ARLA/CLUSTER: DATV-Express Project – update

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Writing software to run at Operating System low levels and at the FPGA
coding levels is challenging, complex, and can be very frustrating

The DATV-Express Project team has made the bitter-tasting decision
that the one remaining significant software bug will postpone the sale
of the DATV-Express product in early January to the general ham
population.

Charles G4GUO has been working diligently to resolve a list of five
remaining DATV-Express software bugs that we knew about at the start
of December. Four of these five problems have now been resolved. Only
one software bug remains… a design flaw somewhere in our PCR redesign
of the Hauppauge MPEG2 faulty (on Linux) PCR clock and packet
timestamp.
Ken W6HHC reports that most descriptive symptom of this bug is that
“transmission video will freeze up on my STB in between 2 minutes and
three minutes of PTT”. Other STBs and DVB-S analyzers are more robust.
 But as Ken explains…the project team does NOT want the user’s first
experiences of our product to be “reception of my video froze up”.

The project team has resolved that general sales to hams will begin as
soon as this last bug is resolved.  Sales to programmers who are
willing to work on software development will continue. Interested and
willing programmers should contact G4GUO by e-mail to obtain a
“PromoCode” if they are willing to assist in working on DATV-Express
software.
A discounted price of US$200 (including all world-wide shipping costs)
is available to programmers with a PromoCode via PayPal on the
website.

The good news this month is that the DATV-Express web site is now
fully functional, thanks to the efforts of Bob N8NT.  Go to the web
site at
http://www.DATV-Express.com/

You must register on the web site in order to see the full contents there.

More good news is that Art WA8RMC has completed a five-page datasheet
for the  DATV-Express product that can now be downloaded in PDF from
http://www.datv-express.com/uploads/
DATV-Express%20specification-rev05.pdf