The DBox is a

DVB Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...

and

cable Cable may refer to: Mechanical * Nautical cable, an assembly of three or more ropes woven against the weave of the ropes, rendering it virtually waterproof * Wire rope, a type of rope that consists of several strands of metal wire laid into a hel ...

digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...

integrated receiver decoder (

set-top box A set-top box (STB), also colloquially known as a cable box and historically television decoder, is an information appliance device that generally contains a TV-tuner input and displays output to a television set and an external source of sign ...

). They were distributed widely for use with

Pay television Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

channels. It was commissioned by the Kirch group's DF1, an early

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

provider of digital television that later merged with Premiere. The hardware was developed and produced by

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

though later also produced by

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

and Sagem under license. The combination of third-party developers and network connectivity which facilitates

card sharing Card sharing, also known as control word sharing, is a method of allowing multiple clients or digital television receivers to access a subscription television network with only one valid subscription card. This is achieved by electronically sharin ...

, makes DBox2 (and the DBox2 based

Dreambox Dreambox is a series of Linux-powered DVB satellite, terrestrial and cable digital television receivers (set-top boxes), produced by German multimedia vendor Dream Multimedia. History and description The Linux-based production software origin ...

) use particularly common among enthusiasts and those who intend to obtain services without payment. It also enables the receiver to store digital copies of DVB MPEG transport streams on networked filesystems or broadcast the streams as

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

VideoLAN VideoLAN is a non-profit organization which develops software for playing video and other media formats. It originally developed two programs for media streaming, VideoLAN Client (VLC) and VideoLAN Server (VLS), but most of the features of VLS ...

and

XBMC Media Center Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open-source media player software application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware platforms, with a software 1 ...

clients. In 2001, following the bankruptcy of

Kirch Media KirchGruppe (KirchGroup) was a German media group founded by Leo Kirch (1926–2011) in the 1960s. By 2000, it controlled a 52.5 percent stake in what would become the country's biggest broadcaster. The group collapsed in 2002 largely due to the ...

, production of the D-box ceased. However, many devices continue to be traded second-hand (often using online auction sites) and fairly high prices are paid because of the ability to gain services without payment. For this reason, there are also a significant number of, mostly German language, web sites and forums devoted to the devices.

Linux on the Dbox-2

Since 1997 an alternative

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

has been available for the predecessor of the Dbox2, the Dbox. This was DVB98 (later DVB2000), developed by a single programmer. Despite programming the hardware directly using machine code, DVB2000 is superior in many respects relative to the original software. For the DBox2, an effort was created to port the

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

operating system. This is now the most popular choice. Installation involves first putting the box into its debug-mode, a mode intended for internal development. It is then possible to take a backup copy of the original operating system (including vital micro-code images for the

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

decoder chipset) and flash an image based on Linux to the device. In addition to the Linux kernel and drivers, a significant amount of code is needed to allow the DBox2 to function as a digital receiver. This code is all maintained under a single open-source project - TuxBox. There is, however, a choice of user-interfaces that can be used, the most popular being Neutrino and Enigma. Enigma is also used on the

Hardware upgrades

The DBox2 does not have a hard disk or other internal storage. Modules have however become available for attaching IDE hard drives and

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard t ...

hard drivesHarddiskdrive IDE - SATA - Interface with MicroSD-Slot for dbox2
/ref> and MMC and SD flash

memory card A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a so ...

s. Support for these is included in some software distributions.

References

External links

UK CVS development and support forum

''("Tuxbox")''
Linux@Dbox2 HowTo

Tuxbox Sharing

Nokia d-box S/C support page

DBox Winserver (English)
{{Home theater PC (application software) Digital television Linux-based devices

Linux on the Dbox-2

Hardware upgrades

See also

References

External links