Compro VideoMata U2800F DVB-T Receiver Tested In Belgium

jmke · 7th May 2009, 16:10

Classic analog antenna broadcastings are soon to disappear all around the world and in most cases being replaced by a digital version, in some occasions you might even run into full high definition video broadcastings. Great news for wireless receivers out there, DVB-T is an excellent way to watch quality video wherever you want, but is it really? We tested a Compro VideoMate Vista U2800F USB DVB-T receiver on Belgian grounds and the outcome is not always what you would have wished for... read on!

http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=910

geoffrey · 3rd December 2010, 16:46

It's been a while since this article is launched and I've been using this thing for a while now. I must say it's pretty handy to have one of these, though the software bugs are still there and are sometimes annoying cause they can ruin your recordings.

This said, I was looking for Linux support but unfortunately there non such, Compro simply hasn't got any drivers for it. I ended up opening the device to have a look at the internals and it seems Compro is using a Trident TV Master TM6010 video decoder. On linux.org I found the following info:

Quote:

There were some efforts on developing a driver for tm5600/tm6000/tm6010 chips.
Michel Ludwig (michel.ludwig gmail.com) did some development mostly focused at DVB-T of tm6000. Mauro Carvalho Chehab did some development moslty focused at analog support, and extended support for tm6010.
There are some versions of the driver at http://linuxtv.org/~hg that merged both developments.
The driver is still at the TODO list, however its development is currently frosen. Mauro intends to return back to it, but this is not on his current top priorities.
Those chips are very buggy and they behave badly if the driver doesn't do exactly the same thing as the original one (it starts to loose frames). The reason is unknown, but it is suspected that there is a firmware or hardware bug at those chips.
Maybe the conversion of the driver to the new i2c approach could help to fix this issue, since this will avoid sending probing packets at i2c bus, as it is known that some i2c probe sequences can hang those chips.
Also, on all tests we've done so far, it can't reliably read data from an i2c device. This prevents that tools like scan work, since you can't be sure if a signal lock happened. Also, driver can't even be sure if xc3028 firmware were successfully loaded on this device.
It is important to notice that the vendor (Trident) doesn't seem to want helping with open source development. Contacts with the vendor were tried during 2007 and 2008 in order to get their help by opening docs, via Linux Foundation NDA program, without success.
The vendor also seems to be refusing so far to help the development of a driver for their demod DRX-K line that they acquired from Micronas (as pointed at http://linux.terratec.de/tv_en.html).
In brief, while we want to fix the driver issues, it is recommend to avoid buying any devices with tm5600/tm6000/tm6010 (and DRX demod) chips.

source: http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Tr..._based_Devices

It seems that these random crashes could be caused by a firmware runtime error, although I can not confirm this and neither did Compro at the time I asked them about it. I'd say better be warned...

7th May 2009, 16:10	#1
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,022	Compro VideoMata U2800F DVB-T Receiver Tested In Belgium Classic analog antenna broadcastings are soon to disappear all around the world and in most cases being replaced by a digital version, in some occasions you might even run into full high definition video broadcastings. Great news for wireless receivers out there, DVB-T is an excellent way to watch quality video wherever you want, but is it really? We tested a Compro VideoMate Vista U2800F USB DVB-T receiver on Belgian grounds and the outcome is not always what you would have wished for... read on! http://www.madshrimps.be/gotoartik.php?articID=910 __________________

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