Saturday, April 26, 2008

HVR-950 Todo list

So basically the driver works, and Mauro submitted a Git pull to Linus for the changes. Wohoo. However, there is still work to be done. Here is a list of things I still need to do:

  • IR support - it looks like most of the components are there already (tveeprom support, IR i2c commands, etc). I will need to setup the driver for inclusion in the em28xx driver properly and debug/test.

  • Analog/digital tuner locking - Because the HVR-950 is a hybrid device that supports both analog and digital reception, I need to work out some locking between DVB and V4L to handle cases where one tries to attach while the other is in use. Right now, there is no locking and connecting while the device is in use results in breaking the currently running stream.

  • S-Video/composite testing - I need to test/debug input switching and signal reception for the other ports.

  • Power management - Right now, the device never goes into low power mode from the time you connect it to the USB. Under Windows or Mac, the device is in low power mode until you startup your video application. While this doesn't affect MythTV users, who pretty much always have the backend connected, it would be helpful for more casual users who use it to record audio/video or watch live TV with a standalone application. Besides, the device runs hot already, so it's probably for the best that we power it down when it's not in use.

Aside from the actual device support, I want to get Kaffeine working with ATSC in general. It's annoying there is no standalone application for ATSC reception (Kaffeine supports DVB only). Shouldn't be too hard, but the project doesn't look very active. It would also be nice to have a real test application that does tuning so I don't have to combine mplayer with the command line azap tool.