[dvblast-devel] Support for a 2nd ASI card?

[Simon Lockhart]

All,

Having had issues trying to source the DVEO / DVBMaster ASI cards (they seem
to be on extended leadtime at the moment, now I've finally managed to persuade
DVEO to talk to me...), I've been looking at alternate ASI cards.

I've found a card from Deltacast:

  http://www.deltacast.tv/Products/DELTA-asi-OEM-video-input-output-PCI-Express-card.asp

Up to 8 ASI receive channels on one card (although it can only fit 6 inputs on
the back of one card, so the last 2 are on a seperate backpanel), and comes 
with Linux drivers and SDK. OEM pricing is a lot cheaper than the DVEO card.

I've reviewed their SDK and don't see that it'll be overly hard to integrate it
in with DVBlast.

a) Is there any interest in getting support for this card in DVBlast?

b) If not, is anyone aware of a different ASI capture card which can work with
   DVBlast?

c) Thinking about the details of integrating support, it'd probably be nice to
   reuse the -A flag to select ASI input, but we'd need to specify which sort
   of ASI card it is - is this best done with a different flag to select card
   type, make it a compile-time flag (we'd need to make support for the
   Deltacast card a compile-time option, as it depends on the non-free SDK),
   or overload the -A flag (e.g. "-A deltacast:3") ?

d) Will there be any issues submitting a patch to DVBlast which depends on a
   3rd party SDK? Should I make the Makefile look for the SDK automatically,
   or make it something which you have to edit the Makefile to support?

Thanks,

Simon