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- .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
- ======================================
- Avermedia DVB-T on BT878 Release Notes
- ======================================
- February 14th 2006
- .. note::
- Several other Avermedia devices are supported. For a more
- broader and updated content about that, please check:
- https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/AVerMedia
- The Avermedia DVB-T
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- The Avermedia DVB-T is a budget PCI DVB card. It has 3 inputs:
- * RF Tuner Input
- * Composite Video Input (RCA Jack)
- * SVIDEO Input (Mini-DIN)
- The RF Tuner Input is the input to the tuner module of the
- card. The Tuner is otherwise known as the "Frontend" . The
- Frontend of the Avermedia DVB-T is a Microtune 7202D. A timely
- post to the linux-dvb mailing list ascertained that the
- Microtune 7202D is supported by the sp887x driver which is
- found in the dvb-hw CVS module.
- The DVB-T card is based around the BT878 chip which is a very
- common multimedia bridge and often found on Analogue TV cards.
- There is no on-board MPEG2 decoder, which means that all MPEG2
- decoding must be done in software, or if you have one, on an
- MPEG2 hardware decoding card or chipset.
- Getting the card going
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- At this stage, it has not been able to ascertain the
- functionality of the remaining device nodes in respect of the
- Avermedia DVBT. However, full functionality in respect of
- tuning, receiving and supplying the MPEG2 data stream is
- possible with the currently available versions of the driver.
- It may be possible that additional functionality is available
- from the card (i.e. viewing the additional analogue inputs
- that the card presents), but this has not been tested yet. If
- I get around to this, I'll update the document with whatever I
- find.
- To power up the card, load the following modules in the
- following order:
- * modprobe bttv (normally loaded automatically)
- * modprobe dvb-bt8xx (or place dvb-bt8xx in /etc/modules)
- Insertion of these modules into the running kernel will
- activate the appropriate DVB device nodes. It is then possible
- to start accessing the card with utilities such as scan, tzap,
- dvbstream etc.
- The frontend module sp887x.o, requires an external firmware.
- Please use the command "get_dvb_firmware sp887x" to download
- it. Then copy it to /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware or /lib/firmware/
- (depending on configuration of firmware hotplug).
- Known Limitations
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- At present I can say with confidence that the frontend tunes
- via /dev/dvb/adapter{x}/frontend0 and supplies an MPEG2 stream
- via /dev/dvb/adapter{x}/dvr0. I have not tested the
- functionality of any other part of the card yet. I will do so
- over time and update this document.
- There are some limitations in the i2c layer due to a returned
- error message inconsistency. Although this generates errors in
- dmesg and the system logs, it does not appear to affect the
- ability of the frontend to function correctly.
- Further Update
- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- dvbstream and VideoLAN Client on windows works a treat with
- DVB, in fact this is currently serving as my main way of
- viewing DVB-T at the moment. Additionally, VLC is happily
- decoding HDTV signals, although the PC is dropping the odd
- frame here and there - I assume due to processing capability -
- as all the decoding is being done under windows in software.
- Many thanks to Nigel Pearson for the updates to this document
- since the recent revision of the driver.
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