Ferguson STBs

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Torsten Duwe

4 Jan 2021 4 Jan '21

12:47

Hi all! Our current HTPC runs happily with Leap + Kodi, but it's too bulky for most of the prospected new furniture ;) After a lot of research for FLOSS, I consider to replace it with a Ferguson Ariva ATV TT [1]. The Hisilicon hi3798cv200 seems to be designed specifically for STBs and is supported mainline, and even the reference board's DTS (hi3798cv200-poplar.dts) only hooks up a few LEDs to GPIOs. I assume H.264 on Panfrost works? My biggest concern however is the SoC's support for secure boot. Alternative firmware images for Ferguson boxes show now hints towards that, but maybe someone here can confirm this? Any other hints or pointers? Torsten [1] http://ferguson-digital.eu/de/ariva-atv-tt-tuner-2/

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Guillaume Gardet

4 Jan 4 Jan

13:11

Hi,

...

-----Original Message----- From: Torsten Duwe Sent: 04 January 2021 13:48 To: arm@lists.opensuse.org Subject: Ferguson STBs

Hi all!

Our current HTPC runs happily with Leap + Kodi, but it's too bulky for most of the prospected new furniture ;)

After a lot of research for FLOSS, I consider to replace it with a Ferguson Ariva ATV TT [1]. The Hisilicon hi3798cv200 seems to be designed specifically for STBs and is supported mainline, and even the reference board's DTS (hi3798cv200- poplar.dts) only hooks up a few LEDs to GPIOs. I assume H.264 on Panfrost works?

Panfrost is for openGL/OpenCL on some Mali GPU, not for video decoding. The SoC may include a video decoder, though.

...

My biggest concern however is the SoC's support for secure boot. Alternative firmware images for Ferguson boxes show now hints towards that, but maybe someone here can confirm this? Any other hints or pointers?

I do not know this SoC specifically, so I cannot help here, sorry. Cheers, Guillaume

...

Torsten

[1] http://ferguson-digital.eu/de/ariva-atv-tt-tuner-2/

Torsten Duwe

14:45

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 13:11:12 +0000 Guillaume Gardet wrote:

...

Hi,

...
-----Original Message----- From: Torsten Duwe Sent: 04 January 2021 13:48 To: arm@lists.opensuse.org Subject: Ferguson STBs

Hi all!

Our current HTPC runs happily with Leap + Kodi, but it's too bulky for most of the prospected new furniture ;)

After a lot of research for FLOSS, I consider to replace it with a Ferguson Ariva ATV TT [1]. The Hisilicon hi3798cv200 seems to be designed specifically for STBs and is supported mainline, and even the reference board's DTS (hi3798cv200- poplar.dts) only hooks up a few LEDs to GPIOs. I assume H.264 on Panfrost works?

Panfrost is for openGL/OpenCL on some Mali GPU, not for video decoding. The SoC may include a video decoder, though.

You're absolutely right. I was assuming VAAPI -> Mesa -> Panfrost, but the Hi3798C (note the "C"!), besides its Mali T720MP, also has some "HiVXE 2.0" video engine, and also an "Imprex 2.0" video-overlay-2D-thingy. No info on those 2 :( Thanks for the correction! Back to square 1 and sorry for the noise. Torsten

Stefan Seyfried

14:50

On 04.01.21 13:47, Torsten Duwe wrote:

...

Hi all!

Our current HTPC runs happily with Leap + Kodi, but it's too bulky for most of the prospected new furniture ;)

HTPC == only play back local / streaming media, no live TV via DVB-S/T/C?

...

After a lot of research for FLOSS, I consider to replace it with a Ferguson Ariva ATV TT [1]. The Hisilicon hi3798cv200 seems to be designed specifically for STBs and is supported mainline, and even the reference board's DTS (hi3798cv200-poplar.dts) only hooks up a few LEDs to GPIOs. I assume H.264 on Panfrost works?

I don't know what panfrost is, but if it is not a software decoder then I doubt it will work. And if it is a software decoder, then I doubt the chips performance will be good enough, and integrating the bits and pieces for live tv will be ... interesting.

...

My biggest concern however is the SoC's support for secure boot. Alternative firmware images for Ferguson boxes show now hints towards that, but maybe someone here can confirm this? Any other hints or pointers?

The main market of this linux Satellite TV boxes is still stealing/sharing paytv subscriptions. The manufacturers will not do anthing like "secure boot" that will prevent people from shipping their favourite custom image. In fact most of the manufacturers do not even try to provide their own software but just ship some variant of openATV or openPLI, or they ship somehting akin to "openDOS" in old PC days: Software solely made to be replaced before first boot ;-) So I would not worry about secure boot, if the box is sold with "e2" on its label. But I would also not hope for a recent kernel, a documented boot mechanism, good drivers. And do not even dream about open source drivers ;-) But for the unlikely case that I'm wrong and the box has all that, then I'd be interested to hear about your success, my STI7111 boxes are growing old now and the platform is long abandoned by ST ;-) -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman

Torsten Duwe

15:59

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 15:50:48 +0100 Stefan Seyfried wrote:

...

On 04.01.21 13:47, Torsten Duwe wrote:

...
Hi all!

Our current HTPC runs happily with Leap + Kodi, but it's too bulky for most of the prospected new furniture ;)

HTPC == only play back local / streaming media, no live TV via DVB-S/T/C?

Well, the current PC has a twin DVB-S2 tuner in a PCIe x1 slot. This is one of the major problems for a non-x86 replacement. I look at the LibreELEC RPi3 next door with envy. But it needs to hook into the second tuner of the PC for a live signal.

...

...
After a lot of research for FLOSS, I consider to replace it with a Ferguson Ariva ATV TT [1]. The Hisilicon hi3798cv200 seems to be designed specifically for STBs and is supported mainline, and even the reference board's DTS (hi3798cv200-poplar.dts) only hooks up a few LEDs to GPIOs. I assume H.264 on Panfrost works?

I don't know what panfrost is, but if it is not a software decoder then I doubt it will work. And if it is a software decoder, then I doubt the chips performance will be good enough, and integrating the bits and pieces for live tv will be ... interesting.

Since VAAPI is buggy for MPEG-2, the current PC decodes it on a <1GHz CPU core and sends it to the Radeon HD 6xxx (or so) for scaling. (H.264 does work via VAAPI and hardware) Panfrost is the code name for Mali-6xx / Mali-7xx GPUs in Mesa/kernel, and I estimated a Cortex-A53 with ASIMD should be capable, with some help from the T720MP, to decode H.264 in software. The specialised video engine is an indicator that it would at least run a little hot trying to do it this way.

...

...
My biggest concern however is the SoC's support for secure boot. Alternative firmware images for Ferguson boxes show now hints towards that, but maybe someone here can confirm this? Any other hints or pointers?

The main market of this linux Satellite TV boxes is still stealing/sharing paytv subscriptions. The manufacturers will not do anthing like "secure boot" that will prevent people from shipping their favourite custom image. In fact most of the manufacturers do not even try to provide their own software but just ship some variant of openATV or openPLI, or they ship somehting akin to "openDOS" in old PC days: Software solely made to be replaced before first boot ;-)

So I would not worry about secure boot, if the box is sold with "e2" on its label.

One even gets the choice between android TV, debian and enigma2. Ferguson is a Polish company BTW.

...

But I would also not hope for a recent kernel, a documented boot mechanism, good drivers.

And do not even dream about open source drivers ;-)

I did when I saw the mainline kernel support :(

...

But for the unlikely case that I'm wrong and the box has all that, then I'd be interested to hear about your success, my STI7111 boxes are growing old now and the platform is long abandoned by ST ;-)

Yes, it's hard. For the record: the runner-up company was Vu+, but the only 64-bit box they made[1] is deprecated and I don't feel like running Tumbleweed or building another 32-bit distro locally[2]. Thanks for the input. Torsten [1] https://vuplus.de/produkte/detail/17/?p=17 [2] http://code.vuplus.com/index.php?action=start

Stefan Seyfried

18:17

Hi Torsten, On 04.01.21 16:59, Torsten Duwe wrote:

...

On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 15:50:48 +0100 Stefan Seyfried wrote:

...

Since VAAPI is buggy for MPEG-2, the current PC decodes it on a <1GHz CPU core and sends it to the Radeon HD 6xxx (or so) for scaling. (H.264 does work via VAAPI and hardware)

OK, so if you have the software already hooked up for decoding, then you might also have success with such a box and open drivers. But beware that even the tuner drivers (or the "glue" demux and stuff) are often closed source. As you might remember, I come from the "I have drivers where I just select audio and video PID and then issue VIDEO_PLAY ioctl" corner ;-) I would probably use a raspberry pi with a SAT>IP box in your case (when you are not limited to software that just does "ioctl(fd, VIDEO_PLAY)" to get that PES stream decoded on the screen ;-)) I'm running a Telestar Digibit R1 SAT>IP box as a frontend for a (headless) VDR box and sometime to experiment with VDR on raspbian (there is both an SAT>IP input plugin and a rpihddevice output plugin). Back then this was the cheapest way to get 4 DVB-S2 Tuners (for about 100€), this is now running since years without a hitch. Unfortunately they seem to be no longer readily available, or only in dumbed down versions. Today with boxes like the ferguson available in the 100€ price range, these could at least be repurposed as a SAT>IP server if the rest of the hardware is a PITA ;-)

...

Panfrost is the code name for Mali-6xx / Mali-7xx GPUs in Mesa/kernel, and I estimated a Cortex-A53 with ASIMD should be capable, with some help from the T720MP, to decode H.264 in software. The specialised video engine is an indicator that it would at least run a little hot trying to do it this way.

Ok, but hooking this up for live tv might be complicated.

...

One even gets the choice between android TV, debian and enigma2. Ferguson is a Polish company BTW.

Doesn't matter who sells the box, they are all the same AFAICT and IMVHO they are all the same crap ;-) The only difference is some more bling bling on the box, and some vendors have drivers that crash less often or do actually get updates from time to time.

...

...
But I would also not hope for a recent kernel, a documented boot mechanism, good drivers.

And do not even dream about open source drivers ;-)

I did when I saw the mainline kernel support :(

Oh, the CPU runs probably fine with the mainline kernel. The ethernet chip and the USB controller might actually work with it. It's just highly unlikely that the pieces of hardware you want to use have even drivers available. Reminds me of some "SLES9 certified laptops" about 15 years ago. The certification clearly stated that WiFI, bluetooth and graphics drivers did *not* work (and so did power management) ;-)

...

...
But for the unlikely case that I'm wrong and the box has all that, then I'd be interested to hear about your success, my STI7111 boxes are growing old now and the platform is long abandoned by ST ;-)

Yes, it's hard. For the record: the runner-up company was Vu+, but the only 64-bit box they made[1] is deprecated and I don't feel like running Tumbleweed or building another 32-bit distro locally[2].

The only realistic way forward is building your own openembedded distro anyway (i used yocto poky), so the 32bits should not matter. OK, you could just use your own kernel and the vendors u-boot, and use openSUSE userspace, but it would probably not be fun. The next thing with 64bit is, if their drivers even work with 64 bit. So if the openPLI and friends do not use 64bit OS, then you can forget about that as well, because even if there are 64bit drivers, they are completely untested. -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman

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Ferguson STBs

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