FreeBSD video recorder (was: FreeBSD as a HTPC!)

[Kevin Downey]

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 11:58 AM, John-Mark Gurney <jmg at funkthat.com> wrote:
> Kevin Downey wrote this message on Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 23:46 -0800:
>> On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Dieter <freebsd at sopwith.solgatos.com> wrote:
>> >> I started on this track a while back, but the main problem I've had is
>> >> that FreeBSD doesn't support any digital tuners.  Here in Australia we
>> >> have digital TV with resolutions of up to 720p (1280x720
>> >> non-interlaced) or 1080i (1920x1080 interlaced).  720p is better.
>> >
>> > Well... 720p is better in some ways, 1080i is better in others.
>> > But for tuner support what matters is ATSC or DVB-T.
>> >
>> >> So what I do is to copy the saved MPEG files to the FreeBSD machine
>> >> and use mplayer, along with a series of scripts, to play it.  I'm
>> >> using a DVICO remote control (the one that came with the tuner), and
>> >> not coincidentally this is one of the few TV remote controls which
>> >> FreeBSD supports.
>> >
>> > There is a FreeBSD driver for the DViCO FusionHDTV5 if that's the tuner
>> > you have.  I don't know if it supports DVB-T though...
>> >
>> > And Jason has written a driver that supports several cx88 based cards.
>> > And there is the HDHomeRun that just needs Ethernet.
>> >
>> > So you can use FreeBSD for recording, if you have the right tuner.
>> > Support for additional tuners would of course be welcome.
>>
>> does anyone know how the heck you build the driver for the divco
>> fusion? as far as I can tell it is a bunch of files in p4, which means
>> it is a huge pain to get them. I think I did manage to build the
>> kernel module but it made my amd64 machine kernel panic.
>>
>> I sent an email to JohnMarkGurney with some questions, but I never got a reply.
>
> Sorry, been a bit lax on reading email recently.  I've updated the
> wiki page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/HDTV/DViCOFusionHDTV5Lite to contain
> a bit more, and put a tarball of the perforce code up to make it easier
> to fetch.
>
> It was last compiled w/ a -current of early 2007, but there shouldn't
> be any significant changes causing problems.  If there are, let me know.
>
>> so saying the card is supported maybe a stretch.
>
> I am getting close to not using mine anymore.  Now w/ the HDHomeRun
> working so well, and about the same price per tuner as a Lite, it's hard
> to support such a crappy chip as the bt878.  Plus, the people at
> SiliconDust are interested in supporting their product on other platforms,
> like FreeBSD, unlike DViCO..
>
> Even w/ only two tuners and an ethernet card on the PCI bus doing a
> single capture and sending out that stream via the ethernet card (yes,
> only 5 MB/s on the PCI bus), I get fifo overruns.  It could be my
> chipset or an agressive em card, but I switched to using a PCI-e NIC
> and that solved it, but with such a sensitive card, it's hard to
> continue support.
>
> Though I will admit that I do ocassionally have udp socket buffer
> overruns w/ the HDHomeRun, it works great, about to get a second to
> replace the two Lite's in my machine...
>
> I'll still provide some basic support, but don't expect to much...
>
> --
>  John-Mark Gurney                              Voice: +1 415 225 5579
>
>     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."
>

holy christ, it works!
thanks a bunch!
(wish I had a homerun, but the fusions was less then $40 on ebay)

-- 
And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good—
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?