference driver to Devin to say latter "aha, you are damned now" is 
not only unpolite but also uncivilized. 

-- 
Christophe Thommeret


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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[BOUWSMA Barry]

On Wed, 3 Dec 2008, Darren Salt wrote:

> > (tubes for you wrong-pondians) and chokes and real transformers leaking
> > oily PCBs down to the parking lot below.
> 
> ITYM "down to the car park below". ;-)

I say guv', I do believe my true roots (routes for all youse'all 
deep southerners and Aussies) are showing...

Damn you Clarkson; if you were a fan of pushbikes, I'd be
watching your show and picking up the right terms rather than
being the poseur I've been outed as, waiting for the latest
repeats of Family Guy on BBC3, instead of a Beeching doku on
BBC4 that's more depressing than uplifting these days...


Anyway, my cunning ploy to keep quiet rather than blurting
out `12AX7 !!!' as a counterpoint to the claim of smashed tubes
has been thwarted.  `Nuvistor' would have revealed me not to
be the old bearded apple that I make myself out to be, while
I suppose I could redeem myself by claiming that senility keeps
me from reciting the tube/valve lineup of the bakelite radio
receiver, only one tube of which actually delivered a soothing
orange glow, that hummed menacingly at me as I tuned in the
Grand Ole Opry on WSM by gaslight.  Ah, the days of dried-up
electrolytic and paper condensers (capacitors for those who
grew up near me and regret it).

Once again I fell asleep reliving my past, thanks to Wackypedia.

It is either a sign of recovery, or senility, or alcohol abuse,
that not only can I not recall the markings on all the metal
tubes in said radio, but that upon seeing designations such as
0A2, 0B3, and friends, I cannot for the life of me remember
either which one(s) I was using, nor in what particular device,
or where, or how, or anything.

Sadly `6L6' and `6550' and too many other 6-foo and 12-foo
numbers not only brought back memories but also reminded me
that today I can't even draw a schematic of the home-built
devices using those, which I had to repair.  With enough beer,
I hope I can kill off those brane cells, as I seem to have been
unable to recycle them into something useful.

Worst of all, the dream I just had took me back to those days,
in a surreal reliving of my radio experience mixed with a modern-day
rave.


> (OTOH, at least we know to avoid these devices. And who to avoid when the
> pointy-haired ones interfere, as I presume has happened here...)

To get back on-topic from my perilous detour down memory lane^W
trodden mudpath, the sad thing is that, at least for me, it
seems the Micronas products of interest have somewhat of a
monopoly position.

In my case, lacking a DVB-C receiver which I'd like to try, four
products with USB2 ability returned by a price comparison site
are known or I suspect contain Micronas products.  The one which
probably does not has the added expense of including a (for me)
unnecessary CI slot.  But could have been a better choice, in
hindsight.

If I am to believe what I've read about ATSC, there's a problem
with multipath interference (for which DVB-T uses the guard
interval, also used to build single-frequency-networks which I
expect them Merkins see no need for), and Micronas' press
releases proclaim their ability to cope with this multipath.

I look at this somewhat like I did the ATI/nVidia video card
debate some years back, when I decided I wanted a card capable
of XvMC MPEG-2 hardware decoding to allow my 200MHz-ish Pentium
machines to be able to display smoothly videos recorded from
DVB.  As a PCI card (no AGP slot in the machines I had recovered
from the dumpster/skip).

At that time, the only choice was to use the closed nVidia
drivers, which I did, and quite happily for my limited usage.
Yes, I've read that others have complained about the stability
and such, but I never experienced problems, and I was able to
watch smooth (modulo generally interlaced 576i source) video, 
without dropping frames.


Would I use the same today in the case of Micronas, should
they release binary blobs that could be interfaced at a low
level using standard demodulator calls?  Probably -- I have
no other choice as a foolish early-adopter, than to watch my
USB stick be intercepted by a raven while demonstrating 9,8m/s
which will then repeat the process in an attempt to get at
the juicy walnut meat that has to be hidden inside.

But as far as a higher-level application that, as a Unix
beardy-weirdie, I'd probably never use, limiting myself to
`scan' and `dvbstream' for my purposes?  Hmmm...


If I could get the equivalent of the drx3973d.ko or related
foo.o files that I've built, except for the particular demods
in my device, I'd be happier than today.  I'm assuming I'd
need the foo.o files to get the .ko file, else I'd be tied
to a particular kernel version, which already causes me
headaches.


I'd say that the proper course of action would be for me to
grab a pitchfork and head to Zuerich, but I'd probably be
arrested for having flushed a toilet after 22h, and that's
not their operative headquarters anyway.

So off it is instead to Freiburg im Breisgau, but I'm highly
likely to be distracted by the lure of the Kaiserstuhl and
take my pitchfork instead into the wine fields and spend my
lynchin'-an'-tarrin'-an'-featherin' time preparing the
fields for next year, harvesting Eiswein or Trockenbeerenauslese,
and drinking to try to kill off those brane cells that still
are imprinted with painful memories of obsolete hardware and
incorrect usage of the Queen's mother tongue, or, as them 
europeans says it, livin' life like it's meant ta be lived.

And if tonight (or tomorrow, or whenever I pass out) I dream
about that ENIAC in my workshop, it's time to break out the
slivovice, damn brane cells.  Time to stop living.  In the past.


chin chin,
barry bouwsma
sorry, what's that?  oh yes, I will in fact shut up and beggar
off now, you're very welcome

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Re: [linux-dvb] Pinnacle 80e support: not going to happen...

[Devin Heitmueller]

Thanks to everyone for their support, and of course to Barry for
several incoherent multi-page rants.  :-)

A couple of things worth clarifying based on people's comments:

In all fairness to Micronas, the people who provided the datasheets
and reference driver source were unaware of the Micronas corporate
position.  They claim to have been surprised as I was when the lawyers
and management came back and denied the request, and I have no reason
not to believe them.  That said, I wish that had happened about six
weeks earlier instead of being reassured "Your ongoing efforts will
not be lost, so please proceed."

If there was any confusion regarding my intentions, I will not be
releasing a binary driver for this device.  I couldn't legally do it
even if I wanted to (but rest assured, I don't), since it would
require me to include GPL'd headers.

On that note, maybe some developers who hold linux-dvb copyrights
should reach out and have a conversation with Asus, since they seem to
be shipping a binary drx-j and dib0700 driver with the eeePC, and I
can't imagine any way they could be doing this without violating the
GPL.

Regarding Markus's video player, I wish him well in his effort, but I
cannot imagine any open source developers wanting to use an SDK to
hook into his commercial, closed source video player application that
is locked down to only work with Empia based devices.

As to which products are affected, I don't have a list but in terms of
the drx-j, the only products I know of are the Pinnacle 80e and the
Asus U3100.  In terms of the drx-k and drx-d, I don't really keep
track of DVB products since I'm in the US, but I'm sure a google
search will tell people (and feel free to update the linux-dvb wiki).
If you're in the US market looking for an USB based device, just stick
with the fourteen devices in the wiki that are currently supported.

On the upside, thanks to Pinnacle and Empia, we now have full support
for the em2874 in the mainline as well as a bunch of other fixes and
cleanup of the in-kernel em28xx driver.  So the next em2874 based
device that comes along should be trivial to add support for (and if
it doesn't "just work", email me and I will *make* it work)...

Obviously this whole situation has taken it's toll on me personally,
so I'm going to take a break from linux-dvb for a while.  Perhaps I'll
do some work on Kaffeine....

Regards,

Devin

-- 
Devin J. Heitmueller
http://www.devinheitmueller.com
AIM: devinheitmueller

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