[mythtv-users] HW CAMs, CI support, legal subscription viewing (DVB-S2)

David Kubicek foceni at gmail.com
Sun Jan 17 12:00:56 UTC 2010


Hello to you all.

I'm bringing up "the big" question - there is some general knowledge 
about some cards' CI's (mostly KNC1) working with Linux - at least 
Kaffeine, if not MythTV. Most of these reports are rather old so I 
looked into MythTV sources and current dvbcam.cpp seems to support CAM 
menus, selections, etc. I guess the developers came a long way since 
those dark days. There must have been people actually testing this code, 
I'm kindly asking these people and anybody else with some experience to 
step up and share their tips. :) Like you, I don't want to settle for 
less - MythTV is the best in this area.

However, there aren't many DVB-S cards with CI slots supported by Linux 
and my impression is that those which work are incompatible with MythTV. 
I've searched and read the whole -dev and -users lists and it seems to 
me that most MythTV enthusiasts are eventually forced to turn to the 
"dark side" and end up using borderline-legal sortcam setups. After 
that, nobody will respond to their questions, because such discussions 
are forbidden here. I conclude that there are basically two options - 
watch FTA (useless) or go rogue and loose all sympathy and support, 
which is impractical to say the least. :)

I'd like to prevent this happening to me. I'm going to build a new 
MythTV box and I would prefer if everything was stable, clean, legal and 
without non-documented hacks like DVB loop devices. MythTV code shows 
there have been some development in this area and there were people with 
some HW CAM's writing and testing the new code. This means there really 
is a working HW CAM for MythTV. Also, with the majority of people here 
against softcams, there must be many users with HW CAM cards. I don't 
think people would have gone all the way to polish (rather complicated) 
MythTV setups just for FTA viewing.

My question, my plea is to hear from you what you've been through, how 
you ended up realizing your setup and any tips along the way. Everything 
to do with DVB-S2 (or even DVB-C) and MythTV. I really hope to collect 
some hard-to-get information and put it up on the MythTV wiki for other 
people like me. Please, do let me know.

Thank you,
David Kubicek


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