AmiTV in update *shocker*. TV cards seen working!

Today has seen a miracle performed. For the first time since the Dark Ages, an update to the AmigaOS 4 TV-card prorgam AmiTV has been released. This is not a full release, just a build to let people play around and give feedback.
Among the features are:
* Brooktree Bt848/Bt878 chipset support
* Conexant Cx23881/Cx23882/Cx23883 chipset support
* Video->System Memory->Workbench window support
* Video->System Memory->Picasso96 PIP (overlay) window support
* Video->Picasso96 PIP (overlay) DMA window support (may crash!)
* Resizable window
* Quit button.

Support is planned for NTSC, but currently only PAL is supported.
Using overlay can crash the system occasionally when compositing is turned on.
Using video->PIP directly uses no CPU time. Going via system memory uses substantially more CPU time. Not using overlay at all is VERY SLOW. Note that RadeonHD drivers do not have overlay support.
If you have a CX2388x card and a Bt8x8 card, use the command line parameter "NOCX2388x" to force it to use the Bt8x8 card.

If you use this program, DO save your work first.

Please send any feedback/donations/X1000s to me at "ian.gledhill@btinternit.com" (but it's a nEt not a nIt) or just post your findings here.

Planned for the future:
NTSC support
Interrupt driven video->system->PIP support (need Hyperion to tell me why the system hangs solid - waiting on an answer).
Tuner support - at least of the tuner on my TV card :P

What is not planned:
USB TV cards - there's no documentation out there, so I can't do it.
MPEG HDTV cards - ditto.
MPEG encoder chips - ditto.

What may be planned:
Philips SDTV chipset support - if I can find a card with it on (i.e. the PVR350) and enough time to do it (unlikely for the near future).

Any feedback greatly appreciated though!

Get it here:
http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/ian_stuff/AmiTV_20120207.lha

Do you have any more info on examples of cards working?
Just take a fast look at a local shop on the net. Found many different tv cards. No idea on what is supported. Or aren't the chips you mentioned in production anymore?

Best place to look is wikipedia for Hauppauge- there's a list of WinTV cards and which chipsets they use. You should be able to get an SD (non HD) card pretty cheap these days!
If you're using a Sam 460, you will need a 3.3V Cx2388x card, not the Brooktree chipset.

@Spirantho

Congrats mate for a big step forward

Crossing fingers that you get the interrupt thing fixed

great news Ian ! time top go dig out a few of those old TC cards in the basement and wait for NTSC support

Does AmiTV support DVB?

DVB is MPEG, so no, sorry. No datasheets so I can't!

Ok, then I wonder how one can use non-DVB TV cards today :-/
DVB is in almost all countries (see here)

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I'm surprised, as I'm pretty sure there are Linux drivers for DVB-T cards.

If you can get me the datasheets I'll be happy to have a crack at them... but I don't have time to wade through lots of partially undocumented Linux source without knowing what it's doing! I really need datasheets.

Incredibly, another version appears to have materialised on my hard disk.

http://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/i ... f/AmiTV_20120209_NTSC.lha

As the more perceptive among you may notice, this is an NTSC build! As before, it supports all bt848/bt878/cx2388x chipsets.

Please send feedback to me... not had any so far on the PAL build at all, so seems like not many people have the cards needed...

Found this on the web: http://www.dvb.org/technology/standards/
Maybe it's not enough but a good start.

No help really, I'm afraid, but thanks for the effort!

The problem isn't how DVB works, as that's covered by the chips on the TV card. What I need to know is how to program the Conexant chip in question... I.e. what registers do what and where are they, that sort of thing.

Thanks again for trying, though, but it has to be the proper Conexant datasheet for the chip.

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Yes, that should definitely help spirantho. Have you managed to track down the documentation for the CS23885 too? It's the PCIe variant.

Having said that, you also need the documentation for the TV tuner and demodulator. For example, the TeVii S470 DVB-S2 PCIe card has the following chips on board:

- RF Tuner: Montage M88TS2020
- Demodulator: Montage M88DS3000
- PCIe bridge: Conexant cx23885

Likewise, the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-4000 would also need:
- Conexant CX24116 (DVB-S2 demodulator and FEC decoder)
- Conexant CX24118A (digital satellite tuner RF IC)
- Conexant CX23882 (A/V decoder & PCI bridge)
- Conexant CX22702 (DVB-T demodulator)
- Philips FMD1216ME MK3 Hybrid Tuner
- Infineon TUA6034 'TAIFUN' (Analogue/Digital TV tuner)
- Philips TDA9887 (Analogue TV/FM demodulator)
- Philips TDA7040 (FM stereo decoder)
- Wolfson WM8775 (4 stereo input ADC)
- IDT QS3257 (Mux)
- Intersil ISL6421 (LNB voltage controller)

Needless to say, I think that the TeVii products (they also have PCI variants) would be much easier to start off with than Hauppauge's all-in-one TV/DVB-T/DVB-S products as they have fewer components to program.

I'd personally be more interested in DVB-S/S2 than DVB-T because where I live has poor UHF reception (there's a hill in the way) so DVB-T isn't much good.

Hans

I almost forgot, it's awesome to see this project alive and making progress again!

Hans

I'm afraid that datasheet doesn't help.... or at least, it does, but it's for the Cx2388x chip (which I've already got working, with a lot of help from that very datasheet).
It's the Cx22702 DVB-T chip I need the datasheet for... but thanks for looking!

@Hans
The TV cards will always be very slow on RadeonHD machines because there's no way of directly displaying a YUV422 format bitmap (like overlay does). At least until there is a way. :) I can actually do it with RGB565 but that sucks up a lot of PCI bus bandwidth.

Incidentally, the reason I gave up on AmiTV originally was because my machines had problems with the overlay mode. On the Sam440ep, for instance, it picks up noise in the graphics when using a buffer in system RAM, and using the overlay directly only works for a short period and is likely to crash the machine. I suspect the Sam may be getting confused as it uses DMA in other places too. My Peg II has no such problems and it works just fine! Which is nice.. but also disappointing! I always thought the Sam trouble was to do with the endianness of P96 drivers, but for some reason the similarly clocked PegII just doesn't have a problem. IIRC my Peg2 has a Radeon 7000 in, the Sam has the onboard (obviously, else there'd be no room for the TV card :) )

Nice!

Will try it asap.

@Spirantho
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Can't find it but there are some source code you can read.
Also other DVB datasheets that could be useful here.

Quote:

Do you know the reason why that is?

@Hans
...and probably a solution to be able to use YUV at last?