by Chris Pascoe
2007/07/28:
There is now a dedicated linuxtv.org DVB Wiki with steps on getting DVB cards going. I recommend following the instructions there when getting started.
2006/01/09:
Whilst there haven't been any updates here for a while, rest assured that support for these cards continues. Development is taking place directly in the v4l-dvb CVS. In the V4L Wiki you can find instructions on how to build from v4l CVS and other useful information. The LinuxTV.org DVB Wiki provides more specific information for DVB devices.
Currently supported DVB-T cards from digitalnow's own DNTV Live! range under Linux include the:
- DNTV Live! DVB-T
- DNTV Live! DVB-T LP
- DNTV Live! DVB-T Pro
If you have queries regarding getting one of these devices recognised, I recommend first searching the Linux-DVB mail archives and if your question isn't answered, subscribing to the linux-dvb list and asking there.
2004/12/03:
The digitalnow DNTV Live! DVB-T is a new card available for the Australian market. digitalnow are an Australian distributor who have been introducing new DVB products to market since 1994. Their DNTV Live! represents the culmination of long and extensive efforts to bring Australia an experience like no other.
The card has a Samsung DVB-T tuner with Zarlink MT352 OFDM decoder, the high-performance CX2388x chip which provides analog capture from S-Video and Composite inputs, and a dedicated IR remote control. It comes with an excellent Windows software bundle including the DNTV Live! software, which supoprts multiple cards and and timeshifting out of the box, and InterVideo WinDVD Creator 2 software for DVD authoring. digitalnow have plans to continue developing their software which are detailed at the bottom of the software page.
digitalnow informed me immediately when this card was out in Australia, interested in seeing if I could get the card going on Linux and the MythTV PVR. Because of my previous work on the DVICO FusionHDTV driver for Linux, I was ready to dive straight in on this one, however thsi time I have no access to the bus analyser and was armed only with the RegSpy utility from the DScaler project and a multimeter.
To cut a long story short, only a small adaptation of my previous driver was necessary to make the card produce a DVB stream, and it appears that the tuner performs at least as well as DVICO's in my signal area. The IR remote control, however, was a little more challenging, given that it is all handled by an unmarked chip on the board. Watching the register accesses made by the Windows software revealed fairly quickly how to receive a signal, and some quick adaptations to the bttv IR code permitted us to get them back to Linux userspace. (My analysis of the PCB's netlist makes me suspect the unmarked chip is a Microchip PIC16C71x or other similar PIC, pre-programmed and write-protected.)
To use the capture card, you'll need:
- The Linux kernel source, configured with CONFIG_I2C=m, CONFIG_I2C_ALGOBIT=m and CONFIG_VIDEO_DEV=m. If you intend to use the remote control, please read below before rebuilding as you'll need to apply a patch to your source tree and pick a few more options. I have only tested this code against stock kernel 2.6.9-rc3;
- LinuxTV DVB-Kernel and Video4Linux code, with my patches. This tar file contains the V4L2 code from November 27 plus my patches, the DVB-Kernel code that I have using at home since October, a build script, and a startup script.
To build and install the drivers:
- Unpack the tar, and edit the "DVB-Build.sh" and "DVB-Init.sh" scripts to contain the path that you unpacked the tree as marked at the top.
- Run the build script, which will build both the Video4Linux and DVB-T trees. If your kernel already has some conflicting DVB modules built, you will get a warning message suggesting how to resolve the problem (messages about unknown mt352_* symbols during the Video4Linux build are OK, though).
- Run the init script with a "start" parameter to load the modules into the kernel. After loading, a "dmesg" should show that the modules loaded - the final line will be "DVB: registering frontend 0 (digitalnow DNTV Live! DVB-T)" if everything went OK.
- From this point you should be able to tune channels in with "tzap" from the LinuxTV DVB-apps package. I have a sample ~/.tzap/channels.conf for Brisbane, Australia if you live in this area.
To get the remote control going, you'll need to:
- Fetch LIRC and configure it for the "devinput" device.
- Configure it to do whatever you want with the key events that are generated by this remote, as described in this file in the v4l2 source, and produce an appropriate lircd.conf for this remote. LIRC should have documentation on how to do this.
- Send through the LIRC configurations that you generated so I can put them up here :)
I welcome any feedback on the driver via email to linuxdvb@itee.uq.edu.au.
Many thanks to digitalnow for their support in this development exercise.