Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 00:21:04 +1000 (EST) From: Q <q@fan.net.au> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com> Cc: ulf@Alameda.net, Ryan Dewalt <rdewalt@meridianksi.com>, freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Creative Labs DVD Dxr2 Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.02.9903112340560.20916-100000@gromit.fan.net.au> In-Reply-To: <72974.921137745@zippy.cdrom.com>
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On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > Jordan posted an email address of a Taiwan CL person, who had promised
> > programming documentations. Try to poke that person again.
>
> I don't think that will do any good at this point. They don't
> appear to be answering.
>
I contacted this person and got a response from him fairly quickly,
unfortunately Creative's official position at this time is that they only
support the Windows MCI API for third party access to the card. Which
doesn't help at all.
I am currently doing research into the likelyhood of completing support
for the Dxr2 card (ie. researching required information not code hacking).
From what I have discovered, all the components used on the Dxr2 board
have downloadable documentation except one. The ZiVA-DS DVD decoder chip,
this is the brains of the board and without technical information about
the chip it looks unlikely that FreeBSD support will be possible.
From what I can gather, the Dxr2 board is based on the Auravision
Universal DVD card, with only a couple of components differing slightly.
Auravision sell a development kit to manufacturers that includes windows
drivers. Unfortunately, to get the ZiVA-DS documentation and source code
you still need to speak directly to C-Cube. Who only give it out at their
discression. So it seems to be a well kept secret.
I have tried to contact C-Cube through various channels in an attempt to
obtain information about the ZiVA-DS chipset but have hit dead ends every
time. Anyone inside the US is encouraged to persue this. Being in
Australia has made things difficult.
I have also seen a couple of reports from Linux developers that C-Cube
have refused to give them programming information because it is
"proprietry" and not for public distribution.
I am not sure on the legalities yet, but I plan to make an attempt at
trying to reverse engineer/trace parts of the Creative windows DVD player
to see if it is possible to derive enough information about the ZiVA-DS
decoder to proceed with the project.
For the moment, reverse engineering is the only option. I don't know what
the legalities are yet, but the result of such an effort would be an adhoc
programming spec. Which would be used to implement a clean room device
driver for FreeBSD. I know that the UK have "product compatability"
related laws that make reversing legal.
I am still learning a lot of new stuff as I investigate this (mostly about
the internals of windows). DVD support fgor FreeBSD is a commercial sized
project. Things that need to be done before DVD will happen on FreeBSD
includes UDF support, CSS key negotiation support in the ATAPI CDROM
driver, Dxr2 video overlay driver, Dxr2 TV/Out driver, C-Cube ZiVA-DS
driver, implementation of a full DVD navigator.
I would be interested to discuss this with anyone interested in commencing
with such a project.
Seeya...Q
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
_____ / Quinton Dolan - q@fan.net.au
__ __/ / / __/ / / Systems Administrator
/ __ / _/ / / Fast Access Network
__/ __/ __/ ____/ / - / Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
_______ / Ph: +61 7 5574 1050
\_\ SAGE-AU Member
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