Pandora Video In?

[Shock-Socks]

is there any way to get video-in on my pandora? i know the AV cables won't work for video-in. basically what i want to do is be able to use my pandora as a screen for my ps2, but is there any way to actually do that without like streaming video from the ps2 over wifi or something? also, if there is a way, what will i need?

 

[fischju2000]

is there any way to get video-in on my pandora? i know the AV cables won't work for video-in. basically what i want to do is be able to use my pandora as a screen for my ps2, but is there any way to actually do that without like streaming video from the ps2 over wifi or something? also, if there is a way, what will i need?

1) Jesus christ, is that the max number of characters you can put in a 'Interests' page? It's stretching your post to make it take up 80% of my screen.

2) Wifi or USB are the only ways to do it, and both would be pretty slow. SD resolution should be possible but good luck finding the hardware to do it (and drivers for that)

 

[droneb]

been talked bef, you will have to use a capturing device thru USB, there are several threads about it, and the last one was about wich ones
will work, since they require a open source driver, and/or to be already appended over the kernel

PD: OMG you should shorten your interest TAGS you are stretching the whole post and wasting space so navigating becomes akward

 

[pelrun]

2) Wifi or USB are the only ways to do it, and both would be pretty slow. SD resolution should be possible but good luck finding the hardware to do it (and drivers for that)

Yeah, that's not true. USB 2.0 is plenty to run a couple of HD digital receivers off of (I do) and there's lots of devices out there that can run under Linux (I do).

And as for actual video in, there are usb dongles that can do it. But it's not likely to work out as you want it to, because there will probably be some latency in getting the image to the screen - no real problem for normal video, but completely ruinous for gaming. Find yourself a PSOne screen on Ebay instead!

 

[Shock-Socks]

2) Wifi or USB are the only ways to do it, and both would be pretty slow. SD resolution should be possible but good luck finding the hardware to do it (and drivers for that)

Yeah, that's not true. USB 2.0 is plenty to run a couple of HD digital receivers off of (I do) and there's lots of devices out there that can run under Linux (I do).

And as for actual video in, there are usb dongles that can do it. But it's not likely to work out as you want it to, because there will probably be some latency in getting the image to the screen - no real problem for normal video, but completely ruinous for gaming. Find yourself a PSOne screen on Ebay instead!

alright, well, it wasn't the answer that i was hoping for, but it does answer my question, thanks

 

[Zotty]

Any recommendations for USB adapters that have a composite in connection?

Just got a unique device that will offer nothing useful, but would be fun to give a try on a Pandora just for laughs. So the cheaper the better

 

[WizardStan]

Any recommendations for USB adapters that have a composite in connection?

Just got a unique device that will offer nothing useful, but would be fun to give a try on a Pandora just for laughs. So the cheaper the better

Composite or component?
The Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 comes highly recommended, if you can find one. They've discontinued it, sadly, so ebay may be the only option. I'm currently looking at their replacement, the HVR whatever, which may or may not work with Linux.
The best part of the PVR USB2 is that it has hardware compression. Setting it up is apparently as easy as "echo"ing a few values into some /sys/ files, and then "cat /dev/video > video.mpg". Doesn't use any CPU or anything, it just streams directly out of the device onto your SD card. It's also $150 though.

 

[Zotty]

Composite for sure. For this I'm not specifically looking to record (although hardware compression would be a sweet addition). Main purpose is taking single captures and running those through some software.

Software-wise this would probably require video4linux 2 right? It's in the kernel, but is it enabled in Pandora's kernel?

 

[WizardStan]

Software-wise this would probably require video4linux 2 right? It's in the kernel, but is it enabled in Pandora's kernel?

Hopefully. It's possible, it compiled in for my BeagleBoard, but they may have removed it to save space and boot time.

 

[Zotty]

Otherwise it would require some userspace USB hacking. Doable, but time consuming...

Btw, concerning the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 you mentioned; the same linux driver was extended to support the currently available WinTV-HVR-1900 (95,- euro). And it has USB2.0 so it can be used without USB hub. Also found cheaper non-TV cards, but they only got USB1.1.

 

[Zotty]

Well after some reading up I found the big boys didn't offer any product to my liking. So I ended up with an el cheapo deal extreme product. It's a "EasyCAP USB 2.0 Audio/Video Capture/Surveillance Dongle" with V4L support. It'll take a while to arrive (2 months ), but if anyone is interested in the results, say so and I'll dig up this topic again once received.

 

[TrashyMG]

Otherwise it would require some userspace USB hacking. Doable, but time consuming...

Btw, concerning the Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 you mentioned; the same linux driver was extended to support the currently available WinTV-HVR-1900 (95,- euro). And it has USB2.0 so it can be used without USB hub. Also found cheaper non-TV cards, but they only got USB1.1.

I got my WinTV-HVR-1950 working a while ago in Linux, I had to extract the firmware from the device and place it in the /lib/firmware/ directory to get it working properly. not sure if it's fully supported now.. it's been about a year since I got it working.

 

[DixieDawg]

Zotty
Posted Yesterday, 05:27 PM
Well after some reading up I found the big boys didn't offer any product to my liking. So I ended up with an el cheapo deal extreme product. It's a "EasyCAP USB 2.0 Audio/Video Capture/Surveillance Dongle" with V4L support. It'll take a while to arrive (2 months ), but if anyone is interested in the results, say so and I'll dig up this topic again once received

Zotty,
I'm interested to know how it turns out. I have ordered one of those too from dealextreme. I would like to be able to record video with the pandora to make .avi files.

Dixie

 

[Zotty]

Small update:
The thing arrived today and I just plugged it into my laptop (Debian Squeeze, kernel 2.6.32). The device is recognised as "Unknown EM2750/28xx video grabber" by the em28xx module. So far so good. But then I used the preview function in v4l2ucp and got a blank image. The LED on the stick lights up, so there is communication taking place. Apparently one has to patch the em28xx module to enable composite input. So that'll be the next step.

This also raises the following question. Can you make your own (patched) kernel and flash it into the Pandora?

edit:
Success!

Apparently the problem was that linux defaults to input 0 which is S-video. Composite is input 1, so after a quick mplayer test with the right options I can confim this thing works out of the box (on my laptop, so keeping fingers crossed it's the same on the Pandora)

Options used:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/video0:input=1:norm=pal-60 -nosound

 

[rabidpoobear]

2) Wifi or USB are the only ways to do it, and both would be pretty slow. SD resolution should be possible but good luck finding the hardware to do it (and drivers for that)

Yeah, that's not true. USB 2.0 is plenty to run a couple of HD digital receivers off of (I do) and there's lots of devices out there that can run under Linux (I do).

Protip: there's a difference between digital and analogue capture.

analogue video capture requires that you 1) compress it in hardware and send the compressed stream to the Pandora (expensive hardware - RE: Hauppauge) or 2) send the uncompressed stream (say 640x480pixels x 30fps x 4bytesperpixel = ~37 megabytes per second = ~300 megabits per second and you're pretty close to the max actual (i.e. not theoretical) bandwidth of a USB 2 connection) and then compressing it on the Pandora (hint - uses lots of CPU).

With a digital capture, you directly receive an MPEG stream - i.e. it's already encoded. Then you pass that to the Pandora and it can (in the future at least) use its hardware decoder for the MPEG stream.