@Spirantho
Hi Spirantho,
I'd be happy to mail my Hauppage WinTV PVR 250 card to you. This one however is the newer version which carries the Conexant 23416 chip which I understand many tv card manufacturers are moving towards. Take your time with it as I found out it doesn't work with the debian 2.4.22 kernel either.
Thanks for your efforts. The community is 1000% behind you.

@janimator

Where are you from? UK or US or other? :)

I've emailed Hauppauge and Conexant with a request for a datasheet - if they don't send me anything there's not a lot I can do, but if they do then your TV card would be very useful! I shall let you know if that is the case!

@SpiranthoQuote:

The problem is in the compressors to make it useful! RGBA32 takes up quite a lot of room!

Surely if you're firing the video straight into VHI studio you don't want to compress it do you? You want the best quality available for any editing you might do.

_________________

@gnarly

That entirely depends on what you want the video capture for.

Indeed, if you want to send it to VHI studio for processing it should be lossless, and the RGBA32 is probably what you want (and if I can find an API for it, should be fairly easy to do).
On the other hand, if you just want to record video - either using hardware or software - then you definitely want something like MPEG-2.

I got a reply from Hauppauge - they can't give me any datasheets on their PVR cards, annoyingly.. and I notice there's no Linux drivers for it either, which suggests that the response from Conexant will be much the same. There are drivers for the PVR cards, but they're only the TV decoder, not the MPEG encoder, so unless the Conexant people grace us with technical details fraid we may be stuck with no support for that chipset.

@Spirantho

there are drivers for the usb version (the pvr usb 2), which is probably the same thing...

Mark

_________________
IceStar Media Ltd.

@Mark

Couldn't find any drivers...
There was a little program which pinched Windows->PVR instructions from the USB bus, but that's not the same thing and it'd take ages to reverse-engineer what's actually going on.

As an example, imagine a parrot. It can recite Shakespeare if you teach it to but that doesn't mean it understands what it's saying and could vary it's speech. That seems to be pretty much what the usb2 'driver' does - it just recites what Windows is broadcasting when you use it, whereas we need to teach the bloomin' thing to speak the PCI equivalent of the Queen's English.

Plus I suspect the firmware in the USB device would make it quite a different kettle of fish (or parrots) anyway...

@Spirantho

Quote:

Spirantho wrote: I got a reply from Hauppauge - they can't give me any datasheets on their PVR cards, annoyingly.. and I notice there's no Linux drivers for it either, which suggests that the response from Conexant will be much the same. There are drivers for the PVR cards, but they're only the TV decoder, not the MPEG encoder, so unless the Conexant people grace us with technical details fraid we may be stuck with no support for that chipset.

Let me say ...

This is great! It's ppl like you who will bring the Amiga back! Truly! Great work!

Soo. What kind of card should I get?


/shoe

@shoe

Heh.. you haven't seen it yet - save the praise till then. ;)

Seriously, I've actually been pleased at the amount of response I got. I was expecting maybe one or two people to ask for a version within a few days, yet I think I had to wait about 5 minutes at most. It's nice to know there are plenty of Amiga people still out there!

As for what kind of card to get - I'm using a Bt848 powered WinTV card from about 1998 and it's looking good so far, but it's monaural. I don't have a stereo card so can't code for that yet, but I'll worry about that later. I reckon I should get the Bt878 code done soon so wait for people's testing results and then we can make a more informed decision! I think you're pretty safe with a Hauppauge WinTV BT848 card if you can find one though, as that's my primary card!

@Spirantho

hello dood , do u think u can add "pinnacle" cards support? , i dont recall the chip type etc but if u live in europe i would more than happily send u one for free (i got 2 cards) .

where do u live btw?

what about setting up a donation paypal ?

i want this driver so much (record especially) ..


cheers


ps:might be my card is what u dev for atm but i need to check that asap!..

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See my blog and collection website! . https://www.blog.amigaguru.com

small update,

on the pctv Rave card the chip (itself) says:

Conexant - FUSION - 878 A

25878 - 13


should i jump in happy'nes now or cry ? ..

_________________
See my blog and collection website! . https://www.blog.amigaguru.com

Anyone wanting to try the latest version - which may or may not work! - should go
to www.retroreview.com/AmiTV.lha!

Please let me know any results either in the forum or by email (iang at amiganet.org)!

Remember it needs a composite video in signal... I think it's a bit more picky
than my previous Bt848 but the Bt878 seems better now!

If you have trouble it may be worth checking your interrupts are set to Level in the BIOS.
I have mine set to IRQs 11, 12 and 13 for INTA-INTC respectively.

Thanks to all showing interest!

@Spirantho

Hi' Spirantho

Some usefull information (if You have not found it yourself):
Some usefull datasheets
Kernel driver for Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250 & PVR-350
driver for the Matrox G-series
driver for bt848 and bt878
driver for some ATi cards

And now big to You

_________________
Best regards,
hnl_dk - Henning Nielsen Lund [Denmark]

Please send no PM to me, email me if you want to contact me. See you somewhere else.

@Spirantho

Hi Just tested new AmiTV with my AverMediaTV PCI Board..(Conexant Fusion 878a based)

I connected my Sony Hi8 VideoCamera to both composite and S-Video ports..

I get a blank blue screen when I run AmiTv...

Here is the output:

ound WinTV card 0x109e 0x36e!
Configured Bt878.
Locked OK!
Device capabilities: 3.
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
Memory space is at 0xa0001000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x0.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Added interrupt 25 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0x40f2fe01.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0xb6.
Input device: 0x9b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x90 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x01fef4c0.
Created 1162 instructions.
PC is now 0x01fef4c0.
DMA Control is 0x30000.
Output enable is 0x00000000.
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0xb00020c.

I am testing with latest OS4 Betas (udma, native radeon e.t.c) on A1SE G3-600

@Spirantho

I started to look at it, then I got side-tracked by one of my own projects. The thing is, I can't get an empty library template (created with idltool) to compile, it complains about structures in init.c (which was created by idltool and I haven't touched).

Aside from that, working it into a library should be fairly trivial, the hardest part is working out which functions need to be publicly acessible.

Chris

_________________
"Miracles we do at once, the impossible takes a little longer" - AJS on Hyperion
Avatar is Tabitha by Eric W Schwartz

@Spirantho

i tried my card now.... ...hmm distorted blue window popped up....
and when i clicked it...it "crashed" ...

anyway here is the output..



6.RAM Disk:> AmiTV
Found WinTV card 0x109e 0x36e!
Configured Bt878.
Locked OK!
Device capabilities: 3.
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
Memory space is at 0xa0001000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x0.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Added interrupt 25 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0xc00f0d02.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0x96.
Input device: 0x9b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x90 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x0211b000.
Created 1162 instructions.
PC is now 0x00000000.
DMA Control is 0x30000.
Output enable is 0x00000000.
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0xb00020c.

Interrupt Status is 0x0a00120e.
Interrupt shows a FIFO overrun - dropping DWORDS.

Interrupt Mask is 0x00000800.
6.RAM Disk:>

_________________
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@Toaks

The blue screen is the TV chip saying there's no signal, but the distortion is
probably the actual signal.
How did it crash? Grim Reaper? How many times did you try? Sometimes I have to
try a number of times (still trying to work out why...)

@Spirantho
gday i get a blue screenonly as well heres the output

Found WinTV card 0x109e 0x36e!
Configured Bt878.
Locked OK!
Device capabilities: 3.
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
Memory space is at 0xa0001000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x0.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Added interrupt 27 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0x20016f03.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0xb4.
Input device: 0x9b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x90 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x037744c0.
Created 1162 instructions.
PC is now 0x0359881c.
DMA Control is 0x30000.
Output enable is 0x00000000.
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0x81006.

looking promissing

@Spirantho

when i click on the window it shuts down and this is the output

Interrupt Status is 0x0008100e.
Interrupt shows a FIFO overrun - dropping DWORDS.

Interrupt Mask is 0x00000800.

@Spirantho

nah...no grim reaper....i tried 1 time , been abit busy...will try more later today..


cheers

_________________
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@Spirantho

I finally got a chance to try your 878 version tonight after work. Like the others, I got a blue window. I didn't get any sign of a signal being applied, but I'm still testing here. The window itself seemed a bit unstable. Sometimes just clicking anywhere in the window caused it to shut down. Once in a while my mouse locked up. I'm thinking the lockups have more to do with window pointers rather than the driver itself.

My card is an ATV Wonder tv -
Here is the output from my test:
Test #1:
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
Memory space is at 0xa0008000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x0.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Added interrupt 26 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0x60191a02.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0x94.
Input device: 0x9b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x90 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x021a1bc0.
Created 1162 instructions.
PC is now 0x021a1bc0.
DMA Control is 0x30000.
Output enable is 0x00000000. (Is this right?)
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0xea000204.

Test #2
Found WinTV card 0x109e 0x36e!
Configured Bt878.
Locked OK!
Device capabilities: 3.
Device initialised OK!
Setting PCI configuration to enable memory access....
Status is 0x6019002.
Status is 0x6019002.
Memory space is at 0xa0008000.
Cleared DMA CTL to 0x0.
Luma is at 0xd8.
Added interrupt 26 with result 1.
Interrupt status is 0x80281b02.
Vendor ID is 0x0.
Setting Bt878 input.
Current Status is 0xb6.
Input device: 0x9b.
Width: 768. Height: 576.
HDelay: 0x90 VDelay: 0x16,
Program being created at 0x021eb800.
Created 1162 instructions.
PC is now 0x021eb800.
DMA Control is 0x30000.
Output enable is 0x00000000. (????)
Command status is 0x106.
Status is 0x290.
Interrupt status is 0xeb00020c.

Hope it helps. keep up the work!!!