I'd like to ask about watching TV on OS4. Is there anyone who runs AmithlonTV or AmiTV just right? Where can I download the latest version of AmiTV, to give it a try? The version on the OS4 Depot it seems rather old.

Is any of these two projects still in development?

Thanks guys for your time

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@walkero

You might want to check out a thread on DVB-T (digital video broadcasting).

Just enter DVB into the search engine.

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Sam440ep + OS4.1FE
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@1Mouse

In other words, this thread here.

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Hi,

The version of AmiTV on OS4Depot is indeed very old. There are newer versions in the Bt8x8 thread elsewhere on this forum, from what I remember.

The problem is it's very difficult to develop a good driver when the system will crash sporadically if you run your own program. Hence I'm kind of waiting on either new hardware or else maybe overlay support will let me fix it. Maybe....

@Spirantho

or you can accept help from other people...

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@Spirantho

Do you know if anyone has found out why the system locks up with excess interrupts? This problem affects more than just the TV driver so it would be beneficial if the system could handle this condition by spitting out error messages instead of locking up.

I'd be interested to know which piece of hardware causes the lockup. If the CPU is still running but the PCI interrupt controller has screwed up, it might be possible to reset the controller and warn about possible lost interrupts.

Hans

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@Spirantho

Quote:

maybe overlay support will let me fix it

AFAIK there's already overlay support for Vodoo cards, so maybe you could already try it?

Ciao, Alfred

@Hans

Quote:

so it would be beneficial if the system could handle this condition by spitting out error messages instead of locking up

But the hardware locks up, so you don't have any chance of spitting out error messages.

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@DaveAE

Quote:

But the hardware locks up, so you don't have any chance of spitting out error messages.

I was hoping that this wasn't the case.
So does the CPU lock up as well? Or is it the artica/Via that locks up in such a way that the CPU can't reinitialize it? I guess that even if the CPU could reset/reinitialize the locked-up hardware that doing so could be dangerous in terms of lost data.

Hans

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@Hans

Hi again Hans.
This may not apply specifically to what you are asking, but it is a link I don't
think I posted recently from an older discussion on particular interrupts that
affect graphic performance. Just thought you might like to read it:
here

#6

Edit: shorten link

Last edited by Moxee on 19-Jan-2007 at 02:58 AM.

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@Hans

This may be caused by PCI AGP transfers getting screwed up by the Articia northbridge... This problem exsited on the Peg1.

realize

Last edited by realize on 06-Jul-2006 at 05:45 PM.

@Spirantho

With OS4 final, we now have overlay support. Have you made any progress with AmiTV since? Watching TV is one of the last things that I have to boot into Linux for.

Hans

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@Hans
I highly doubt the amigaone has the ability to use tvtuners with overlay due to limited bandwith over pci bus.. :(
If it is as bad as people claimit to be that is..

Last edited by Tomas on 18-Jan-2007 at 01:51 PM.

@Tomas

Hopefully that won't be the case.... it should be OK though if I can shift the data using YUV compression instead of RGB like I have to at the moment. I may also have to halve the framerate, though.

@Hans

I can't actually do anything until the new SDK comes out. Hyperion changed the functionality of AllocMem and introduced a new function AllocVecTags which has a new flag which is necessary for DMA. Unfortunately the old SDK doesn't have this function so I can't actually do anything at all!

@Spirantho

Would the functionality changes really be so critical? Apps compiled with previous SDKs should run without problem. Or do you want to take advantage of new features? I haven't had any trouble using the old SDK, but only tried to compile simple stuff. I hope the new SDK comes out soon.

@Tomas

I still don't understand why overlay would be such a problem. Isn't overlay supposed to reduce the bandwidth requirements? It's supposed to allow DMAing straight into video RAM instead of requiring an additional copy. I can watch TV no problem without overlay in Linux. When using overlay, not only is the image corrupt, but it isn't resized to fit the whole screen
(which it is without overlay). This sounds more like the overlay just not working, as overlay is supposed to handle the rescaling for you.

I'm not saying that the claims are wrong. It just doesn't make much sense to me right now. Regardless, I hope that they are wrong, and that there's a way to make it work.

Hans

Last edited by Hans on 18-Jan-2007 at 03:33 PM.

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@Hans

I agree that I think overlay should work ok. Hopefully. :)

As for the SDK, the new memory system is only supported in the new (unreleased) SDK, and there was a fundamental change to one of the AllocMem() parameters that I rely on such that it now doesn't return what I need, viz. a solid block of DMA'able RAM.

When I get the new SDK I can use the new AllocVecTags() function to get the same result as I used AllocMem() for in the previous SDK, but until then there's no function available to me to get the required result. Unless you're trying to DMA large blocks you'd never need the new parameters, so it's unlikely you'd find incompatibilty.

@Hans
I can talk from the experience i and others have had when it comes to tvtuners on x86 computers with pci bandwith problems. What happens is that the image get corrupted during high motion scenes or scene changes. It looks like some pixels are frozen and are not updating as they should. If the problem is severe enough, then you will even experience this during low motion scenes.

I do not know if there is a workaround though.. I know for sure that there were no workaround on those pc motherboards that suffered from a similar problem. The only fix on some of them was lowering the res and depth significantly or using it in software mode.

Last edited by Tomas on 18-Jan-2007 at 04:12 PM.

@Tomas

I can only imagine you were using a really cheap PC... or else it wasn't doing what you think it was doing. I've been using overlay-capable TV cards since my 486 DX4/100!

Also high motion scenes or low motion scenes make no difference, the TV card deals in raw uncompressed data, it shouldn't matter at all what the data is - it could be a black screen or a random pattern.

I suspect what is more likely is that the signal drop was the same but it was more visible in high-motion pictures, simple because if the data was bad and didn't overwrite the old data, in a low-motion picture the data may not have changed anyway, whereas in high-motion the pixel is more likely to have changed and hence become incorrect.