[mythtv-users] Some Info on the Video Without Boundaries Boxes

Warren warren-lists at icruise.com
Fri Apr 7 16:58:25 UTC 2006


That's almost correct.  They are not the most technical down there.  The
board is made for them.

The Processor is a C3A (Nehemiah) 1Ghz.  The Sigma 8475 may or may not
actually be used.  There are no drivers for it in the 2.6 kernel
series.  When the original board was spec'd out there was a question as
to whether the VIA processor would be able to handle the MPEG4 content
so it was added.  Since everything is MPEG2 on this machine there is no
reason to assume that the 8475 is even needed.  In the last version of
the software that we did for the 4000 which was written with porting to
the 5000 in mind we did not use it at all.

I do not know what video capture card was finally decided upon, but
originally the spec for the 5000 was a Hauppauge 150.  If that is the
case, it explains the coax, although it would be an input, not an
output.  Take a look at
http://www.vwbinc.com/pdf/MR4000%20Brochure%205-10%20web.pdf for the
specs of the 4000.  The bottom-right picture shows the i/o ports on the
4000, which are likely to be the same on the 5000.  From left to right
in rows
1) composite video and stereo audio in ***Not hooked up to MPEG capture
hardware
2) Composite video and stereo audio out.
3) Y/Pb/Pr component out fed from a VT1623 which means 480p max
4) 6-channel analog audio out - This was having problems but looked to
possibly be solved on the last version of the board I have.
5) Digital audio out, both fiber and coax.

Additionally there are USB and Firewire connectors on the back and on
the front.  S-Video in and out on the back, Composite and stereo input
on the front (again not hooked up to MPEG compression hardware). PCMCIA
and ISO card slots on the front.  The 5000 was supposed to add a larger
HD, DVD/RW and PVR onto basically the same motherboard.

The biggest problem was that the board was truly designed for Windows,
even though it was spec'd otherwise.  The PCMCIA controller was always a
problem and the only way I could make it stable was to remove ACPI from
the kernel.  Granted that was a while ago now and at may work and play
well with the newer kernels.

The only custom mods that were ever actually made to the kernel were in
the 2.4 kernel to make the PCMCIA controller work properly, which to the
best of my knowledge were incorporated back into the kernel in a later
release, at least as far as the 4000 goes.

As for HD playback, it has the ability to do so from an MPEG2 source,
although scaled down to 480p.  I have done that myself through xine.

W

Brian Wood wrote:
> I got a response to some of my email questions:
>
> The processor is a Via C3, the media processor is a Sigma 8745.
>
> The guide data is free and is supplied by "Tribune Media", which is  
> DataDirect.
>
> The device does not have a way to input baseband HD (not surprising  
> but I had to ask).
>
> It is said you can get HD programming into the machine via "USB or  
> network". This implies it is able to play it back but I wouldn't bet  
> the bank on that.
>
> I asked what video inputs the machine has. the answer was "3  
> composite video, 2 S-Video, 1 coax video outputs". This answer  
> confuses me but it is a direct quote.
>
> All recording is done in MPEG-2.
>
> No additional internal storage can be added, just external USB  
> drives. The unit has 4 USB 2.0 ports.
>
> Source code is not available. I assume this refers to the Sage stuff,  
> as obviously Linux source is available. No mention of any custom mods  
> to the OS.
>
> Not much, but I thought I would share this info.
>
>
> Brian Wood
> beww at beww.org
>
>
>
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