[pvrusb2] pvrusb2 driver status for new hardware version

[Mike Isely]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Hans Verkuil wrote:

>>>
>>> Are you sure they are different? Can you mail me the firmware you
>>> extracted?
>>
>> Yes, I'm positive.  In fact after extracting it I compared it against
>> the three other variants of this firmware floating around and it
>> didn't match any of them.  The first 8 bytes or so are similar in all
>> cases but that's about it.  And this firmware *does* work.  I'll
>> e-mail it to you.
>
> Thanks. I wonder if this isn't a somewhat older firmware than the
> ivtv-recommended fw. I know of two firmwares: an older one (13883 bytes
> long) that should be avoided at least for PAL/SECAM and a newer version
> (14264 bytes long) that seems to work well with all standards. This fw
> is even smaller than the old one that is known to have problems. It's
> hard to tell as there is no version string embedded in the firmware.

When I successfully extracted the firmware, the first thing I did was to 
grab EVERY other cx25840 firmware image I could find anywhere and compare. 
I was hoping to identify the geneology of this image that way.  But 
nothing matched anywhere.  While this *could* be older firmware, it came 
from the lastest PVR USB2 drivers from Hauppauge (in fact last I checked 
this version wasn't even up on Hauppauge's web site).  I find it hard to 
believe they would package older firmware, but anything is possible.

I wanted to stick with this particular firmware version at least for the 
initial debugging work since it's obviously a known quantity, i.e. known 
to work with the Windows driver.  Also I wasn't sure that since this 
firmware was so far unique that perhaps the differences might be due to 
the fact that this was PVR USB2 specific.  One I get things stabilized I 
want to go back and try the other firmware versions just to see that they 
all work.  I think that would be useful to know for all parties concerned 
- otherwise we're going to have a firmware naming conflict for people 
using this device alongside an ivtv-driven device.  Given what you're 
saying here it sounds like all the version should work; it just needs to 
be tested.


>
> But in any case you should be aware that the audio autodetection (which
> is handled by this firmware) is more difficult when dealing with
> PAL/SECAM standards compared to NTSC. So any problems with the firmware
> are unlikely to show up with NTSC. To my knowledge all firmware
> versions work fine with NTSC.

OK, I'll keep that in mind.


>
> You can usually tell problems like that by sending the VIDIOC_LOG_STATUS
> i2c command to the cx25840 and checking the following:
>
>   cx25840 5-0044: Video signal:              not present
>   cx25840 5-0044: Detected format:           PAL-Nc
>   cx25840 5-0044: Detected audio mode:       stereo
>   cx25840 5-0044: Detected audio standard:   no detected audio standard
>   cx25840 5-0044: Audio muted:               yes
>   cx25840 5-0044: Audio microcontroller:     running
>   cx25840 5-0044: Configured audio standard: automatic detection
>   cx25840 5-0044: Configured audio system:   automatic standard and mode detection
>   cx25840 5-0044: Specified standard:        PAL-BDGHI
>   cx25840 5-0044: Specified video input:     Composite 7
>   cx25840 5-0044: Specified audio input:     Tuner (In8)
>   cx25840 5-0044: Specified audioclock freq: 48000 Hz
>   cx25840 5-0044: Preferred audio mode:      stereo
>   cx25840 5-0044: Selected 65 MHz format:    autodetect
>   cx25840 5-0044: Selected 45 MHz format:    chroma
>
> If there are problems then 'Detected audio standard' is completely wrong
> or simply not detecting an audio standard.

The pvrusb2 driver in my sandbox area now is able to issue 
VIDIOC_LOG_STATUS requests, and in fact it will issue such a request as 
part of the driver's initialization.  It's possible to trigger additional 
such requests at any time now just by tickling a sysfs file.


>
> Note that for external (i.e. non-tuner) inputs the audio microcontroller
> is stopped and no audio standard detection is used (it's tuner
> specific).

That's good to know.  Thanks.


>
>>
>>>>    o We don't know yet what the correct input settings on the
>>>> cx25840 should be for the composite or s-video inputs on the
>>>> device.
>>>
>>> It's likely to be the same as the PVR150. This PVRUSB2 device seems
>>> to be basically a PVR150 with an USB interface.
>>
>> Well possibly.  But since I don't have a PVR150 to compare with I
>> can't be sure.  Also we're limited here by what the FX2 controller
>> will perform on behalf of the host.  We had discussed before the
>> possibility of getting VBI working and I had noted at the time that
>> the FX2 firmware seemed to support operation of another USB endpoint
>> for additional data, like perhaps VBI outside of the mpeg2 stream.
>> The firmware in the new device seems to have removed the commands for
>> operation of that endpoint :-(
>
> Ouch.
>

I'm still wading through the new firmware.  There's also an outside chance 
that the old device's FX2 firmware might still work on new devices.  It's 
another thing I want to try but haven't had the chance.

   -Mike


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