Feature: CI - cams directly in Tvheadend

Raymond Paulsen

I was looking into the Mumudvb setup and dicoverd this software has the option to use CI based cams, lot of dvb cards has the option to use hardware based Cams, why not make support for it in the tvheadend code base?

OScam has lots of issues regarding softkeys and in the future it wil be a limitating factor for tvheadend.

if tvheadend could utilized CI based cams it wil be more robust for the future not depending on questinable software like OScam and CCcam.

Is there any problems deveolping a feature for this in TVheadend?

Wild Penguin

I too would be interested in this. I was forced to move to using MythTV, since I wanted to record some scrambled channels, but currently have only HW CI+CAM setup (no card reader). For my usage, I'd prefer tvheadend over MythTV in all other aspects except this one!

However, I believe there's a bit of a lack of developers / coders ATM... hopefully some developer would comment!

(also. OSCam and CCcam are questionable, I agree, too, at least according to the law in some countries. But I also find the actions of current producers, rights holders and service providers questionable. So I find nothing morally wrong in using the said software - provided you really have the rights to view the channels you are viewing. But I'm veering off the subject here...)

Raymond Paulsen

I havent tried Mythtv to be honest, but you said it has CI support? is it possible to round up som docs on this?

nice if some devs could chime in with som info on this, if its even possible and if so, whats needed.

Raymond Paulsen

I did read alittle on the myth tv forums about ci slots and cams.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User_Manual:Setting_up_DVB-S_for_satellite#What_about_PayTV_and_encrypted_channels.3F

Seems that this is how it will work in practice.

tvheadend uses dvb api right? It request a transponder and waits for a output.

The ci part needs to be done by the dvb-card firmware. Not in tvheadend.

Can this be confirmed?

How will a usb based ci slot work in practice? Is it the dvb cards firmware or is there something in the dvc common api?

Wild Penguin

Raymond,

Yes, mythtv does handle hardware CI's correctly (as does VDR; I used to use it previously, I'd recommend you to try it too, if you have the time and patience required for setup).

> The ci part needs to be done by the dvb-card firmware. Not in tvheadend.

This is not true AFAICT, though I don't know much about the inner workins of the CI's (or the Linux DVB API), so I could be wrong. But I conclude so, because mplayer, nor tvheadend, can receive scrambled channels, while software that specifically state that they can use descrambling (that I have tried), can.

So it is not totatlly transparent to the software. A CI device node needs to (currently at least) be attatched to a frontend device node, and even then, the CI+CAM needs to be activated by software - and the TS relayed trough the descramlber. Or somesuch.

Someone could prove me wrong, if there's anyone using a CI+CAM (i.e. not a card reader with some kind of software CAM - which is illegal in a lot of countries for this purpose) with TVheadend.

Wild Penguin

Ville Aakko wrote:
> Raymond,
>

> Yes, mythtv does handle hardware CI's correctly (as does VDR; I used to use it previously, I'd recommend you to try it too, if you have the time and patience required for setup).

I have to add, that I never watched scrambled channels with VDR (back in the day when I used it, I had no CI+CAM nor any subscriptions); but there's at least some people using VDR with the same HW I'm using (Digital Devices Octopus or similar and one of their CI's) - I've been following the discussiong at vdr-portal.de, too.