• Initial Release

• Fixed NTSC_J to stabilize color in picture. (DVD players and Video Cameras were affected).
• Updated Documentations and installer to show my new e-mail address. (The older one does not work anymore).

• Added support for more Capture Cards

• Fixed NTSC (Wasnīt properly working). But NTSC_J WAS working!!
• Added NTSC-50 support (needs a Bt878)
• Added PAL-60 support (needs a Bt878)
• Scaler code rewritten. This has fixed the analog and digital windows so video can be cropped and scaled simultaneously without errors
• Reverted to Brooktree's recommended values for each videomode

• Adjusted PAL-NC to get rid of black border in image
• Added even more supported cards to the driver

• Finally, Overlay Mixer is Working!!!! - Lots of stupid fixes .. More stable!

• Compatibility with Hibernation (.inf file update only)

• Recalculated AnalogVideoStandard values used in Scaler: This will allow:
  1. To capture and preview at 744x576 pixels in PAL-NC
  2. To capture and preview at 756x480 pixels in NTSC.
• If you want to capture in another format, just select it in your capture program!

• Ooops! Preview wasnīt working when capturing if both images were less than half maximum vertical resolution - Fixed. Fixes MovieMaker and VFW Apps!

• I have modified AMCap to let you choose the audio mode (Mono/Stereo/Sap). I have also released the sourcecode of that mod. I have to say that I miss some features in AMCap, such as Video Codec selection. If I have time , I will try to add it.

• Sorry about this, folks, but the email address redirector has closed my redirection account while I was absent, so , If you have sent me e-mail , please, resend it to my real mail account because I have not received it, Again ... Sorry about it. I have to update the email address in the installer also.

• Sorry... Sorry.. Sorry folks! - An other one... Geocities now is case-sensitive to files. This explains why it was impossible to download the drivers - I was using the "files" subdirectory while the real subdirectory is called "Files".... Well , itīs fixed now! - I would like to thank to all those who have tried to download the driver.

• Due to some problems people are having trying to install the driver using the installer program under Win2000 and WinXP, I have rechecked the installer sources and I have found a very stupid bug that should be responsable of that Wizard button not doing anything. Thanks to all who have contributed to find this bug. It should work now. Tell me if it does not for you.

• I have recompiled the driver using the libraries for Win2000 instead of the libraries used for WinMe. Maybe that was the reason it wasnīt working under Win2000 and WinXP. Please, tell me if it is working now. There were no changes to the source code itself.

• After lots of investigation, debugging of the driver and disassembly of part of the Windows DLLs, finally the driver is working under WinXP (and I hope under Win2000 also). Unfortunately, I had to remove some colorspaces due to the discovered bugs on Windows DLLs. Despite this, AVI capture is still working, NetMeeting also, and I hope that my selection of colorspaces is the one that suits most of you. Enjoy.
• Now PV951 does allow the user to select tuner instead of forcing it to be Philips NTSC
• Also I have released a new AMCAP with some useful features, such as the ability to use the Overlay Mixer to preview video (the best choice to get better framerate and video quality).
• Added the "Microsoft Bugs" section to document all the strange behaviour found after investigation.
• Added the "News" section to point out the features/corrections.

• I have found, thanks to your feedback, a silly bug on the Automatic TV Channel Fine tuning routine that caused all channels to be slightly out of tuning. This is now fixed and should solve all the TV tuning related problems (I hope).
• Also, I have made an attempt to make the VBI data adquisition work, But, I should warn you I am unable to test it, simply because no VBI data is broadcasted in my country. So, donīt be surprised if Closed Captioning wasnīt working. Please tell me if it works for you, but be warned that actually I wonīt be able to test it due to the lack of that signals to test it.

• Added the ability to autodetect tuner type for AverMedia and Flyvideo cards
• Added more capture cards to the list
• Added the ability of using the audio circuit of the TV tuner to tune FM Radio (will get Mono sound)
• Make Neetmeeting default to RGB24 capture format to try to fix the upside-down image at the remote computer (Why?)
• Fixed Intel Create&Share so bundled camera works
• Improved the Installer so it reports the autodetected card.
• Updated README files.
• Added support for several tuners and TDA9874 (untested)
• Implemented a faster tv channel fine tuning method
• Tried to fix the memory corruption (because DMA seems to be filling buffers that Windows has already freed) - Thnaks to all of you who have contributed bug reports,etc

After lots of debugging to improve driver stability, I have finally found the cause of windows crash on a video capture program start or end. Seems it was a race condition that was not handled by the driver. Even more strange is that Conexantīs reference driver did not properly handle the same race condition , but seemed not to crash (you could try to open-close several times a video app to see). Based on that info, I have rechecked all driver source, and have kill all possible race conditions. Now , the driver should be more stable. Despite all that, sometimes a bluescreen appears, but seems to appear some minutes after the last video program has ended. I donīt know why - If you have an idea on how to catch/tackle that problem, please, mail me.

Besides all the above, the driver is working, and is pretty stable right now..

 

• Installer was rewritten from scratch to fix all the installation issues you have reported. Also added tons of options to let user configure the driver for the card. Also I have added Tooltips to the installer to help with the installation. All the installer sources are now C++: This helps to develop quicker code.
• Added digital video in support to the driver.
• Added autoconfiguration of the driver inputs. Now it only shows the inputs that your card actually has.
• Fixed some bugs found while checking the source code.
• Improved image quality (i didnīt realize that some chroma filters were off when they should be on by default)
• The autodetection of tuner, and the tuner handling now defaults to a compatibility mode. Hope this will help all the users who were unable to drive their tuner modules.

• Driver sources rechecked to fix crashes. I have serialized all the user commands to the driver, so all race conditions are gone forever!
• Made it more Microsoft compliant
• Fixed the sharpness control (It wasn't working at all!!)
• Fixed the slow speed of change of image settings (color, norm,etc) - This is a bug of Microsoft layer.
• Rewritten all the video capture code to make it more compatible with hardware. I have tested it continuously for more than 5 hours without even a crash (and much less dropped frames than before).
• Fixed Flyvideo/Pinnacle/Hauppauge autodetection code (a stupid bug of the tables taken from linux drivers , they specify a tuner for those cards, but the tuner should be autodetected instead)
• Tried to add Tekram 205 card. This card requires more testing.
• Rewritten the FAQ using all the questions you have sent me. Thanks goes to all of you!

• Driver is working so well that I was able to avoid setting the Triton compatibility fix of the Bt8xx and it keeps working! - Incredible!
• I have added some compatibility options to the advanced settings page of the installer. Please, look at them if you have an SMP machine or a VIA chipset and are experiencing random machine lockups.

• Some compatibility fixes to allow iuVCR to work with the driver, and to be more compatible with misc software.
• Updated the internal card database.

• Fixed some strange behaviour in driver I2C code. Makes Windows start faster, and should solve autodetection problems. (I hope). The code to drive advanced modes of I2C (only available to Bt878 users) is untested (but I think it should be working)
• Added more cards to the internal database of supported cards
• Attempt to make TDA9874H work: Now i am using normal programming mode (instead of easy programming that does not work for TDA9874H, because it is NOT forward compatible to TDA9874A) . Hope not to make TDA9874A stop working. I have neither a way to test this , nor a way to debug this because simply i don't have this chip in my capture card.
• Maybe the above fixes will make MSP34xx work for everybody.
• Tried to fix PV951 sound support - Maybe it's working right this time!

• I have checked the Hibernation mode code inside the driver, and I have fixed some bugs... It works pretty well right now!
• I have tried to make the TDA9874 standard autodetection more reliable... But it takes 4 seconds to autodetect the standard... I think this needs more testing...
• Fixed a silly bug that does not allow you to select video source if your card does not have an audio input...

• Some minor fixups...
• Rechecked the TDA9874 code. I am pretty sure it is working perfectly this time (audio norm autodetection, initialization, etc. So, if you don't get Stereo it's another problem: The chip is init ok.
• Rechecked MSP34xx code and some bugs inside it fixed.
• Added support for FlyVideo2000S with addon cards.
• Now Provideo 951 board defaults to have the PV951 audio chip.
• Due to a bug in Microsoft's tvtuner channel selector, I had to force fine-tuning always (it was not doing it, because Microsoft is instructing the driver not to do it).
• Added support for FlyVideo3000 card

• Some minor fixups to make sure Hibernation works properly always... And some minor fixups to the TV Stereo autodetection.

• Trying to improve even more Hibernation and TV Stereo sound detection... I have made the driver even mor OS friendly. Hope this will fix the apparent 100% CPU utuilization on some rare cases reported by you.

• Trying to fix TekramM205 support and WinView601 support. Both seem to use the PT2254 volume control chip, so they share the same problem. Also, Tekram seems to have an unknown I2C chip responsible of audio routing and Remote control decoding. I think both cards shoulsd work now.
• Fixed MM100PCTV card.
• Fixed the Generic 4 composite ins card.

• Seems that Winview601 is working right now!
• Fixed MSP34xx support code Thanks to all of you who have contributed to this!
• Fixed several lock-ups related to audio chips
• Fixed autodetection in the installer program (oops!)

• Fixed MT2032 tuner (I hope - It wan't working)
• Driver stores settings as you change them now.
• Fixed VBI capture - It was causing a system lockup - now fixed.
• Added interfase to driver to be able to control Bass , treble, loudness and volume for those cards that support it.
• Improved quite a bit AMCAP. Now it does work much better.

• I have finally found the cause of the audio problems related to those cards that use the MSP34xx chip. And i think i have managed to correct them, so audio should finally work for those cards. Thanks to all who have contributed to this

• This is maybe the most complete driver released ever since this site has begin!
• I have rewrorked all the I2C interfase to the user applications, finally solving those problems the old interfase carried.
• Also, the GPIO interfase was completely rewritten from scratch. This fixes all the problems some programmers had with it (it was non-functional)
• Added a new interfase that lets user read the last received IR control code (to be able to implement programs that can be controlled by it. That interfase lets user read the codes without worring about the details of the hardware behind it. (thanks lirc package!)
• Added DPL3518 support and more interfases to be able to control the Dolby prologic decoder!
• If the MSP34xx version present on your card supports the graphic equalizer function, it will use it and a new extension to the audio interfase will let user control it
• For those of you who are unable to use the driver because your card uses a non-standard crystal reference, the driver now implements crystal frequency autodetection, so no more user configuration parameters are required
• Rechecked again the suspen/resume/hibernate function of the driver. I hope i have finally fixed it (tell me, seems to work pretty well for me)
• MSP34xx support was fixed even a little more
• Added support for the IR decoder chips used on Hauppauge, Flyvideo, PV951, Tekram and AverMedia cards. All the other compatible cards should work!
• Some other misc. fixes.

• I have implemented several workarounds to make VBI capture work under PAL modes. This means Teletext and Closed Captioning are working right now (WDM bugs)
• Reworked the IR code so it is now interrupt driven and uses a FIFO to record buttons!
• Added IR support for several cards
• Added several cards to the driver database
• Fixed the reference crystal autodetection (hope so)
• Added support for user defined custom cards. (this will let users generate new profiles to make their cards work without trouble with this driver , specially, should solve all audio related problems)
• The AMCAP test tool was improved: Now user is able to select no audio or no video codec, user is able to use legacy VFW codecs and configure them... And some several fixes; Check it out!
• Installer now supports user defined custom cards.
• Written a new utility to generate those custom cards profiles by just spying the original driver and apps while they work!
• Lots of small fixes/improvements to all the packages

• Fixed a silly bug triggered by Windows that caused all video capture application to wait up to 3 minutes begore starting. Also fixes the resume delay and the startup delays your computer was experiencing after the installation of the driver.

• Due to a bug of the Win2000 kernel (maybe others) (does not tolerate to raise IRQL to POWER_LEVEL for 1/60 of a second) , I had to disable the reference crystal autodetection - So the driver takes the crystal frequencies from the card database - That autodetection can be reenabled by the user, but will default to disabled.

• ACPI support was totally rewritten ; Now it adheres to the Microsoft supplied guidelines for kernel drivers. This fixes the Hibernation problems that some people were experiencing (to able to resume from hibernation)
• Some Misc audio fixes for PV951 (audio is working now, because it wasn't, Oops!)
• Some MSP34xx audio fixes, so audio is not muted when you change the audio mode from stereo to mono or from mono to stereo (Hope it works, if you can test it , be sure to tell me if it works)
• Added more capture cards to the internal database. Thanks to all of you who have submitted BtSpy reports!
• Added Support for TEA6320 so CEI Raffles card audio selection is working now. Note that the TEA6320 is used if a CEI Raffles card is selected by user, But there is no way to force it using the installer. Just use the install-byhand(tm) method if you need to force detection.

• The unload code of the driver had some bugs that prevented Windows from unloading the driver properly, causing lockups at the shutdown or disable time. Now all those bugs are gone!
• Fixed the analog video standard associated to some countries (Greece, China, Vietnam) - Thanks to all the ones who reported this.
• And if you have more than one Bt8xx based video capture card plugged into your system, now it is properly handled by the driver. (But you will have to install the driver by hand for each device)

• Seems that the Bt8x8 chip needs some time to recover from ACPI D3 As I was not waiting that time, the chip was unable to recover, causing a PCI bus lockup ... Finally locking the computer! So now this is fixed, and all of you who were experiencing those strange lockups should have now a working driver... Please, I am interested to know if the driver is working properly, so mail me if it works or if it does not work for you.
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards

• I2C code had a bug that caused all I2C communications to be reported as timed-out. That was creating problems accessing some specific I2C chips (as the MSP34xx) or killing the autotuning capabilities. Now it is fixed.
• VIDEOINFOHEADER2 support is back... and fixed. Now, the driver offers to all the applications that can use those featurea field capture (added to the previous frame capture that is also supported) - So, the apps that can use fields can benefit directly from this
• Fixed a bug in the FormatFromRange() routine. This fix allows us to export all the useful colorpaces supported by the Bt8x8 chipset, instead of the previoua 4 colorspaces: Now there are 9. The only thing that is still missing is the user selectable cropping region due to a bug of ksproxy.ax
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards

• Fixed the YV12 colorspace... Now you have pure I420 and pure YV12 and not a mix of them, so you can choose the one that works for you.
• Dscaler and other programs compatible... I have to thank to all the ones who have contributed to this... Complete list is on source code. Hope it works!
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards

• Finally the driver supports multiple instances of it running simultaneously. This fixes all the problems people were experiencing when they had more than one Bt8x8 card installed on their system at the same time, or a card that has more than one Bt8x8 on it, So, it is possible to use all the cards at the same time without trouble.
• Still not fully compatible with Dscaler, MoreTV and other programs that use proprietary drivers to access the Bt8x8 hardware. Can't be fixed in a reliable way. Note that ANY program that uses custom drivers may interfere with the system driver, as there is no contention mechanism to avoid accesses from more than one driver at the same time to the same piece of hardware. And usually, those drivers tend to do some actions that could make the other driver hang the system. For example, try to open ANY video capture application while Dscaler is running... Also, only one driver (the system driver) can receive interrupts generated by the Bt8x8, so if another program forces the Bt8x8 hardware to generate an int that is unxepected by the system driver, the system will also hang. This is specially true, as Windows pāges out all unused drivers, and can't handle unexpected interrupts.
• Video Cropping regions are now selectable by the user... Means you can select the video area that you really want to capture, instead of capturing the default video area. You may think about it as telling the driver the subrectangle of the full video area rectangle that you want to capture. You will need tha latest AmCap (from the wdmmiscutils package) to use this feature. Keep in mund that you can't Zoom in video (a Bt8x8 hardware limitation), so capture area MUST BE greater in size than the image to capture. You can find this as Cropping region under the capture settings of AmCap.
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards

• Tried to fix the Teletext support... I think it is working as it should (no more corrupted characters at the right columns!
• Still not fully compatible with Dscaler, MoreTV and other programs that use proprietary drivers to access the Bt8x8 hardware. Can't be fixed in a reliable way. Note that ANY program that uses custom drivers may interfere with the system driver, as there is no contention mechanism to avoid accesses from more than one driver at the same time to the same piece of hardware. And usually, those drivers tend to do some actions that could make the other driver hang the system. For example, try to open ANY video capture application while Dscaler is running... Also, only one driver (the system driver) can receive interrupts generated by the Bt8x8, so if another program forces the Bt8x8 hardware to generate an int that is unxepected by the system driver, the system will also hang. This is specially true, as Windows pāges out all unused drivers, and can't handle unexpected interrupts.
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards

• BtSpy low level routines rewritten... Now it will work under all Windows versions, including WinXP and Win2000 series. BtSpy uses the same driver used by Dscaler, so i will thank the Dscaler team!
• Supports Philips TV Tuner powerdown mode... Less heat while you don't use the TV card!
• STB and STB2 card support was improved. Hope it works without trouble when using those cards.
• Tons of MSP34xx support fixes. All the problems users had with cards that use the MSP34xx chip to decode audio should be gone now! - Thanks to all who have contributed to this, Specially to Jan Nikitenko who has contributed code and patches. Thanks
• I have disabled the removal of low color signals. Seems to fix some problems users had with some particular cards. You can always disable color setting it to 0.
• TDA7432 support improved a bit... Now the mute function of this chip is also used,
• Still not fully compatible with Dscaler, MoreTV and other programs that use proprietary drivers to access the Bt8x8 hardware. Can't be fixed in a reliable way. Note that ANY program that uses custom drivers may interfere with the system driver, as there is no contention mechanism to avoid accesses from more than one driver at the same time to the same piece of hardware. And usually, those drivers tend to do some actions that could make the other driver hang the system. For example, try to open ANY video capture application while Dscaler is running... Also, only one driver (the system driver) can receive interrupts generated by the Bt8x8, so if another program forces the Bt8x8 hardware to generate an int that is unxepected by the system driver, the system will also hang. This is specially true, as Windows pāges out all unused drivers, and can't handle unexpected interrupts.
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards!

• MT2032 tuner support was improved quite a bit... This will make work the newest Pinnacle cards with the driver!
• MSP34xx support improved even more. Now the audio standard autodetection is faster and safer than ever. This will also fix the ATV2000 program crashes some users where experiencing. It also fixes NICAM and BTSC support (that wasn't working properly sometimes. Again, thanks Jan Nikitenko
• Capture engine rewritten to make it even faster and more reliable. I will suggest that if you want to capture VHS video, you should use YUY2 colorspace. YV12 colorspace has some troubles with VHS that , according to my experiments, are related to the Bt8x8 hardware (Don't know why)
• Tons of MSP34xx support fixes. All the problems users had with cards that use the MSP34xx chip to decode audio should be gone now! - Thanks to all who have contributed to this, Specially to Jan Nikitenko who has contributed code and patches. Thanks
• Added support for more Bt8x8 based capture cards!

• MSP34xx support was finally fixed. Now Stereo should really work as intended! Thanks to all the people who contributed to fix those issues.
• Some frame timing problems fixed. Now it should sync audio and video properly.

• Fred Hoogduin sent code to implement a new Tuning algorithm. This was adopted as the new and only tuning algorithm. This will fix several problems, including some TV channels not properly tuned, channel number shifts, etc. It also speeds up the tuning process quite a bit.
• There was a typo on the STB audio support that caused TV not to work properly on some of those cards. That is now fixed, so STB card support should work.
• I added more IR receiver chips support. This could help to support the IR controller of your card.
• Pinnacle card support was also improved. Newer Pinnacle cards should have their TV tuner modules properly autodetected.
• Started to fix Dscaler field support. Seems to work sometimes. This still requires more investigation.
• Oops! - Fixed (i hope) the last race condition that was causing systems to crash when the computer was loading the btwincap driver and the bt8x8 was sharing ints with some other active cards. Hope this will fix all startup/shutdown problems that were caused btwincap.

• Fixed the problems some users had using the Btinstaller (autoinstall utility) program. Seems the installer crashed if some INF file was readonly... Now it is fixed. Thanks to all who have contributed bug reports and hints on the probable causes of this problem.

• Added support for the MT2050 some pinnacle cards use-
• Added support for some more cards

• Added support for the PMS video card