A message from Steven …
The HVR-2250 Linux driver – Where is it?
As of Sep 17th 2009 the SAA7164 driver was merged into the LinuxTV.org repositories, available here http://linuxtv.org/hg/v4l-dvb
We continue to maintain the most stable source code http://kernellabs.com/hg/saa7164-stable/
The development branch is here http://kernellabs.com/hg/~stoth/saa7164-dev/
If you’d like to donate to this project then http://www.steventoth.net/blog/products/hvr-2250/
You may need HVR-2250 / HVR-2200 firmware from here.
Wiki instructions here: http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-HVR-2200
MythTV instructions here: http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7344302
If you’d like to sponsor the project then please contact me using the details from the site Contact page, here.
Feb 19th 2009 – 11pm
— The original posting that started this project
Here’s the project summary so far… Background: It’s a long (ish) story that began during the early part of 2008. I started work on the Linux driver for the Hauppauge HVR-2250 Dual ATSC/QAM/Analog Encoder board (IIRC) March 2008. Works went well up until July / August 2008 when I put the project on ice and decided to take a stand against the whole Multiproto farce. It’s best not to dwell on that sorry episode of v4l-dvb history. That being said, I started to focus my attention on developing the S2API project, going head to head with a few people and trying to get DVB-S2 into DVB-CORE. Didn’t we all want a flexible API able to deal with S2, ISDB-T and other modulation types? For the main part, Yes. We bickered over lot of the implementation details (Multiproto vs S2API) but importantly – things were moving forward. (Side note: for a group of developers who enjoy spending their spare time writing TV kernel drivers, it’s odd that we fight so much). The S2API work swiftly led on to the Linux Plumbers Conf 2008 where I presented the S2API proposal and met with these excellent fellows! (I’m top left, white shirt, Yep – the odd bod.). What happened after Plumbers? We’ll more S2API and then the code merge. Thanks to the work of many developers worldwide we finally merged support into the master repository for S2. Kudos to everyone who helped. I’ve already thanked you publicly, you know who you are. Then things got crazy, personal and out of hand on the mailing lists so as usual (as I often do) I took some time away from Linux to recharge the batteries. After all, isn’t this supposed to be fun? We’d broken the back of the S2API and the rest was trivial to resolve. To be honest I just needed a break. Something weird happened during October 2008, the average person didn’t expect the economy to tank, but it did. Companies started laying off employees. Big names like Sun, HP, Microsoft, Google. Even companies like Hauppauge. People were losing their jobs, their homes, 401k’s in the tank, stock prices falling to the floor and everything got ugly. It’s still ugly today. I have friends in the Investment Banking industry. What’s their outlook?
“It’s not going to get back to pre-october levels for 5 years.” Doh!
So, since October / November, other than keeping myself busy in the New York Hauppauge offices, I spend my evenings and weekends working on projects that help bring a few extra dollars into the Toth household.
As Jason Calacanis says “In times this that you need to be investing in yourself”
Hey, it’s good to take a break. I’ve been learning all sorts of interesting things about the Mac OSX developer tools and frameworks. This work turned into a couple of Mac projects (HDPVRCapture and AVCNoodle) which I occasionally make a few dollars from. If you interested or curious you should checkout the AVSForum where these are discussed here and here. Anyway, back to the point. A number of individuals have written to me in public and in private (as have a number of companies). They’ve suggesting that I should start accepting donations… really? … to help fund the HVR-2250 and HVR-2200 driver project. Why? HVR-2250 users are frustrated. They want to use their TV tuners under Linux and the only way we can legally make this happen is if I start working on the driver again. This isn’t a project I can outsource to another developer. If you know me and my work then you’ll know that I’ve done a large amount of Linux work in the past, you’ll find my email address stoth at linuxtv [dot] org all over the v4l-dvb tree. Look, I do this for fun, not for profit, so it’s uncomfortable feeling for me to add a donation button to my blog. Still, I do need to earn a crust. So, to all the people who have asked, “Put a donation button on your blog and maybe we can convince you to start working on the HVR2250 driver again”. See here, and thank you.
