Subject: Re: bktr driver
To: Louis Guillaume <lguillaume@berklee.edu>
From: Daniel Carosone <dan@geek.com.au>
List: port-i386
Date: 12/13/2002 10:23:42
On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 11:22:56AM -0500, Louis  Guillaume wrote:
> Does anyone have recent information on the status of the bktr driver?
> All the information I've found has been untouched since 2000 (which 
> could be a good thing, a sign of stability??).

It works fine in current, and I presume 1.6, with the fxtv pkg.

> I'm also looking at what hardware to buy. It seems that amongst the 
> Hauppauge cards there are some that have hardware mpeg encoders and some 
> that don't. It will be necessary for my project to be able to capture 
> audio/video.
> 
> Supposedly the fxtv package does capture mpeg video and allow "pausing" 
> of TV, but does this occur outside of the pci hardware or does this 
> require a "video capture" device?

fxtv just lets you watch, and capture (in a fairly primitive
fashion).  The "live pause" thing is an application feature, not
something in the card (and not in the fxtv app, either).

> Somehow I suspect (because of the aged bktr driver) that some of the
> cooler features (pause TV, hardware-based mpeg2 encoding, remote control
> and others) are not yet implemented.

Many of the more advanced applications out there are written for
linux, against the v4l framework.  I'd like to see NetBSD grow a
video framework, either directly compatible with this, or via
something like -lossaudio, so that these apps can be easily ported
to NetBSD. Some of them seem quite interesting.

--
Dan.