Re: [PATCHv2 00/16] staging/media: remove most deprecated drivers

[Corinna Vinschen <vinschen@redhat.com>]

On Jan 16 15:39, Hans Verkuil wrote:
> On 16/01/2023 14:35, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > On Jan 16 11:08, Hans Verkuil wrote:
> >> On 16/01/2023 10:53, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> >>> I only learned about this yesterday, so I hope I'm not too late.
> >>>
> >>> Please don't do that.  You're about to remove working drivers used by a
> >>> lot of people.
> >>> [...]
> >>> I'm fortunate that I even learned about this developement, being a
> >>> developer myself, but how's a normal user to know that a Linux driver
> >>> they are using every day is about to be removed from the kernel?  Again,
> >>> please don't break the equipment of us users of these DVB-C and DVB-S
> >>> cards for the future.  
> >>
> >> I've dropped the PR for now.
> > 
> > I'm really glad to read that.
> > 
> >> [...]
> >> One partial solution would be to drop analog video support from saa7146,
> >> since that's the bit that uses this framework. DVB would remain working,
> >> but analog video support would die, unless someone steps up to do the
> >> conversion from vb1 to vb2.
> > 
> > Maybe I'm biased, but who has actually still access to analog TV?  I'm
> > not sure about that, but in Germany, analog TV over terrestrial antenna
> > has been dropped about 2005.  Analog satellite has gone 2012.  Analog
> > cable took until 2019.  I don't know about other regions.
> 
> Analog TV is almost certainly still used in places.
> 
> But it's not so much about TV as it is about analog video in general, so
> also capturing from S-Video or composite connectors. That's definitely
> still used.

Ok.  I was too TV focused, apparently.  Yeah, S-Video recording still
makes sense.

> >> So support for the old MXB, Hexium Gemini and Hexium Orion would die, but
> >> for the other DVB devices it would stay alive.
> > 
> > So, yeah, from my POV this might be an option.
> > 
> >> I'm honestly quite surprised that these old DVB PCI cards are still in
> >> use, I did not expect that.
> > 
> > There isn't a really well-working alternative, unless you plug in lots
> > of USB devices instead.  Even more important these days, the cards are
> > still working, despite their age.  There's really no good reason to
> > throw them into the dustbin and buy something new, instead of trying to
> > use working equipment as long as possible to save waste.
> 
> OK, I'll make a new PR that keeps the saa7146 for now, and work on removing
> analog video support from saa7146.

That sounds great to me.  Thanks for your understanding!


Best,
Corinna