[PLUG-AV] Expresscard or USB3 HDMI capture options

[Tim Ansell]

One important note, any device which doesn't do pass through means you will
need an external splitter, adding another place for things to fail.
Splitters are also notorious for having strange unreproducible failure
modes too - specially with computers.

Generally, the only Linux drivers for HDMI capture cards I know of are
commercial proprietary drivers provided by Kernel Labs provide;

http://www.kernellabs.com/blog/?page_id=2983
http://www.kernellabs.com/blog/?p=1959


On 4 December 2013 13:53, Jason Nicholls <jason at mindsocket.com.au> wrote:

> It's a good sign more devices and actual claims of linux support! That PC
> expresscard one also seems to have a reasonable price compared to
> everything else previous. Perhaps Tim has heard of these new devices, I've
> CC'd him.
>
> On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 12:25 AM, James Bromberger <james at rcpt.to> wrote:
>
>>  Hi all,
>>
>> Been a while since I looked for HDMI capture but perhaps thereare some
>> new options:
>>
>>
>> HDMI PC ExpressCards for capture:
>> http://www.amazon.com/ScECHDCAP/dp/B008YT5QEO/ref=pd_bxgy_e_text_y
>>
>> This manual -
>> http://mediapool.xpressplatforms.com/product-files/pdf/816359-36545.pdf- claims kernel 2.6.14 or newer is supporting it. Its from US$109.99 to
>> US$150 on Amazon, and launched around Aug 20 2012.
>>
>
I haven't seen this particular device before, but my guess is that it uses
a similar chipset to the PCI-X cards on the market which have no support
under Linux.

The StarTech website doesn't list Linux as supported.
http://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/HDMI-to-ExpressCard-HD-Video-Capture-Card-Adapter-1080p~ECHDCAPand
that documentation is dated later then the mediapool one.

The MST3367CMK chipset information is for the HDMI receiver and gives us no
information about what chipset the computer is actually talking too making
it hard to confirm any driver compatibility.

The following email thread seems to indicate for a similar device it might
use the saa7160 chipset which has a bunch of unfinished drivers but nothing
stable and usable in the kernel.
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.video-input-infrastructure/69075


I had a good hunt through the kernel for anything with "StarTech" or
ECHDCAP or HDCAP and couldn't find any references.

At at $100 USD, I might still get one and have a play. Always good to
checkout the competition ;)



> Second option for HDMI capture:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/DVI2USB-External-HDMI-Video-Capture/dp/B00CPOSYQQ/ref=sr_1_1
>>
>> Much more expensive at US$699, but is USB3 HDMI capture, launched around
>> May 9 2013, and also claims V4L support.
>>
>
>From the Epiphan website;

Although we provide a Linux SDK (API for driver and examples), we do not
provide source code for the driver itself. We provide binary drivers for
major Linux distributions (Fedora, RedHat, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE).
Please contact us in advance of purchase to verify that we can support any
other kernel or distribution.


We have had no luck with stability of Epiphan devices in the past (locking
up the whole machine and such) and a proprietary driver means we couldn't
even fix them.

Tim
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/av/attachments/20131204/93cde739/attachment.html>