Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Soft-DVB working flawlessly

[John Gilmore]

> Soft-DVB working flawlessly ...
> thanks again for precious help,

Thank *you* for building a great tool on top of all the signal
processing work that's been poured into GNU Radio over the years.
We hoped someone like you would do things like this!

I'll love to see it GUI'd and packaged so that anybody can make a
local DVB transmission station by just plugging the hardware together,
installing the right software package, and feeding it realtime video
streams.  Has anyone glued GRC into MythTV?

I can already think of one use that others can make of your
transmitter.  EFF and I are interested in measuring the DRM responses
of various digital television consumer products.  DRM is the
unnecessary restrictions that are built in to control what consumers
can do.  (Like no fast forwarding; won't play in some countries; or
only works with one manufacturer's products.)  DVB is really thick
with complicated, ugly restrictions like "can only record one copy --
only on Tuesdays and only within 1000 meters or with members of your
immediate family except for kids of divorced parents".  I bet there is
a lot of variation in the products that try to enforce it -- and maybe
some don't even try.

Manufacturers tend to avoid documenting these 'features', for some
reason.  We consumers can benefit by collectively reverse-engineering
what they are up to.  In particular, nobody should be buying DRM-laced
products without knowing it, when similar non-DRM products would serve
the consumer as well or better.  But how can we tell them apart?  A
broadcast-quality software transmitter for DVB (and for ATSC and other
dtv waveforms) would let us do these tests.  (We'll also need a simple
editor for MPEG transport streams, for inserting and removing
"Broadcast Flags" and other data items.)

        John Gilmore