[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500

Ivan Kowalenko ivan.kowalenko at gmail.com
Mon Apr 17 15:16:54 UTC 2006


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On Apr 16, 2006, at 23.34, Michael T. Dean wrote:

> On 04/17/2006 12:11 AM, Joe Votour wrote:
>> Believe me, their competition could learn a great deal
>> from just their drivers, since drivers are an
>> interface to the hardware.  As an example, the
>> competition might see in the driver some great way to
>> shrink down a transfer of data implemented in the
>> driver (which exposes how the hardware works), and
>> decide to then add that logic to their next graphics
>> chip.
>
> I really think this argument is like the argument that software
> copy-protection schemes prevent piracy.  Generally, they only stop the
> people that aren't the problem (end users) instead of stopping those
> with the time/interest/equipment/money (large-scale pirates, or the
> competition).

Well, it helps partially. If you want to see when piracy hits a large  
scale, look at the Dreamcast. True, not everyone could extract the  
data themselves, but to play the games, all you needed a CD-R drive.  
It helps to curb piracy, but it doesn't eliminate. At this point,  
that's the best companies can hope for.

> In other words, good luck trying to convince me that ATI isn't  
> paying a
> team of developers to reverse engineer NVIDIA's drivers /and/ hardware
> (and vice versa).

Yes, but there's no reason to make it easy for them! ;)

Of course, I'd love to use an open-source driver.

>   After all, look how closely capabilities and even
> designs have been tracking over the years.  I don't think that's
> completely the "free market" effect ensuring the people get what  
> they want.

Well, we don't have a completely free market economy here. It's  
closer to an ogilopoly.

> And, as a matter of fact, binary-only drivers aren't even stopping end
> users from (at least partially) reverse engineering the
> drivers--reference the Windows Omega Drivers (
> http://www.omegadrivers.net/ ) and other similar projects.

Then, in that case, why don't I have native Linux drivers for my  
MA111 USB WiFi adapter? Or my XBox's video card?

My point is that the quality (and difficulty) of reverse engineering  
these things is a lot harder than it seems.

>
> Mike
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