Thursday, November 28, 2013

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

I've just finished reading of excellent book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" by Steven Levy.


Very recommend to everyone who involved with the computers, gamedev, electronics, hacking, etc.

After reading I recommend also to watch a movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. Some events and characters have parallels with events from the book.

First part about first true hackers was really new for me, may be because second part (about hardware hackers) is more commonly known and popular due to the reflection in cinema, documentary films.
Chapters about game development companies, game hackers and birth of first games are very exciting. I remember these interesting games by Sierra Online, like Mystery House, King's Quest, Space Quest and other with beautiful graphics and addictive story.

PS. I've read a version with a new afterword "Afterword: Ten Years After" with latest information about some characters. Wikipedia said, that in 2010, updated 25th anniversary edition was published.

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Hauppauge HD PVR and Linux

Last week I've tried to run Hauppauge HD PVR under Linux (Ubuntu 12.04), after successful run under Windows 7.
After reading and trying things from http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR, I've still found that command of reading stream from device is executed with error:
cat /dev/video1 > test.ts
cat: /dev/video1: Input/output error

Later I found that if there are no video cables (with some signal of course) connected to HD PVR, this error is occures, unlike Windows if no cable is connected we have blue screen as output signal.

After connection of component (YPbPr) video cable, you need to configure default video input of your HD PVR device. You can do it with next commands:
rmmod hdpvr
modprobe hdpvr hdpvr_debug=1 default_video_input=0

Default video input values for HD PVR
0=Component (YPbPr)
1=S-Video
2=Composite

Or using v4l2-ctl tool (from v4l2-utils package).
sudo v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video1 --set-input=0

After that, I've successfully captured video stream from HD PVR.

Friday, November 8, 2013

C function argument name

Reading some source code I stumbled upon a funny function argument name. :)