xref: /linux/Documentation/driver-api/media/dtv-core.rst (revision 4b4193256c8d3bc3a5397b5cd9494c2ad386317d)
1.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
2
3Digital TV (DVB) devices
4------------------------
5
6Digital TV devices are implemented by several different drivers:
7
8- A bridge driver that is responsible to talk with the bus where the other
9  devices are connected (PCI, USB, SPI), bind to the other drivers and
10  implement the digital demux logic (either in software or in hardware);
11
12- Frontend drivers that are usually implemented as two separate drivers:
13
14  - A tuner driver that implements the logic which commands the part of
15    the hardware responsible for tuning into a digital TV transponder or
16    physical channel. The output of a tuner is usually a baseband or
17    Intermediate Frequency (IF) signal;
18
19  - A demodulator driver (a.k.a "demod") that implements the logic which
20    commands the digital TV decoding hardware. The output of a demod is
21    a digital stream, with multiple audio, video and data channels typically
22    multiplexed using MPEG Transport Stream [#f1]_.
23
24On most hardware, the frontend drivers talk with the bridge driver using an
25I2C bus.
26
27.. [#f1] Some standards use TCP/IP for multiplexing data, like DVB-H (an
28   abandoned standard, not used anymore) and ATSC version 3.0 current
29   proposals. Currently, the DVB subsystem doesn't implement those standards.
30
31
32.. toctree::
33    :maxdepth: 1
34
35    dtv-common
36    dtv-frontend
37    dtv-demux
38    dtv-ca
39    dtv-net
40