1 Documentation for dib3000* frontend drivers and dibusb device driver
2 ====================================================================
4 Copyright (C) 2004-5 Patrick Boettcher (patrick.boettcher@desy.de),
6 dibusb and dib3000mb/mc drivers based on GPL code, which has
8 Copyright (C) 2004 Amaury Demol for DiBcom (ademol@dibcom.fr)
10 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
11 modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
12 published by the Free Software Foundation, version 2.
15 Supported devices USB1.1
16 ========================
18 Produced and reselled by Twinhan:
19 ---------------------------------
20 - TwinhanDTV USB-Ter DVB-T Device (VP7041)
21 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_3.asp
23 - TwinhanDTV Magic Box (VP7041e)
24 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_4.asp
26 - HAMA DVB-T USB device
27 http://www.hama.de/portal/articleId*110620/action*2598
29 - CTS Portable (Chinese Television System) (2)
30 http://www.2cts.tv/ctsportable/
32 - Unknown USB DVB-T device with vendor ID Hyper-Paltek
35 Produced and reselled by KWorld:
36 --------------------------------
37 - KWorld V-Stream XPERT DTV DVB-T USB
38 http://www.kworld.com.tw/en/product/DVBT-USB/DVBT-USB.html
40 - JetWay DTV DVB-T USB
41 http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/product/lcd-tv/DVT-USB/dtv-usb.htm
43 - ADSTech Instant TV DVB-T USB
44 http://www.adstech.com/products/PTV-333/intro/PTV-333_intro.asp?pid=PTV-333
49 - Ultima Electronic/Artec T1 USB TVBOX (AN2135, AN2235, AN2235 with Panasonic Tuner)
50 http://82.161.246.249/products-tvbox.html
52 - Compro Videomate DVB-U2000 - DVB-T USB (2)
53 http://www.comprousa.com/products/vmu2000.htm
56 http://www.grand.com.tw/
58 - Avermedia AverTV DVBT USB (2)
59 http://www.avermedia.com/
61 - DiBcom USB DVB-T reference device (non-public)
64 Supported devices USB2.0
65 ========================
66 - Twinhan MagicBox II (2)
67 http://www.twinhan.com/product_terrestrial_7.asp
70 http://www.globalsources.com/si/6008819757082/ProductDetail/Digital-TV/product_id-100046529
72 - Typhoon/Yakumo/HAMA DVB-T mobile USB2.0 (1)
73 http://www.yakumo.de/produkte/index.php?pid=1&ag=DVB-T
75 - Artec T1 USB TVBOX (FX2) (2)
77 - Hauppauge WinTV NOVA-T USB2
78 http://www.hauppauge.com/
80 - KWorld/ADSTech Instant DVB-T USB2.0 (DiB3000M-B)
82 - DiBcom USB2.0 DVB-T reference device (non-public)
84 1) It is working almost.
85 2) No test reports received yet.
89 2005-02-11 - added support for the KWorld/ADSTech Instant DVB-T USB2.0. Thanks a lot to Joachim von Caron
90 2005-02-02 - added support for the Hauppauge Win-TV Nova-T USB2
91 2005-01-31 - distorted streaming is finally gone for USB1.1 devices
92 2005-01-13 - moved the mirrored pid_filter_table back to dvb-dibusb
93 - first almost working version for HanfTek UMT-010
94 - found out, that Yakumo/HAMA/Typhoon are predessors of the HanfTek UMT-010
95 2005-01-10 - refactoring completed, now everything is very delightful
96 - tuner quirks for some weird devices (Artec T1 AN2235 device has sometimes a
97 Panasonic Tuner assembled). Tunerprobing implemented. Thanks a lot to Gunnar Wittich.
98 2004-12-29 - after several days of struggling around bug of no returning URBs fixed.
99 2004-12-26 - refactored the dibusb-driver, splitted into separate files
100 - i2c-probing enabled
101 2004-12-06 - possibility for demod i2c-address probing
102 - new usb IDs (Compro,Artec)
103 2004-11-23 - merged changes from DiB3000MC_ver2.1
104 - revised the debugging
105 - possibility to deliver the complete TS for USB2.0
106 2004-11-21 - first working version of the dib3000mc/p frontend driver.
107 2004-11-12 - added additional remote control keys. Thanks to Uwe Hanke.
108 2004-11-07 - added remote control support. Thanks to David Matthews.
109 2004-11-05 - added support for a new devices (Grandtec/Avermedia/Artec)
110 - merged my changes (for dib3000mb/dibusb) to the FE_REFACTORING, because it became HEAD
111 - moved transfer control (pid filter, fifo control) from usb driver to frontend, it seems
112 better settled there (added xfer_ops-struct)
113 - created a common files for frontends (mc/p/mb)
114 2004-09-28 - added support for a new device (Unkown, vendor ID is Hyper-Paltek)
115 2004-09-20 - added support for a new device (Compro DVB-U2000), thanks
116 to Amaury Demol for reporting
117 - changed usb TS transfer method (several urbs, stopping transfer
118 before setting a new pid)
119 2004-09-13 - added support for a new device (Artec T1 USB TVBOX), thanks
120 to Christian Motschke for reporting
121 2004-09-05 - released the dibusb device and dib3000mb-frontend driver
123 (old news for vp7041.c)
124 2004-07-15 - found out, by accident, that the device has a TUA6010XS for
126 2004-07-12 - figured out, that the driver should also work with the
127 CTS Portable (Chinese Television System)
128 2004-07-08 - firmware-extraction-2.422-problem solved, driver is now working
129 properly with firmware extracted from 2.422
130 - #if for 2.6.4 (dvb), compile issue
131 - changed firmware handling, see vp7041.txt sec 1.1
132 2004-07-02 - some tuner modifications, v0.1, cleanups, first public
133 2004-06-28 - now using the dvb_dmx_swfilter_packets, everything
135 2004-06-27 - able to watch and switching channels (pre-alpha)
136 - no section filtering yet
137 2004-06-06 - first TS received, but kernel oops :/
138 2004-05-14 - firmware loader is working
139 2004-05-11 - start writing the driver
142 NOTE: This driver was developed using Linux 2.6.6.,
143 it is working with 2.6.7 and above.
145 Linux 2.4.x support is not planned, but patches are very welcome.
147 NOTE: I'm using Debian testing, so the following explaination (especially
148 the hotplug-path) needn't match your system, but probably it will :).
150 The driver is included in the kernel since Linux 2.6.10.
154 The USB driver needs to download a firmware to start working.
156 You can either use "get_dvb_firmware dibusb" to download the firmware or you
157 can get it directly via
160 http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/dvb-dibusb-5.0.0.11.fw
162 for USB1.1 (AN2235) (a few Artec T1 devices)
163 http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/dvb-dibusb-an2235-1.fw
165 for USB2.0 (FX2) Hauppauge, DiBcom
166 http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/dvb-dibusb-6.0.0.5.fw
168 for USB2.0 ADSTech/Kworld USB2.0
169 http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/dvb-dibusb-adstech-usb2-1.fw
172 http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/dvb-dibusb-an2235-1.fw
177 Since the driver is in the linux kernel, activating the driver in
178 your favorite config-environment should sufficient. I recommend
179 to compile the driver as module. Hotplug does the rest.
181 1.3. Loading the drivers
183 Hotplug is able to load the driver, when it is needed (because you plugged
186 If you want to enable debug output, you have to load the driver manually and
187 from withing the dvb-kernel cvs repository.
189 first have a look, which debug level are available:
192 modinfo dib3000-common
196 modprobe dib3000-common debug=<level>
197 modprobe dib3000mb debug=<level>
198 modprobe dib3000mc debug=<level>
199 modprobe dvb-dibusb debug=<level>
203 When the driver is loaded successfully, the firmware file was in
204 the right place and the device is connected, the "Power"-LED should be
207 At this point you should be able to start a dvb-capable application. For myself
208 I used mplayer, dvbscan, tzap and kaxtv, they are working. Using the device
209 in vdr is working now also.
211 2. Known problems and bugs
213 - Don't remove the USB device while running an DVB application, your system will die.
215 2.1. Adding support for devices
217 It is not possible to determine the range of devices based on the DiBcom
218 reference designs. This is because the reference design of DiBcom can be sold
219 to thirds, without telling DiBcom (so done with the Twinhan VP7041 and
222 When you think you have a device like this and the driver does not recognizes it,
223 please send the ****load*.inf and the ****cap*.inf of the Windows driver to me.
225 Sometimes the Vendor or Product ID is identical to the ones of Twinhan, even
226 though it is not a Twinhan device (e.g. HAMA), then please send me the name
227 of the device. I will add it to this list in order to make this clear to
230 If you are familar with C you can also add the VID and PID of the device to
231 the dvb-dibusb-core.c-file and create a patch and send it over to me or to
232 the linux-dvb mailing list, _after_ you have tried compiling and modprobing
235 2.2. USB1.1 Bandwidth limitation
237 Most of the currently supported devices are USB1.1 and thus they have a
238 maximum bandwidth of about 5-6 MBit/s when connected to a USB2.0 hub.
239 This is not enough for receiving the complete transport stream of a
240 DVB-T channel (which can be about 16 MBit/s). Normally this is not a
241 problem, if you only want to watch TV (this does not apply for HDTV),
242 but watching a channel while recording another channel on the same
243 frequency simply does not work very well. This applies to all USB1.1
244 DVB-T devices, not just dibusb)
246 Update: For the USB1.1 and VDR some work has been done (patches and comments
247 are still very welcome). Maybe the problem is solved in the meantime because I
248 now use the dmx_sw_filter function instead of dmx_sw_filter_packet. I hope the
249 linux-dvb software filter is able to get the best of the garbled TS.
251 The bug, where the TS is distorted by a heavy usage of the device is gone
252 definitely. All dibusb-devices I was using (Twinhan, Kworld, DiBcom) are
253 working like charm now with VDR. Sometimes I even was able to record a channel
254 and watch another one.
258 Patches, comments and suggestions are very very welcome.
261 Amaury Demol (ademol@dibcom.fr) and Francois Kanounnikoff from DiBcom for
262 providing specs, code and help, on which the dvb-dibusb, dib3000mb and
265 David Matthews for identifying a new device type (Artec T1 with AN2235)
266 and for extending dibusb with remote control event handling. Thank you.
268 Alex Woods for frequently answering question about usb and dvb
269 stuff, a big thank you.
271 Bernd Wagner for helping with huge bug reports and discussions.
273 Gunnar Wittich and Joachim von Caron for their trust for giving me
274 root-shells on their machines to implement support for new devices.
276 Some guys on the linux-dvb mailing list for encouraging me
278 Peter Schildmann >peter.schildmann-nospam-at-web.de< for his
279 user-level firmware loader, which saves a lot of time
280 (when writing the vp7041 driver)
282 Ulf Hermenau for helping me out with traditional chinese.
284 André Smoktun and Christian Frömmel for supporting me with
285 hardware and listening to my problems very patient