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Does Dvbviewer support WDM drivers?


hellsingfan

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Hey,

 

I wanted to know if DVBViewer supported wdm driver based cards. If not, why? Can you add wdm support? I'm asking because there are some cards that are wdm based and probably the most notable is Genpix skywalker-1 which has wdm driver but not bda.... Please add wdm driver support! Are there are plans of doing this?

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Yes, we support WDM Driver for Sky/Cable/Airstar 2 and for Twinhan cards. No, we will not add any WDM Driver support.

If not, why?

Not that we have to explain this in any way, but I do it this time: BDA is the way to go. So you just need to update your hardware or bug the manufacturer to release a BDA driver.

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Actually there is NO hardware capable of Turbo-coded 8psk for Dish Network HD EXCEPT the skywalker. so all the other dvb cards are rather "outdated", BEV is also switching to 8psk later on. Does BDA support the diseqc? I don't think so, except vendors can come up with something on their on. In that case BDA is outdated?

 

I would think that DVBViewer would try to have support for as much device as possible. secondly there are a lot of skywalker users who will easily jump to DVBViewer if it had support because currently nothing else is as good as DVBViewer.

 

Well you have supported the sky/cable/airstar 2, why leave out the skywalker which is the only one of its kind while all three of the supported cards do have "alternatives".

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Why no BDA driver? :(

 

BDA doesn't support diseqc, why is that? Why don't any of the other cards do turbocoded 8psk? I think the list can continue.. don't you. DVBViewer has practically chosen to leave out all the dvb setup that are running Dish Network HD, which is a base that is only going to grow not shrink.

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Never even heard of skywalker except for Luke.

But anyway. ask them to provide a propper BDA driver like any other current card does (even the cheapest chinese based card) and everything will work.

 

And if you taker a look you will see we support diseqC 1.2. it's up to your hardware provider.

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Never even heard of skywalker except for Luke.

But anyway. ask them to provide a propper BDA driver like any other current card does (even the cheapest chinese based card) and everything will work.

 

And if you taker a look you will see we support diseqC 1.2. it's up to your hardware provider.

 

I've asked already, I don't know whats up, one of the reasons he spoke about is the diseqc problem with bda. If I may request could you ask the development team to add support for skywalker? I mean you have supported those 3 WDM driver based cards, I'm sure adding support for skywalker which has wdm drivers (which is one of its kind, with NO alternatives atm) would only help.

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I mean you have supported those 3 WDM driver based cards
The WDM driver support for this cards was there before the DVBViewer had support for BDA driver.

Thins the BDA driver support was add no new WDM driver support was add. Only the old support for some WDM driver is not removed until now.

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Hmm the genpix device is only for FTA transmissions and Dish Networks is scrambled resp. does not allow something else than their own receivers :( I'm quite sorry in this case (even if i understand that such a monopoly sucks) you probably don't get help by the DVBViewer developers. The only thing i could advise is to ask the manufacturer if he would be able to publish a sdk, or to create a bda driver.

 

Peter

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I've asked already, I don't know whats up, one of the reasons he spoke about is the diseqc problem with bda.

Most DVB-S card manufacturers managed to support DiSEqC with a vendor-specific BDA supplement. E.g. there is a quite simple method for sending Pos/Opt DiSEqC commands originating from TechnoTrend. It uses a standard BDA interface (IBDA_FrequencyFilter) and has been adopted by other manufacturers. So DiSEqC shouldn't be such a problem. If the skywalker people want to know how it has to be implemented they can ask us. :( It would work "out of the box" with DVBViewer.

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This is what genpix (manufacturer) said:

 

"BDA standard does not include anything but QPSK modulation for satellite drivers." (For DVB-S, I know DVB-S2 has 8psk support)

 

Now that really screws everything up because DishNetwork uses Turbo-coded 8psk, that is the only reason to buy skywalker-1 (DVB-S), otherwise I could just buy a cheap twinhan, why would I buy a $230 skywalker?

 

The more I think about it, the more it seems that BDA sucks... No native support for diseqc, and doesn't support newer modulations. When Bev switches all the HD channels to turbo-coded 8psk, I guess then those with those "HD" cards will start crying. At that time Skywalker-1 will be the only card, I'm sure you'll rethink adding the wdm support for it then.

 

If BDA driver means that Skywalker loses the ability to play HD then there is no point in getting a BDA driver. I could get the same capabilities with a cheap dvb-s card.

 

Microsoft sure screwed up with this BDA stuff, it is way outdated!

Edited by hellsingfan
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Good news (depends):

 

He said: (I corrected the spelling mistakes ;) )

 

"if other software developers can provide a sample for DVB-s card interface, I would write genpix_unified interface.

Both, TSReader and DVB Dream have these samples. And I wrote genpix interfaces for them (DLL files)."

 

So can you guys release what he wants to him (I don't know if its confidential or not)? This will be a business booster for you guys cuz there are at least a few thousand skywalker-1 users who are using "not so great" software who would love to switch!

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This is what genpix (manufacturer) said: "BDA standard does not include anything but QPSK modulation for satellite drivers."

That's not true anymore. The genpix people should take a look at bdatypes.h from the WDK 6000, covering DVB-S2 requirements.

 

Anyway, BDA *is* a lousy standard. But it's better than no standard at all, and it is not such a big thing to implement additional vendor specific properties on a BDA tuner filter, e.g. for setting up a modulation type that is not covered by BDA. Several manufacturers did it this way, and I don't see why genpix can't do that.

 

So can you guys release what he wants to him

It's already released: ;)

 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms779692(VS.85).aspx

 

If "Direct Tuning" is switched on, DVBViewer communicates directly with the tuner/demodulator filter by using IBDA_XXX interfaces (IBDA_FrequencyFilter, IBDA_DigitalDemodulator, IBDA_LNBInfo, IBDA_SignalStatistics, IBDA_DeviceControl, IBDA_Topology). Additionally DVBViewer uses IKSPropertySet (implemented on the input pin of the tuner filter) in case of vendor specific extensions. That's all.

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In case the genpix devs are interested: The screenshot below shows a typical DVBViewer BDA capture graph in Direct Tuning Mode, leaving as much as possible of the MS stuff aside.

 

Internal DVB-S Network Provider is a DVBViewer component replacing the MS Network Provider. It implements IBDA_NetworkProvider, but only performs basic configuration of the tuner filter via IBDA_Topology, thus skipping most of the MS BDA overhead.

 

BDA Sample Dumper is a DVBViewer component receiving the TS data from the Capture Filter.

 

The rest are MS KSProxy filters working as DirectShow wrappers for the DVB-S BDA driver. DVBViewer queries them for the interfaces mentioned above and does the tuning...

Zwischenablage01.png

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Its not like I'm a coder, so most of this goes over my head except the last part which you gave an image, seems like the tuner is being used through a directshow filter? I think DvbPlus utilizes that which is totally based upon Skywalker.

 

Anyhow I've asked genpix to talk here, hopefully he'll come.

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every software developer says that BDA driver is the way to go.

It's easier for them to use BDA driver and just manually add all these functions which are outside of BDA scope (like modulation, diseqc commands, legacy switch commands, extra LNB power (extra 1V), etc.).

Since there is no standard for all these extra functions, every single BDA driver has to be considered as individual case (and new features have to be added manually).

Which means, there is no software which can use all feature of "extended BDA" driver without special coding (that is, new version of software is required for every new single "extended BDA" driver).

 

The problem is:

I can not find a single software developer who knows how to write BDA driver. Everybody knows how to use them, but very few know how to write them (and I can not find those few).

Microsoft DK has very extended help on BDA driver usage, but BDA driver sample sucks (I mean, comments inside that sample suck).

Edited by genpix
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Since there is no standard for all these extra functions, every single BDA driver has to be considered as individual case

DVB-C/T usually works without extra measures, so this only applies to DVB-S. However, there is a basic BDA class in DVBViewer, derived from an abstract hardware class, and all we have to do is to is to overwrite two or three methods for vendor specific stuff like DiSEqC, which means, only little additional code.

 

The DVBViewer design allows to integrate WDM support, and if it can be based on a well documented DLL, it's possible... but it requires writing a complete new class, which means quite a lot of code just for one device, that has to be tested and maintained - quite difficult if we don't have this device, or if we can't receive the DVB network for which the device is designed. That's why we want to get away from WDM. There is only one WDM driver that is still fully supported (the one for TechniSat SkyStar2), but that's more or less nostalgia, because originally (in pre-BDA times) DVBViewer was a SkyStar2 application.

 

IMHO you will have to provide a BDA driver sooner or later, because without it your hardware is exluded from a lot of software support.

 

The problem is: I can not find a single software developer who knows how to write BDA driver.

I see the point. I would like to help you, but I only know BDA from the application's side. Anyway, I will think about it, and if I find something out, I'll post it here or PM you...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Has there been any progress or even initial contact with this yet? Whether or not the skywalker-1 has a bda driver effects not only this community, but, a lot of them.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Dan

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Well we implemented the WDM support for genpix adapters, concerning the BDA driver: I asked one of those driver developers i stay in contact with. We'll see what happens :blush:

 

Christian

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Well we implemented the WDM support for genpix adapters

 

Wait... Does this mean that DVBViewer now supports genpix skywalker? Please say yes........ If yes, is there a test version for this?

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  • 4 weeks later...

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