Enigma2 Backend

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Home icon grey.png   ▶ PVR ▶ Enigma2 Backend

Enigma2 is a framebuffer-based zapping application (GUI) that is primarily targeted to physical set-top-boxes running embedded Linux (OpenEmbedded based firmware distributions), however Enigma2 can technically also run on regular PCs, but it is not common. (Also it's possible to run Enigma2 on RaspberryPi devices with Open Vision images and external USB tuners)

While the Enigma2 software was originally developed by Dream Multimedia for their Dreambox series, the opendreambox.org has made Enigma2 into an popular open source based firmware platform for set-top boxes and it is used by a number of different set-top box manufacturers, including the most commonly known are Dreambox, DBox2, and Vu+ (VuPlus), which all use Enigma2 based firmware images. Most of these Enigma2 based set-top boxes falls under the category of Linux-powered satellite, terrestrial and cable digital television receivers.

With the Enigma2 PVR add-on Kodi PVR can be used also with any Enigma2 based set-top boxes running OpenWebIf. Other WebIfs are supported with a subset of the original functionality.


Enigma2 technical overview

Enigma2 frontend code is based on the Python Script language with a PVR backend software for tuning and recording written in C++ programming language. The PVR backend side uses the LinuxTV DVB API, which is part of a standard Linux kernel.

The Enigma2 platform and Kodi are similar in that they both use Python to add extra features, KodiLite is a plugin developed by "pcd" which could run so many Kodi plugins on Enigma2.

Enigma2 Client PVR add-on (C/C++ based)

The Enigma2 Client PVR add-on is a native PVR client made by the Kodi community for all Enigma2 based set-top boxes. This PVR C/C++ binary add-on for Enigma2 is an open source code community project.

Compatibility with other Kodi PVR Add-ons

As OpenWebIf is capable of outputting M3U and XMLTV files it is also possible to configure other PVR add-ons to work with Enigma2 backends such as:

Supported set top boxes

Mipsel architecture

  • It was the main architecture for Enigma2 and all of Mipsel models run Enigma2 fine except dm7025 (ancient Dreambox model with ATI Xilleon 226 SoC instead of Broadcom) which isn't a HD model.

Even some "smallflash" models (the models with 64MB internal flash or less) can't handle recent Enigma2 builds and some open source teams already abandoned them.

SH4 architecture

  • Only some Enigma2 teams are supporting this old/powerless architecture, Open Vision (fully) and OE-Alliance (partly).

This architecture is well known by the name "fulan" or "spark".

ARM architecture

  • Modern Enigma2 set-top boxes come with ARM SoCs as the 4K content requires too much power for being processed, today ARM is considered as the main Enigma2 architecture and all new models come with Broadcom or HiSilicon but with ARM SoCs to support h265 and HEVC.

ARM64 with multilib isn't stable enough so choosing ARM over ARM64 is recommended.

External links

Open source Enigma2 images