[pvrusb2] Updated firmware files for ivtv/pvrusb2.

[Mike Isely]

On Sun, 2 Jul 2006, xavier.gnata at free.fr wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Wait, it is not legal to redistribute these files.
> I'm not a lawer but IMHO you should consider this point.
>
> Xavier

I can't speak for Hauppauge about this, but I presume permission would be 
needed to distribute these things.  Hans might have gotten that 
permission, but I have not.

If he wants to host firmware for the pvrusb2 driver at ivtvdriver.org 
that's fine with me but my opinion does not matter.  Since I can't control 
that, therefore I can't be responsible for it.  I can cheer him on :-) 
But ultimately it's not my call to make.

In my own case, since I didn't want to host the firmware, I did the next 
best thing: host an extraction script which is as bullet-proof as 
possible.  Anyone with a pvrusb2 device is going to have the firmware 
anyway, on their driver CD.  So it made sense to provide a means to 
robustly locate and retrieve that firmware.  The fwextract.pl script uses 
MD5 sums to locate, extract, and verify the firmware image(s), from any 
known version of the Hauppauge Windows driver package (CD or download). 
Basically all that's left to do is unzip their driver package (if a 
download) and then just run fwextract.pl, pointing it at the directory 
where all the driver files reside.  The script does the rest; if you get 
firmware files out of it, then you can be assured that they are correct 
since the extraction script has the MD5 sums needed to verify them.  The 
script is table driven and has very little that's actually specific to the 
pvrusb2 driver (beyond the table itself).  When Hauppauge releases new 
driver packages, there's a procedure than can be followed to generate the 
additional table entries needed.

Anyway, I don't know if distributing the firmware is legal or not, but 
rather than tangle with that, this is handled for pvrusb2 with a smart 
extraction script.  It seems to work pretty well; I haven't had any 
complaints.

It's up to others if they want to actually host the firmware.  But that's 
not something I am going to do, at least for now.

   -Mike


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