Open source software for series A7/8/9 SH4


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Increasing discontent with Samsung software resulted in looking for better alternative. And open source community offers one. Belive or not, Samsung TV can run without Samsung's software!

Disclaimer

System is very experimental and many components are work in progress. It is not yet suitable for general public. If you are not experienced in linux, please do not use it. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY


System components

System is based on Linux, modified STLinux from ST Microelectronics and DuckBox - collection of open software for satellite box. TDT used in following text is acronym for Team Duck Box.

Build toolchain

Used TDT build system with patches for SAMTV

Linux kernel

linux kernel version 2.6.32.59 stm24-211 with TDT patches and SAMTV board setup. Kernel is configured for nfs boot and root. To speed up boot time, usb disk and flash drivers are NOT compiled in, so this kernel will NOT work with usb root.

Havana player2

Open source multimedia player framework from ST Microelectronics. In original Samsung software is used player version 1 with STAPI. Player 2 has linux native DVB API. Used TDT patched version 2-191 with aditional patches for SAMTV.

Native linux DVB-T driver

Driver for DVB-T frontend S5H1432 was backported from linux 3.6 and substantially reworked.

Initialization and control of TV hardware

User mode process for initializing and setting

  • FRC (frame rate converter) - I belive FRC9459M chip from Micronas is used
  • FBE (FBE2 picture enhancer, commercially called DNIe)
  • LDM (local dimming control)
  • NTP3100 speaker amplifiers

Also used for

  • SCH (scaler handling) - communication with secondary CPU MTK8226


User software

Neutrino-samtv.jpg

Neutrino MP

User software for satellite receiver. Multiplatform version with DVB-T.

Sources git://gitorious.org/neutrino-mp/neutrino-mp.git

  • Fast start-up and operation
  • Reasonable memory requirements - 50 MB free when running
  • Nice GUI with partial transparency
  • Advanced live graphs of signal quality.
  • Simple media player and UPnP browser, not yet working on Samsung TV.




Showtime-samtv1.jpg

Showtime media center

Nice media center software now being ported to sh4 / Havana player2. See http://www.lonelycoder.com/showtime/

  • Appealing animated GUI
  • Advanced browser with support for local files, smb, http, UPnP
  • Automatic search in info databases
  • Demanding lot of CPU and GPU power, original GUI uses OpenGL rendering
  • Plugins and internal scripting in JavaScript


Test showed that number of simplifications in GUI must be done to adjust low CPU power of Samsung TV.



Showtime-samtv2.jpg Showtime-samtv3.jpg Showtime-samtv-min.jpg Showtime-samtv-max.jpg


DuckBox project includes also following user software

  • Enigma 2: Satellite receiver user software. Works and supports DVB-T. Media player does not decode all formats supported by Havana player2.
  • XBMC: Media center works but is very very slow and hardly fits into memory. Not for real use on this architecture.


Instalation

To be described


TODO list

  • Factory and user settings of FBE2, FRC, LDM
  • More filter banks for speaker amplifiers
  • setting EEPROM handling
  • HDMI input handling
  • Micom IR remote control input and improve micom handler
  • HDMI CEC
  • SPIDF output

Functions NOT planned to be suported

  • Analogue TV
  • Analogue video in/out

Misc

Also see discussion

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