Mario Smit wrote: > Yes, if you go against their wishes you will certainly have problems > later getting help from them. > > Unfortunately this creates the situation that only selected people have > a little bit information that they are not allowed to share. So, we can > only test the results of their works (reactive) and not work together > (proactive) creating the best driver possible. More than that STM wants to see the best driver. Currently it is not yet complete (complete in the sense, some bugs do remain in the driver. Other than that when you say a third party hardware, it is a mix of stuff from different vendors, so it is just not the demodulator driver alone that always matter) as you might be aware (WIP). The release what i had was based on a Satelco (KNC1 OEM) card using the STB0899. There have been a couple of folks who put a lot of effort, as well as to get additional hardware supported such as the TT S2 3200. These are just coarse patches, not even applied to the tree. Crying out frustration after applying these patches do not help anyone, but just a waste of time for everyone. Such patches are meant only for the brave, not for the people who just keep crying around. Also i saw from one of the users I/O errors. This are due to I2C probes which are crappy, due to a SAA7113 getting attached. (The SAA7113 doesn't have any video function at all but is used for a very different reason) The demodulator will not respond after that utter crap. Basically V4L drivers try to do I2C probing which is something like you are being called suddenly by a lot of people suddenly, you get confused, the same happens to the hardware. Additionally STM has provided lot of support as well for getting a very good driver. In fact it is a very complex device, because it doesn't hide it's internals in any firmware. For the same reason due to many patents and IP involved, they would like to keep the information far from prying eyes. Just with the specifications/datasheets alone (supposing you had them) it is far from reality, that you can make anything out of it, due to the complexity. Hardware these days are getting complex and even more complex, not simpler. In fact, i had to get back to STM at various stages for help, which they really helped by putting me in touch with the relevant people involved in the development of the various stages. Not to mention about missing registers in the datasheets etc. So even if you get the datasheets, it is quite pointless, unless you understand the innards of the device. On top of this, you will need to have a really good idea how a DVB-S2 demodulator will work to understand the same. So it is quite a lot of effort to get a driver for such a beast going from basic bare register specifications with around 800 registers with thousands of bitfields. (In contrast you can take a look at drivers were specifications are generally available and how they behave, you can see the complaints from the users if you just see the posts on the ML.) If you look at drivers generally, even if you have the specs, the drivers aren't normally great unless it is well tested and certified by the vendors. For the same reason, once it is complete STM wishes to take the driver a do certification program for selected hardware. This is the best that can ever happen. You get completely certified well written OSS drivers. User tests can of course make things better. _______________________________________________ linux-dvb mailing list linux-dvb@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-dvb
