Examining the 8 files.

One of the 8 files extracted during the last blog entry is called "install_ide_pvrbox_pc_v2"

Well, this file has the familiar 3 letter word at the beginning... ELF!

Hmm, sounds like something that will install the PVR utilities... So I thought about it for a second, realized I had nothing on my SPP to lose right now anyway, so I went ahead and ran it.

PVR BOX from PC install v2 0......Aug 28 2008 19:05:32
It goes through a script and ultimately fails at the end. What it was trying to set up and run (which failed because I was logged into a drive that had mounted partitions) was the basic partitions that the screenplay starts with. So this is probably used for the initial setup to do everything required to set up the drive for the firmware installation. In fact, looking at the file in HxD, I see a bunch of interesting text. One seems to suggest that it can set up a FAT partition. So there may be some way to tell it to add PVR yet...

But this was also interesting: "tar -xjvf /mnt/hdc/ext3.img -C /mnt/hdc.ext3"
That is just a reference to the tarball in the install.img file. But that proves that his program is the one responsible for the update once you turn on the player after you've installed a firmware.

Video_firmware.bin is another one of the files in that set of 8. And I believe it is probably the microcode that gets flashed into the RTD 1262 chip itself. My basis for that belief is that if you look at the file using HxD in 16 bytes per row, you will find a graphical representation of the numbers 0-9, and then references to the decoders, MPEG-2, MPEG4, GOP, JPeg, YUV/RGB888/RGB565 -- these are all terms associated with encoders and decoders. My guess is that this will be the file we'll have to change to add H.264.

The GetUSBDev.dll, GetUSBDev.dat, and DeviceInfo.dll are probably just associated with hooking up to the ScreenPlay from the PC and transferring the information on. Arial.ttf, a font, is found on the screenplay itself, so it may just be there for when the installer wants to write some letters to the screen, such as "do not turn off".

That's all for now.