I think the LGPL would be more appropriate for if you had a library with a custom interface. These drivers are BDA compliant so there should be no need for other people to use any of the driver code in their apps.

I think VP (VisonPlus) is the retail arm of Twinhan. As the card is sold OEM'd under other retail names (eg. ChainTech) I would see Twinhan as the common or root node in the tree.

JoeyBloggs, thanks for the link - OMG :shock: this stuff is insane - I've never read a license agreement in full before. As far as I can see the GPL or LGPL is a likely choice. Can someone who understands this a little better please comment?

Spectrum

I sort of agree with what Nate is saying, it's unlikely that people will incorporate your driver code into other source code so GPL is probably ok. That said LGPL allows a little more wiggle room ~

Lets be realistic. You are unlikely to have the cash or determination to go after people infringing. What you really need from the licence is a release from all liabilities and consequential damages etc. Which is what a MIT licence is, do whatever you want with the code but don't blame me for anything that happens period.

Ok. I'm a bit tired today and i wasn't thinking straight.
I think the linux drivers for this card and other OEM'd models are called dvb-bt8xx so perhaps something along those lines would work well.

I don't like the bt8xx name much as it represents just one controller chip on the card rather than the card as a whole.

Spectrum.

I suppose "Bt878A/Nxt6000/DVBT-6K07/THDTV20023/ATMEL 24C02 DTV BDA Driver" is too big a mouthful. :?:

THDTV20023 is the only component that is Twinhan specific and after all this driver is meant only for this Twinhan card. Therefore THDTV should be the short name for the drivers and will appear where appropriate. Eg:
"THDTV BDA Digital Tuner Filter"
"THDTV BDA Digital Capture Filter"

There may be scope for adding "DVB-t" where appropriate I guess.

Maybe:
"THDTV DVB-t BDA Tuner Filter"
"THDTV DVB-t BDA Capture Filter"

Mmmm that looks nice.

Spectrum

FYI -

Did a full windows XP reinstall last nite. Service Pack 1 and fully windows updated (Critical). Installed DirectX 9 (full install 34MB download - not the windows update version).

Couldnt get the latest BDA's to install until I changed the INF's to the ones quoted in version 1.4.4. But apart from that it all worked nicely out of the box. Installed showshifter and was watching in no-time..

First of all, thanks to nate, spectrum and null_pointer for the great work on drivers and apps.

I had been using ws for some time for recording. Great to see that spectrum's bda drivers get rid of the glitches for abc recording present with twinham's sdk.

I have had quite a few reboots while using bda ws though. Is anyone else getting this?

I don't have a kb or mouse connected and control the loungroom box with vnc. Sometimes it just reboots at the start of a recording, sometimes I seem to have lost all network access (the box may have frozen).

Should I consider a fresh install?

Athlon 1900, 768mb ram, 160gb hdd, winXP Pro SP1 with all patches.

Edit.... always used TS mux

I always try everything before a fresh install.

Perhaps try removing all traces of drivers and try the card in another PCI Slot.

The rebooting does seem weird. I have had it try to kill XP (got better with newer WS and BDA Drivers) but no reboot (2400+).

What motherboard?

Don't reinstall, it's unlikely to change anything. The BDA drivers and application software are alpha.

If you need stability then go back to the WDM drivers.

Thanks Joey & Spoonfed. I'm not going to jump up and down about bda alpha drivers. I really do appreciate the work done.

I wasn't sure how unusual the behaviour I'm seeing is. The board is a pretty basic MSI something from about 18mths ago. I think I used the latest chipset drivers etc at the last install about 3 months ago. I can't remember ever looking for firmware for it.

Is there any feedback that I could supply that might be useful? There is a recovery from serious error message after reset that prob has a report or memory dump sitting behind it.

So far it seems that after a reset it always grabs the next recording okay then goes pear shaped on the second.

I have show shifer installed and working, so might try the ss filter rather than TS MUX.

At the moment it is locked up rather than spontaneous reboot. Pretty hard to read the WS text on the tv.

Seems to have got as far as change freq. map vid pid, map aud pid then lockup.

hiya all-just thought i'd let you all know i'm watching this forum, and indeed testing the BDA drivers. i have 3xVP cards in one machine and true multicard support for WS/DW is what i'm really waiting for. in my experience with BDA thus far (using the latest versions of BDA/DW) is that generally it works aside from the features not yet implemented (TS etc).
however, i have had several BSOD's including ones related to USB(somethingorrather).SYS and to the ntoskernal itself, doesnt seem to be anything i can reproduce-as well as a few random reboots. i have currently reverted back to using the DTV drivers so i can use digivision. im anxious to try all new releases as they become available. well done to those of you putting in your time to creating the code for all the apps (DW/WS/BDA) without a commercial interest. as a side note, anybody thought of putting up a webpage of summarized links to the latest releases and dependancies? i myself have found that installing 20 odd apps to get filters, SDK's and the like is all very well but hard to remember or ascertain as a newbie to htpc's. a bit of a 'cut the 's**t from the clay' kind of review, updated (non-historically) as things progress. i'd volunteer but think i'm a little new to it all to be confident what i'm posting is the best information.

I've just had a second recording begin without a reboot or lockup for the first time.

Only difference was that I used the showshifter mux filter rather than TS mux.

I'll schedule a few more and see how it goes.

Edit: we have an odd situation where WIN and Prime use the same freq with diff pids. The two successful consecutive schedules were from these two. Not crashing might have been to do with no freq change rather than the SS filter.

Will schedule a couple from SBS and ABC overnight and see if it is still alive in the morning.

Must have been the freq change on the second recording that is tripping it up.

The switch from Prime to ABC caused a lockup. Frozen just after map audio pid.

The settings for ABC are okay. If an ABC recording is the next in the schedule after a reboot it works fine.

Interesting ! Where are you?

In the Griffith area, NSW.

Both are run by the same company. Not sure how it fits with multichannel restrictions.

I think they had a deadline of end Dec last year to get it running. I'm not sure how many analogue-digital-analogue-digital etc conversions it goes through before we get it. There is plenty of analogue in the distribution.

Looks a bit dull and washed out for Win and Prime. ABC and SBS are stunning in comparison.

Prime analogue has always had a 50hz hum interferrence running through it. (not just at my place but for everyone). That is reproduced in the digital transmission.

Interestingly Prime analogue went all digital and blocky last saturday morning. Occasional freeze in picture.

I think this is the SFN (Single Fequency Network) that is discussed here. This seems to be used outside the metro areas.

Cheers
Darren

No. SFN is where you have multiple transmitters (towers) transmitting on the same frequency.

For example. If a transmitter at location A doesn't quite make it to location B, then they put a second transmitter at location B transmitting on the same frequency. The problem is that location C, which is half way between A and B can now pick up signal from both transmitters. This was a problem for analogue tv because there was no way to isolate the signal from 1 transmitter so you got a screwed up picture. DVB-T is designed to handle this though.

:oops: Sorry!

Hey Shayne,

I'm also using the BDA drivers and am having BSOD problems with USBPORT.SYS and NTOSKRNL.

I am using the DW BDA Version and the 1.4.5 drivers. The most localised I seem to be able to get the problem down to is a "Channel Change". Wether it's the same Transponder or a different Transponder doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference. So far I can watch 1 channel, it seems fairly indefinite the length of time that it will continue to work, but as soon as I try to change chanels, it bombs out.

Windows seems to try and wait till it can't lock a signal and as soon as it fails, then comes the BSOD, it's not as soon as I try to change, there's a minor delay between changing and BSOD.

Current OS: Windows XP SP1 install patched up.

Malcolm

Shayne,

Just out of interest, what Graphics Card are you using. I seem to think at this point in time that a bunch of my problems getting this software to run in a semi-stable manner are related to the fact that I need to go and spend some money and put a decent ATi graphics card in and not rely on the dodgy Intel onboard card that is currently in the machine.

In showshifter whenever I try and view a HD channel it seems to run into problems with the video drivers so that's the major reason I'm suspect of the graphics card / drivers at this point.

M

Looks like my problems with reboot or pc freeze on second WS recording is more of a web scheduler problem than a driver problem. If I restart web scheduler after each recording, everything is fine.

It is impossible for an application running as a process on a windows
NT machine to lock a machine up or blue screen it (windows xp
spontaneous reboot).

A driver is the only way the OS can become unresponsive or crash the
actual OS (Blue Screen).

It may be the way WS is using the driver but the driver should not
crash a system no matter what the app that is using it does.

I agree Null,

Often the BOSD in XP is a sign of bad/going bad hardware. But given he hasn't had the issue before (i assume using TH drivers) it possilby is driver related. Or as you say possibly WS is using the drivers, and inturn the hardware (ie the card) where this "way" may not have occur previously with the TH drivers and SDK WS.

Try another PCI slot (probably wont help).

The past 2 weeks i've had 2 BOSD's caused by the graphics card/driver and ive never had them before. Im guessing either the 9600pro is dying or something. I'll try newer drivers in hope

Thats interesting, as mentioned on another thread, I'm also getting BSOD on channel changes with the message "This error seems to have been caused by thbdacap.sys......"

DW will sit there playing the ABC for hours but as soon as I change channel...... Also I can't scan for channels in WS because of the BSOD so I enter them manually. I also have an ATI 9600 Pro with latest 4.5 drivers.

To help narrow down the suspects you could try using the omega drviers (http://www.omegacorner.com/) for your video card and see if that makes a difference. i'm using these drivers and haven't had any blue screens.

I seem to have a clunky solution for avoiding XP lockups and reboots when using web scheduler.

My schedule is fairly static for a weeks worth of recording. I've added some items to the windows XP scheduler to restart WS after recordings (or sometimes at 1am each day ready for the next days stuff etc)

Seems to work so far.

The BDA driver for the capture component has a bug that may cause the O/S to crash (BSOD). I'll post a new version soon.

I haven't been able to find a reliable way to get around the problem of losing the channel on some occasions when signal statistics is requested. I suspect the Twinhan MCU is at fault. Does anyone have contact details for the technical department in Twinhan?

Spectrum

Only via Renura I'm afraid. And there is no guarantee of getting a response from them...

The bug fix would be valuable by itself

Do these bda drivers have a different tolerence for capturing a ts that the twinhan drivers? i ask this because i can no longer get sbs or d44/d4 which have a signal strength of 62 & 44 respectivly. i can get these channels fine with TH drivers

Have a look to mailing list at www.linuxtv.org, the linux drivers are now working perfectly, i think that the linux developers can help you with useful informations.

They have also, same Twinhan contacts


I'm using your drivers, thy are working but sometimes, my machine resets itself. This happen after the channel changes or when i close and reopen the application (ShowShifter).

BTW thanks a lot, great work ;-)

Version 1.5.0.0 now available.

The work around for the freezing problem has been removed; there is now code in place to deal with the "problem". Let me know if it still occurs as this has taken me weeks to sort out. Fixed bug in capture driver that would crash the system sometimes on capture restart; fixed another bug that may have caused a crash on shutdown or driver unload.
http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~spectrum/drivers.zip

This is the best set yet. Highly recommended.

Spectrum

P.S. This is the first release with the new name, so let me know how you like it.

Bravo and kudos on version 1.5.0 - my system is much more stable watching TV using Showshifter and changing channels. Currently having a debate with HDTV channels and the Video Card / Codecs at the moment, but so far this driver has allowed me to actually watch more than 1 channel of DTV.

blinky B:



i'm running a radeon 9600XT under W2k. like you, my problems seem to exhibit when channel changing or lock failure on a particular channel.

Spectrum,

Are you sure you uploaded the latest version? The file I download still contains driver files with the date 19/05/04. Or have I got some proxy caching happening?

Simon

Yup, I would say so

Yeah, stoopid Datafast transparent proxy. Entered Telstra proxy settings and all is good.

Simon

Yeah !!! With the latest drivers all works perfectly, no more resets or hangs.

Autotune in showshifter, is very fast, just a couple of mins for all-fequency scan (was 35 mins).

My pc is now very happy... and me too ;-)


Again tanks a lot to Spectrum (& Co), very very good work !!!

Great work Spectrum.

The few test I have run have been perfect with web scheduler.

It was a consistant lockup or bsod/reboot before.

Well done!

Ooooh the good news is tempting me back to BDA (currently TH). Good to see the progress.

Hmmm gotta sort my stupid video/hardware issue first

I have installed spectrum bda drivers 1.4.5 on windows XP Home for a Vision Plus DVB-T PCI and windows deosn't install it windows says that the spectrum TV Tuner card device won't start and the capture one won't even install, am I missing something or will the 1.5 drivers work better?

Download the 1.5 driver or manually copy the *.sys files in the

windowssystem32drivers directory, before you install the 1.4.5 drivers

ohhhh - sooo keen to try this 2nite!!!

fingers crossed it allows me to finally record in showshifter....!! if so, spectrum you offically get god-like status in my books

installed the drivers - easy as.

channel searching in showshifter was ALOT faster - and things seem to be running great. so its a definate improvement..

sadly showshifter recording still does not work correctly - but I think that a showshifter bug and not the BDA drivers....

magnetik,

You are right - it is not a driver issue.

I have to say, I am pretty happy with this set. I know it has been said before, but it is most definitely true - the Twinhan drivers (in my opinion) are not well written. I used them as my reference and that has been the cause of many problems. As I get to know the hardware better, I know that my code is improving and "driving" the card properly - unlike the Twinhan drivers.

It's been a hard 9 months (yes it's really been that long) but the 1.5.0.0 set can finally stand up by themselves. There are still feature enhancements to add and probably bugs to squash, but I'm satisfied the current state of the code is quite solid.

Spectrum

Excellent news Spectrum, well done :-)

Recording and Sowshifting works perfectly now.

Maybe you have some wrong settings in SS (try to restart in safe mode and reconfigure it, or uninstalling and reinstalling SS)

oh yeah for sure spectrum - dont get me wrong I wasnt knocking your work in the slightest at all - infact the exact opposite. I would never consider going back to the Twinhan drivers now at all.... the current 1.5.0.0 version are excellent - picture quality is better in SS than the visionDTV software ever was - my G/F had the HTPC with DTV for about 12hours straight yesterday and it was perfect ALL DAY - so the drivers really have proved themselves as a highly stable release...

be very proud with your efforts - you have basically turned what could have been a junk PCI card into a worthwhile DTV card - and with the price of the VisionPlus dropping I will be sticking with it when I build my second HTPC system.

I just need SS to catch up recoding wise and im fine!!! I must admit after clean installing windows XP and updating fully I ONLY installed DirectX 9 and the BDA drivers and then showshifter worked - I didnt do any of that other stuff you describe spectrum on the drivers howto page (reg of files/graphedit/etc) do you think maybe this could be part of my recording woes/etc...?? Also I have fddshow installed for my DivX/XviD movies - maybe thats it?



can you give me more details to your codecs installed, driver install steps (did you do all that reg of files/graphedit stuff?) that could maybe help with my issues..?