Need confirmation that this doesn't do hardware MPEG

[The other Colin]

I need your help, guys. I've gone and bought a TV / Capture card on eBay that the seller claims does hardware-based MPEG, see:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2772135385&category=3762

It's hard to see the card in those photos, as it's still in the anti-static bag. But now that I have it, (and know what it is) see:

http://www.fastcom.com.tw/product_pci_tvcard.htm

(The card I have says IT005, but it has an '878A on it, not Philips.)

I can't see how this could have hardware MPEG on it. It's got an '878A for the capture, an IC for the remote, another small IC (which I seriously doubt is a hardware encoder), and of course the tuner module.

I installed it, and as I thought, lots of dropped frames at DVD settings. (OK at VCD settings, but that's not what I want to do. If I did, I would've bought something that looks essentially the same to me, for about AUD$80.)

I'm posting this, as I e-mailed the seller with my thoughts and findings, but he still maintains that this is a hardware MPEG card. Now I'll admit to being a newbie when it comes to capturing, but I think I'm right and he's wrong. However, I'll be happy to be corrected, if this card can do what I want to do (convert analogue camcorder tapes to DVD), as the price is good. (Maybe, too good for a hardware-based encoder???)


Thanks,

Colin

[indolikaa]

The '878' chip sounds like the Brooktree 8x8 nomenclature.

Hold tight, you're likely to get some good help with this one.

[The other Colin]

From memory (the card's not with me at present), it's something like "Conexant Fusion 878A", which would appear to be part of the Brooktree series. But I thought those chips only did the video capture, and something else is required to MPEG-2 encode it.

Colin

[indolikaa]

I thought they did both, but unless the Dazzle DVC-II uses one, then I've never used one. The Brooktree comes up sometimes in thread discussions; I want to say FOO knows a lot about these but I'm not sure...

[FOO]

I know whatever you can know from having the official data sheets
and some reference driver source.
I see no mention of MPEG2 encoding engines ,and i suspect
they would advertise that..

[indolikaa]

I see no mention of MPEG2 encoding engines ,and i suspect
they would advertise that..

The eBay listing mentioned it, but I couldn't find it anywhere else. The eBay seller's description was excessive. Too much hype; there's a red flag.

[FOO]

I was talking about the official Conexant engineering data sheet.
Mpeg encoding is not on that chip.

[racerxnet]

Foo,

Where are you getting the data sheets from? Any data on the R200 chipset from ATI? I had sent several requests to some Chinese suppliers of the chipset, but no response. Thought I might get lucky.

[FOO]

I tried for a week and gave up. All I found was statements
from ATI about there was no way in hell they would publish it.
I found some Russian info that seemed to be info about the control
registers , but was very unclear

The whole effort was to try to figure out how to set the AGC to fixed gain
to beat macrovision. I still wanna know

Conexant has all the BT8x8 stuff public

[racerxnet]

Foo,

What do you think if I probe the legs of the chipset while playing a macro encoded tape and watch the response with my Tektronix scope?

[lordsmurf]

I tried for a week and gave up. All I found was statements
from ATI about there was no way in hell they would publish it.
I found some Russian info that seemed to be info about the control
registers , but was very unclear

The whole effort was to try to figure out how to set the AGC to fixed gain
to beat macrovision. I still wanna know

Conexant has all the BT8x8 stuff public

I'm keeping my eyes out for this too, at least more detailed specs than what I've seen and found.

At any rate, the 128 PRO card I installed for family does suffer from the AGC effect, though I think hacking of the firmware and/or WDM drivers will remove that problem. How will I accomplish this? Don't know.. in fact I just ordered a $40 SIMA SED-CM for their computer just because it's easier.

[proxyx99]

Quite likely you are talking about DVICO (Korean) product.
http://www.dvico.com/products_multi.html

I got in touch with this company in Korea well over a year ago. They were selling directly as well. It has no harware capture to my knowledge. Could have been a bundled product (with Dell, Gateway, Compaq). Then pulled out. This seems to be not a recent model (last years' ?). Spoke with BernClair about it and he pulled it as well (performane issues) about 2 years ago. May perform with a very fast, well tuned system (that's what I've heard). Check their website and get in touch with them.

The other possibility is that this is an Emuzed product. Can't say now.
Keep in mind these companies make stuff for others under generic names.
www.emuzed.com

[FOO]

Foo,

What do you think if I probe the legs of the chipset while playing a macro encoded tape and watch the response with my Tektronix scope?

Surely you jest. What response ? Which of the hundreds of pins will
you probe ?
The chip will have dozens of control registers to set them up. With
a logic analyzer you could watch the values being loaded. Now
how do you identify which bit in which register does what ?

Easier to disassemble the driver to look for I/O instructions. Then
you change one bit at a time and see what happens.

Look at the BT878 data sheet , You want to try to figure that out without
the register descriptions ? The ATI is probably worse

[racerxnet]

Here are a couple of hints for solving the AGC/Macrovision from the software side. I think the best plan of attack would be the IOCTL first (if it was done that way), and second would be the stream. The bit that enables macrovision could be disabled there. The last would be to go after the hardware interface code, meaning a LOT of work.

Hint Hint: StrMiniReceiveStreamDataPacket routine to handle read and write requests for a specific stream.

And Foo,

I posted the article from Radeon2.ru where they probed leg 59 of the R200 chipset. They also provided a diagram of the y/c signal input/output. I'm doing this for shits and giggles on the hardware side to see the results. I'll take some pictures with the digital camera while doing this and post in a couple of days if you like.

http://www.radeon2.ru/konkurs_2/8500_vivo.html

[FOO]

You are looking in the wrong place. There is no BIT in a stream.
Macrovision is analog.
The stream has already been screwed by having its Luma values
artificially reduced. The only way to fix it is to prevent the capture
chip from doing this , which will require changing it's configuration .

[The other Colin]

I received a reply from Itemstech that confirmed it's software MPEG, so the card has been sent back for a refund.

Thanks anyway, guys. (You all seem to be having fun with an off-shoot, though.)

Colin