nutball video question

mark tinguely tinguely at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu
Wed Jul 9 14:42:22 PDT 2003


>  For which device(s) does it have a non-free driver? Or hardware MPEG2
>  devices are not supported by FreeBSD at all?

I am not aware of any MPEG2 hardware capture cards supported under FreeBSD
at this time. The MPEG2 chipsets are finally relatively inexpensive. There
are several drivers for Linux.

The Hauppauge WinTV PVR [based in a Philips decoder and Conexant CX23416
(aka iVAC-15) MPEG2 encoder chipset]. Sounds like a good board. Conexant
does not release information but the Linux driver web page has some
register information that they said should be enough to write the driver.
The web page says they put the YUV information in a strange order and this
would be important if you wish to use a fxtv-like application to watch on
screen. Both of these facts make me leary.

I read the "KFIR" MPEG chipsets are bad.

The Philips MPEG2 SAA6752 encoder (with SAA7134 video bridge) looks good on
paper, and Philip is great with providing product specs. Unfortunately,
the only board I saw using this chipset was from a company in Germany
for 250 Euros. It looks like this chipset is mostly embedded in video
consumer appliances.

--Mark Tinguely.


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