[pvrusb2] New driver snapshot: pvrusb2-mci-20060318

[Mike Isely]

A new driver snapshot is available.  You can find the details in the usual 
place:

   http://www.isely.net/pvrusb2.html

Most of the changes with this release are things needed for support of the 
new 24xxx model series, HOWEVER there are still other changes needed which 
I haven't proved in yet.  Basically what I've been doing here is 
committing various changes as I conclude that each change doesn't harm the 
stability of operating the existing hardware.

There are also changes here needed for acceptance into V4L (and still more 
changes coming there).

Two changes in particular might affect you:

1. The firmware files have been renamed.  The new names are listed in the 
documentation, and this driver will still fall back to the old names if 
the files could not be found under their new names.  Also, I've improved 
the log messages in this area so you can see what names were or were not 
found during initialization.  I've updated fwextract.pl to handle all this 
however fwfind.sh probably still needs changes...  Roger: Care to 
investigate this?

2. I've reworked the streaming logic in a significant way for the first 
time in over 6 months.  The new logic will filter garbage from the front 
of the stream.  It turns out that the hardware has been emitting some 
initial garbage all along (for reasons not understood).  With the 29xxx 
model series, this has been a benign problem, but with the new devices the 
particular garbage data emitted is fatal to mythtv and ffmpeg (but not 
mplayer).  This change implemenents filtering out of that junk.

I still have more changes to make for supporting the new hardware.  This 
new snapshot is a whole bunch of steps in that direction.  My focus right 
now is support for the new hardware plus changes to satisfy requirements 
for inclusion into V4L (and thus inclusion into the kernel source tree 
which it is hoped now will happen in time for 2.6.17).

BTW, the model census info I've collected (and am still collecting - send 
me your model info) is in the snapshot under the doc subdirectory, as 
"models.txt".

I realize that the existing pvrusb2 web documentation is in need of more 
updates.  The documentation in its current form is still accurate, but it 
could use a rework to improve readability.  I need to move all the module 
gunk out to separate html files and probably auto-generate the change 
history out to its own file as well.  The new 24xxx model series is going 
to introduce a different 8051 firmware image (with its own name) and also 
with that device there will be a THIRD firmware file that must be 
extracted (for the cx25840 in the device).  I've already updated 
fwextract.pl to handle all this, but the documentation doesn't yet reflect 
that fact (however fwextract.pl should still compatibly operate OK with 
the way people already use it).

Please let me know if anyone sees any new issues.

   -Mike


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