For those of you who are interested in testing an alpha version of the enhanced T4 driver, back up your settings, make a copy of the old driver, download the new driver, install it and reboot. If the driver doesn't work well enough for you, you can restore the old driver and reboot. If the new driver results in an unbootable system (and it should not), reflash from USB and restore settings.
An alpha snapshot of the T4 driver can be downloaded from here: ini-840t4-drivers-3.14.2-20180220.zip
Code: Select all
root@beyonwizt4:~# wget https://peteru.net/ini-840t4-drivers-3.14.2-20180220.zip
root@beyonwizt4:~# unzip ini-840t4-drivers-3.14.2-20180220.zip
root@beyonwizt4:~# cp /lib/modules/3.14.2/extra/dvb.ko dvb.ko.original
root@beyonwizt4:~# cp dvb.ko /lib/modules/3.14.2/extra/dvb.ko
- Add HDMI identification of "Beyonwiz T4", vendor "Beyonwiz"
On receivers that can display HDMI source device identification, the correct device label will now appear. - Add missing capabilities for AUDIO_GET_CAPABILITIES
When advertising driver capabilities to user space, advertise all supported formats. - Fix playback of AAC files
Some AAC files did not play at all or took many seconds to start playing. In some instances, playing back AAC-HE files could lead to hardware lockups or system crashes. - Ensure there are enough audio resources to handle all codecs
- Enable AC3+ and AACSBR audio passhtrough
- Downmix to 5.1 and enable high bit rate passthrough over HDMI
In previous versions of the driver, audio could be delivered in only two formats. It could either be decoded and downmixed to stereo or passed through as a standard bit rate bit stream. The analogue outputs are hooked up to a stereo DAC, so those outputs must always receive the decoded and downmixed stereo signal. The SPDIF output can receive either downmixed stereo or act as passthrough for any standard bitrate codec. The SPDIF output can not handle any high bit rate codecs or more channels than stereo when sending decoded audio. In the old drivers, the HDMI port output was configured to receive a copy of whatever was being sent out to SPDIF. That means that the HDMI audio output had all the limitations of SPDIF.
In the new drivers, the HDMI port and SPDIF ports have been decoupled and the pipelines have been enhanced so that HDMI audio output can deliver a much better experience. When using down mix mode with the new drivers, audio will be decoded to 5.1 multichannel format. For DAC and SPDIF output, the audio will be downmixed to stereo. HDMI output will receive 5.1 multichannel decoded signal. In passthrough mode, the codecs will be divided into two categories, standard and high bit rate. DAC output will always receive decoded audio downmixed to stereo. SPDIF will receive passthrough bit streams for standard bit rate codecs and downmixed stereo signal for high bit rate codecs. HDMI will receive both standard and high bit rate codec passthrough bit streams.
Examples of standard bit rate codecs are AC3 and DTS. Examples of high bit rate codecs are AC3+ and DTS-HD.
This is still work in progress, there are lots and lots of combinations to try. Some things are likely to be broken, but probably less broken than they were with the old drivers. If you feel like testing, please do so and let me know your results. I am interested in both positive and negative feedback. It will be good to know what was tested and works, so that if there are regressions in the future, we can track down the changes.