SDK for TT 1.2 Premium / Nexus-T / SS1 (1 Viewer)

[smokeman]

it's great to see someone looking into this,
It is going to be another few months before I get around to it.
We are just digging the basement for my new house

 

[draktheas]

So after a little research (and I mean a little), there are a few ways I could go with this:

1) Hardcode the functionality we need into several places in MP and talk directly to the TT API. This is not good as it will polute the current MP code base with a lot of special case code and it's not very useful given that MP appears to want to link to a Directshow graph with it's components.

2) Build a Directshow graph that talks to the TT API and has output pins that I can link to the components used in MP. This seems to be the way that the SS2 was done. However, the SS2 already had a Directshow filter to hook into. So I would have to write the filter, the DVBGraphTTPremium component, and the appropriate code in the device scan to pickup the new TT Directshow filter.

3) Attempt to create a BDA driver that talks to the TT API. As I don't know much about the requirements of BDA, this would take more time and be more error prone. But this would also be the most flexible approach as it would allow any software supporting BDA to access the TT Premium card through my work.

I am heavily leaning toward option 2 right now, because it seems to be the most flexible given the current knowledge that I have. Any opinions, advise, or comments?

Drak

 

[JMS]

Yeh, I have downloaded and looked at the DVB.NET wrapper. However, it is missing some key functionality in order to implement the TT Premium in Media Portal.

I am not sure if DVB.NET is even actively being updated anymore.

Is is - the last beta update is around 4 days old, current release notes can be found in the forum. Although my main development path is still recording and as I mentioned in the Hauppauge Forum (the link some posts above) I don't think that the existing implementation can provide much help in everything around user interface. Personally if I would decide to open the TT Premium access I would prefer option 3) in the previous post. I didn't dive into all the Direct Show stuff very deep and scratched only the surface (while extending DVB.NET to the Nova-SE2/Nova-S Plus) but the required funcionality of a BDA support doesn't seem so complicated. Although having the PID limitiation of 8 filters at a time will make a standard graph including the BDA TIF almost impossible since it would eat up most of the capacity. The most tricky part would be around that - a tuner and TS generating capture filter doesn't sond that hard [opinion after surface scratching - remember].

Jochen

 

[hani]

I don't know much about the BDA thing
but I have implemented a "hard code" wrapper(hardware mode only) around the TT API.
I built my code on the top of the current SS2 implementation(GUI only)
personllay I did not like to do it this way but it was the only option
available to me.
I have stopped working on it for a while but I woud love to join the developement team and share my code with you guys.

most of the DVB application using TT API some of them using dvbcore.
and others trying to use Directshow filters,
but I think BDA is the way to go, this may anable other people outside
the MP develpment team to contribute.

I suggest creating sticky in the develepment area so we can share
all the info with other developers(Agree and the others....)

JMS I really like your VCR.NET, keep up the good work

 

[draktheas]

After a little more research and superb amounts of frustration at the lack of documentation for BDA. I have decided that BDA drivers are beyond my capabilities as a developer.

If anyone has a good source for BDA development information, I would be happy to look it over and re-evaluate my opinion. But at this point I am not familiar enough with driver development or BDA to do this kind of work.

So I am going to go with the second option which is to develop a Directshow source filter that provides the seperate output pins that I can hook into MP. This will most closely mirror the development of the SS2 solution for MP and as well as being a lot easier for me or others to maintain in the long run.

I am curious, has anyone attempted to develop a Directshow filter in .NET or C# yet? I have found a couple of sources through a google search, but no confirmed .NET Directshow filters or example code. I can certainly experiment with this option, but I would rather not waste time if it is a dead end. Ultimately, I may have to write in C++ just for performance reasons anyway. I would just like to know if this is even a concrete option at this point.

Thanks all,
Drak

 

[JMS]

The DVB.NET 2.6 Beta for which I provided a link above includes a skeleton Direct Show filter (see BDA\JMS\DVB\Provider\BDA\DirectShow\Filters and therein PIDFilter and PIDPin). For my purpose it's working but it has some major limitiations (maybe at least you can take a look on it):

1. It's an In-Memory filter and not registered or creatable from the outside. Personally I think this is not a major issue but I didn't check.

2. It's a consuming only filter. So it doesn't deal with memory allocation or pushing samples through the graph. As a BDA outsider as well I have the strong feeling that this can be much of work to do.

3. It's not stable - ok, it is right now BUT when I create the graph in an application which is marked with [STAThread] - which is the normal case - it leaks memory! On a [MTAThread] it runs fine. I think this is some issue with garbage collection in the concreate situation with a STA main thread and .NET code running on COM created threads - it has to do with the automatically created Run-time-Callable Wrappers which will not be freed. I reported this to Microsoft but got no response (here, I don't know, if you can see the thread without registering). For now and my goal I got a work-around but this is not sufficient - especially the trick will no longer work with .NET 2.0.

To summerize: don't give up so fast and try to have Fun 8)

Jochen

 

[draktheas]

Thanks for the info. I will take a look at the filter you have. I am by no means giving up on this project. I am just not going the BDA route as referenced in my last post.

Thanks again,
Drak