[mythtv-users] Getting hardware encoding to work with blackbird (cx88 based) cards

Justin Hornsby justin.hornsby2 at ntlworld.com
Sat Sep 10 10:40:08 UTC 2005


Tomas Roos wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I have a Leadtek WinFast PVR 2000 card (not the XP version) which I
> use in my mythtv setup.
> The software decoding works fine and the quality is descent with the
> 0.0.4 cx88xx driver (V4L2)
> 
> I have heard that you can enable the mpeg2 encoder in the card by
> uploading firmware somehow. I have no clue on how to extract the
> firmware from the windows drivers or how to get this to work. Does
> anyone have a link where this is step by step explained.
> 
> Also. If I get the HW mpeg2 encoder to work will it work together with
> mythtv. In that case, how do I do that?
> 

There was some work done on this a while ago, and I've had a play with 
it (without success).

You don't 'update' the firmware to the card - you upload firmware to the 
mpeg encoder on the card.  I couldn't find a procedure for extracting 
the firmware from the windows drivers, but it's allegedly available to 
users of Plutohome (www.plutohome.org) who were in the process of 
developing the driver a while ago.  Sadly, development work on the 
driver has all but stopped due to a shortage of testers.

Apparently some people have this card and its mpeg encoder working with 
the newer driver available from plutohome.org and the usual V4L cx88 
driver branch, but I've not seen any hint of a 'how-to' yet.


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