[pvrusb2] Hauppauge HVR 1950

Sat May 17 11:55:57 CDT 2008

I tried v4l-dvb latest version on my system with HVR1950 plugged in (I
put all of modules inside /lib/modules/xxxx/extra folder), and added
"inmod pvrusb2.ko" in my startup scripts. From the log,
usb_register_driver was called, but not usb_probe_interface. When I
checked the output of "cat /proc/bus/usb/devices", it showed HVR-1950's
"   driver=(None)". Do I need to insert other modules from v4l-dvb
package?

I tried standalone package(20080120) running on my system as well, I got
the same result. I saw HVR-1950 usb device from proc's usb/device, but
usb_probe_interface was not called. Do I miss something here?

-----Original Message-----
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Subject: pvrusb2 Digest, Vol 33, Issue 7

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Hauppauge HVR 1950 (Mike Isely)
   2. Re: Feature Misconception of HVR-1950? (Mike Isely)
   3. Re: Feature Misconception of HVR-1950? (Mike Isely)
   4. Re: Maybe what a I really want is a Hauppauge HD PVR!?
      (Mike Isely)
   5. Re: Feature Misconception of HVR-1950? (roger)
   6. Re: Maybe what a I really want is a Hauppauge HD PVR!? (roger)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 22:27:10 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mike Isely <isely at isely.net>
Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] Hauppauge HVR 1950
To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver <pvrusb2 at isely.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0805152215480.9349 at cnc.isely.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, 14 May 2008, Tina Ning wrote:

> Mike,
> 
>  
> 
> I am starting a project that I need to port Hauppauge HVR1950 to my
> broadcom Linux 2.6.18 system. Since I just started up, I hope you can
> provide me your guidance:
> 
> 1)       what kind of drivers I need to have in order to run the
driver
> 
>       From Hauppauge web site, I saw it needs to have cx2341x driver.
> And my kernel contains the driver(might not working though).
> 

You need the pvrusb2 driver and various bits from v4l-dvb, all of which 
is already available.

>  
> 
> 2)       What approach will be best for me to start? I saw your web
site
> that you provided three choices, standalone, v4L and in kernel. 
> 
> i)                     Standalone: I am not sure if standalone is the
> good approach or not. I saw your new patch 20080120 has supported
> HVR-1950 already. This seems a good approach for me. The only question
> is if I still need its firmware or not. If yes, where can I find
HVR1950
> firmware? Is it usable for Brtoadcom Linux Kernel?

Support for this driver is very very new.  That causes some additional 
constraints.  And while the driver support is there, I haven't updated 
the documentation yet to cover this device.  That unfortunately is 
probably part of the confusion here.

The standalone driver will work, but it needs to be built against a 
recent enough kernel that has the needed additional support.  
Unfortunately 2.6.25 is not recent enough.  You will need 2.6.26.

> 
> ii)                   In kernel: My kernel has cx2341x driver as well
as
> pvrusb2 package. Do I need other drivers? Is it possible I put your
> 20080120 package inside the kernel?

The driver in 2.6.25 is too old to support this device.  What is coming 
in 2.6.26 will have the needed support.

The in-V4L driver refers to the V4L-DVB repository, which contains 
cutting edge code that is typically targetted for the next kernel 
release.  The V4L-DVB repository has everything you need already 
(including the pvrusb2 driver itself).

Probably for your situation I'd recommend you grab and build a V4L-DVB 
snapshot against whatever kernel you are currently using.  Alternatively

you can try out a 2.6.26 release candidate, which should have all the 
driver pieces (except the firmware, see further) already included.

The firmware is another issue.  I've been remiss in getting fwextract.pl

updated - been distracted by other issues for the recent past.  However 
it's not that hard to get this part going.  I will try this Sunday to 
take care of the firmware extraction and I'll publish a new fwextract.pl

to handle it.  Alternatively, you should be able to execute the "manual 
extraction" procedure documented on the pvrusb2 driver web site, which 
should result in all the firmware you need.  This device requires 
firmware similar to the 24xxx model, same types of files though the FX2 
firmware will be different and requires a different name: 
"v4l-pvrusb2-73xxx-01.fw".  You likely can reuse existing cx25840 and 
cx2341x firmware files floating around, but the FX2 firmware is very 
specific to this device and will still need to be extracted.

  -Mike

-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ pobox (dot) com
PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 22:30:30 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mike Isely <isely at isely.net>
Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] Feature Misconception of HVR-1950?
To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver <pvrusb2 at isely.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0805152227450.9349 at cnc.isely.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, 14 May 2008, roger wrote:

> http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1950.html
> 
> "Notes:
> For analog cable TV reception, you need an analog cable TV connection.
> If you have a digital cable set-top box or a satellite box, the
> WinTV-HVR-1950 can connect via either Composite or S-Video inputs.
> Channel changing will be done using the IR Blaster."
> 
> Should probably be modified to read (or something similar):
> 
> "If the WinTV-HVR-1950 is connect via either Composite or S-Video
inputs
> channel changing cannot be done via the IR Blaster."

No, the first statement is correct.  An IR Blaster is an IR 
*transmitter* not a receiver.  The point here is that if you have to use

a cable box then you typically will want to jack the cable box's 
composite (or s-video) output into the device and also aim the IR 
blaster at the box's IR receiver.  Then you set up the IR blaster 
software transmit appropriate channel change codes and also tell the PVR

app to use the devices composite (or s-video) input.

> 
> Or can channel changing be really configured if it is connected
through
> Composite/S-Video to the Digital/Satellite box?
> 

You are confusing channel changing on the HVR-1950's RF tuner with 
channel changing in the cable box.  Two entirely different things.

  -Mike

-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ pobox (dot) com
PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 22:37:03 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mike Isely <isely at isely.net>
Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] Feature Misconception of HVR-1950?
To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver <pvrusb2 at isely.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0805152230440.9349 at cnc.isely.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, 14 May 2008, roger wrote:

> 
> On Wed, 2008-05-14 at 08:57 -0800, roger wrote:
> > http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hvr1950.html
> > 
> > "Notes:
> > For analog cable TV reception, you need an analog cable TV
connection.
> > If you have a digital cable set-top box or a satellite box, the
> > WinTV-HVR-1950 can connect via either Composite or S-Video inputs.
> > Channel changing will be done using the IR Blaster."
> > 
> > Should probably be modified to read (or something similar):
> > 
> > "If the WinTV-HVR-1950 is connect via either Composite or S-Video
inputs
> > channel changing cannot be done via the IR Blaster."
> > 
> > Or can channel changing be really configured if it is connected
through
> > Composite/S-Video to the Digital/Satellite box?
> 
> The page does say, "IR Blaster to control satellite and cable TV set
top
> boxes"?  Maybe analog satellite & analog cable -- but the way this is
> worded, it implies Echostar/Dishnetwork, etc.
> 
> 
> Also note Specifications seem somewhat high for watching 1080
resolution
> video?  64MB video memory too??

The high requirements aren't for the PVR-1950's driver.  They are going 
to be for the application that is trying to render HD video to the 
computer monitor.  HD video requires A LOT more CPU and GPU horsepower 
than old-school SD video.  A 1080i picture for example is 1920x1080, 
easily 4 times the pixels (perhaps even 16 times the pixels depending on

the situation) than SD video.  This puts large demands on the software 
MPEG decoder (remember the device might hardware encode but somebody 
still has to decode at the other end), the video scaler, and the transit

to video GPU memory.  Basically any modern PC (i.e. made in the past 3 
years) is probably OK, but an older machine will have problems.  I 
learned this lesson the hard way when I first tried to set up MythTV 
with HD tuners a few years ago.

> 
> Processor Requirements (minimum): 
>       * 1.0 GHz Intel P4 or equivalent (for watching cable TV)
>       * 2.2 GHz Intel P4 or equivalent (for watching high definition
>         ATSC or QAM digital TV)
>   * Available USB 2.0 port
>   * Graphics with 64MB memory (or greater)

For HD, I'd consider the above to be a bare minimum.  I have one 
HD-capable MythTV front end here working that uses an Intel P4 2.4GHz 
processor but it's barely there.  Had I known then (when I bought the 
hardware) what I know now I would have done things differently.  This is

something I wrote about about how I set up MythTV here:

http://www.isely.net/mythtv_setup.html

(though it really focuses more on tricks for making multiple diskless 
front end systems rather than strictly the HD aspects)

  -Mike

-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ pobox (dot) com
PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8

------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 22:44:48 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mike Isely <isely at isely.net>
Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] Maybe what a I really want is a Hauppauge HD
	PVR!?
To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver <pvrusb2 at isely.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0805152237130.9349 at cnc.isely.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, 14 May 2008, roger wrote:

> http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
> 
> Any connectivity notes with Linux yet?
> 
> I'm guessing, this is going to be classified as an external hard drive
> with the PVR's operating system within the first partition of the hard
> drive and the storage on the second partition.
> 
> Might be an extremely interesting box if linux users can tinker with
it.
> (Much like the famed Linksys WRT54G boxes ;-)
> 

There has been A LOT of chatter on mythtv-users about this.  People are 
salivating over it.  Right now AFAIK, there is no Linux driver for it.  
This is basically an HD-capable hardware-encoding video capture device.

I would expect a driver for it to look like another V4L device.  However

I am unaware of any existing available Linux driver right now.

Given that this device is doing HD encoding not SD encoding, then the 
usual cx2341x encoder chip can't be in use here.  It has to be something

a lot faster - and probably not cheap.  I can envision the pvrusb2 
driver potentially supporting it in the future, but the changes would 
require better abstraction of the cx2341x support in the driver so that 
it can be compartmentalized and replaced with a corresponding driver for

whatever is inside.  And that's assuming that the control processor is 
still a Cypress FX2 - which is probably a bit too optimistic.

One advantage that the pvrusb2 driver has had is that a lot of the 
different devices out there all share a common ancestor in an apparent 
reference design from Conexant.  Though there are differences between 
say a Hauppauge tuner and a Gotview device, those differences are 
relatively minor so the driver can abstract these things into a table 
and adjust accordingly.  This device probably doesn't fall under that 
umbrella.  (Not that I wouldn't like to take a real shot at this.  But 
we'll see what time will tell.)

  -Mike

-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ pobox (dot) com
PGP: 03 54 43 4D 75 E5 CC 92 71 16 01 E2 B5 F5 C1 E8

------------------------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 22:41:24 -0800
From: roger <roger at eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] Feature Misconception of HVR-1950?
To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver <pvrusb2 at isely.net>
Message-ID: <1210920084.15317.6.camel at localhost2.localdomain>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 22:37 -0500, Mike Isely wrote:
> On Wed, 14 May 2008, roger wrote:
> > 
> > Also note Specifications seem somewhat high for watching 1080
resolution
> > video?  64MB video memory too??
> 
> The high requirements aren't for the PVR-1950's driver.  They are
going 
> to be for the application that is trying to render HD video to the 
> computer monitor.  HD video requires A LOT more CPU and GPU horsepower

> than old-school SD video.  A 1080i picture for example is 1920x1080, 
> easily 4 times the pixels (perhaps even 16 times the pixels depending
on 
> the situation) than SD video. 
> 
> > 
> > Processor Requirements (minimum): 
> >       * 1.0 GHz Intel P4 or equivalent (for watching cable TV)
> >       * 2.2 GHz Intel P4 or equivalent (for watching high definition
> >         ATSC or QAM digital TV)
> >   * Available USB 2.0 port
> >   * Graphics with 64MB memory (or greater)
> 
> For HD, I'd consider the above to be a bare minimum.  I have one 
> HD-capable MythTV front end here working that uses an Intel P4 2.4GHz 
> processor but it's barely there.  Had I known then (when I bought the 
> hardware) what I know now I would have done things differently.  This
is 
> something I wrote about about how I set up MythTV here:
> 
> http://www.isely.net/mythtv_setup.html
> 
> (though it really focuses more on tricks for making multiple diskless 
> front end systems rather than strictly the HD aspects)

Thanks for clarifying this up.  I didn't realize 1080 was 1920x1080.
For some reason, thought something like less then 1280x1024.  I hope we
can trigger a switch within the box to show 1024x768 on live playback.
I'm assuming we can at this point.

I don't plan on upgrading for still another few years.  VIM still seems
to run find on my 2x750P3 box here, as well as my P3 1Ghz laptop. :-/

I'm sure I'm not the other one who's only need is VIM. But, I'm guessing
you had to buy the 2Ghz for Emacs. ;-)

-- 
Roger
http://www.eskimo.com/~roger/index.html
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008 22:49:23 -0800
From: roger <roger at eskimo.com>
Subject: Re: [pvrusb2] Maybe what a I really want is a Hauppauge HD
	PVR!?
To: Communications nexus for pvrusb2 driver <pvrusb2 at isely.net>
Message-ID: <1210920563.15317.14.camel at localhost2.localdomain>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 22:44 -0500, Mike Isely wrote:
> On Wed, 14 May 2008, roger wrote:
> 
> > http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr.html
> > 
> > Any connectivity notes with Linux yet?
> > 
> > I'm guessing, this is going to be classified as an external hard
drive
> > with the PVR's operating system within the first partition of the
hard
> > drive and the storage on the second partition.
> > 
> > Might be an extremely interesting box if linux users can tinker with
it.
> > (Much like the famed Linksys WRT54G boxes ;-)
> > 
> 
> There has been A LOT of chatter on mythtv-users about this.  People
are 
> salivating over it.  Right now AFAIK, there is no Linux driver for it.

> This is basically an HD-capable hardware-encoding video capture
device.  
> I would expect a driver for it to look like another V4L device.
However 
> I am unaware of any existing available Linux driver right now.
...
>  This device probably doesn't fall under that 
> umbrella.  (Not that I wouldn't like to take a real shot at this.  But

> we'll see what time will tell.)

I'll probably keep an eye on this myself.  If the device is at least
recognized as an external drive when plugged in via USB, and I can at
least grab CNN/FOXNEWS/History & DISC Channel stuff, I'll probably save
my pennies and grab this device in the future.

For mythtv devs to try to rewrite the firmware on this device, will
probably take some work, as well as luck.  We can all pretty much assume
there's some copyright mechanism employed on it to prevent HBO/Movie
Channel infringements. But, on the other hand, there might be none since
it's much easier to make a copy of a DVD vs. recording something over
the air.

This will probably be the deciding factor, as well as most, as to
whether I buy another PVR, or just off load everything to a device such
as this, conserving electricty.

-- 
Roger
http://www.eskimo.com/~roger/index.html
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