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View Full Version : Television tuner card AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 on FC4?


jdpipe
2006-02-07, 07:06 AM CST
Hi all,

I have had one of these AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 cards sitting here in my computer ever since I switched over to linux and have never yet managed to get it to work despite quite a bit of scouring of forum postings and modprobing and dmesging. The consensus on the net is clearly that this card does work but it is not clear whether or not I need to be an arch-hacker before I can use it:
http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=TVCards
http://www.spinics.net/lists/vfl/msg12376.html
http://hardware.linuxfaqs.de/view.php?tab=cards&ctype=TV

My problem seems to be that bttv sets the tuner for this card to '-1' which means that it can't be found. But at least the 'AverTV 761' does show up in the list. It's just the tuner doesn't.

Some web pages seem to say that I need to have extra modules loaded for the tuner, something about the sp887x for example. If I do need an extra kernel module for this, do I load it before or after bttv?

Does this card, being digital terrestrial, actually use a tuner?
On http://www.bttv-gallery.de/ it says it does, and it says it needs a Microtune MT7202DTF. How can I tell modprobe to use this particular tuner? (Do I just randomly tried "modprobe bttv tuner=1' thru '...tuner=493'?) None of the lists give the mapping from chipset to tuner ID.

How can I tell whether or not I need to do a kernel all that palaver?]
http://www.linuxtv.org/mailinglists/linux-dvb/2003/09-2003/msg00103.html

Assuming I do manage to get all this stuff with the modprobe stuff working, do I need do channel scanning for my card? What is the recommended Fedora package for doing that? I could only find 'scantv' as part of 'xawtv' RPM from ATrpms, http://atrpms.net/dist/fc4/xawtv/

If I do get the kernel module working, will it work automatically from then on, or do I need to change some settings somewhere so that happens?

What is the 'PLL' option for the bttv module? Do I need to set that in this case?

Does this 'just work' for most people, or is it this what everyone on linux has to do with this card?

Finally, there is some talk about having to do a firmware update on this card. For example,
http://knoppmythwiki.org/index.php?page=TVCards
What does that mean? If I had the card running under Windows, does that still apply? Is there any way I can 'query' the TV card and check the status of the firmware, or confirm that this is/isn't a problem?

Would very much appreciate any help you can offer here. Else watch out on ebay for a bargain!

Cheers
JP


BTW here is my dmesg output:

bttv: driver version 0.9.16 loaded
bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:02:0d.0, irq: 11, latency: 32, mmio: 0xf47fe000
bttv0: detected: AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 [card=124], PCI subsystem ID is 1461:0761
bttv0: using: AverMedia AverTV DVB-T 761 [card=124,autodetected]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=009e004d [init]
bttv0: using tuner=-1
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 . ok
bttv0: add subdevice "remote0"
bttv0: add subdevice "dvb0"
DVB: registering new adapter (bttv0).

I have been playing around with commands like these:
/sbin/rmmod dst dvb_bt8xx bt878 bttv
and
/sbin/modprobe bttv && /sbin/modprobe bt878 && /sbin/modprobe dvb-bt8xx && /sbin/modprobe sp887x && dmesg | grep bttv

When I use 'scantv' I get a message '
[global]
freqtab = australia

[defaults]
input = Television
norm = PAL

device has no tuner, exiting
[root@xxx john]#

Edit: I have just found this additional link that I am going to look at:
http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/dvb-kernel/linux/Documentation/dvb/avermedia.txt?view=auto
(but it's not Fedora specific, so I'd still love some input here)

jdpipe
2006-02-08, 09:28 PM CST
Apparently the tuner=-1 value is OK here. I got this back by email:


>So, I see that you have "using tuner=-1" -- does this card actually work
>> for you?


It works just fine. Not sure what the '-1' means. It does register
a vbi device which is what is needed to control the card.


>> Doesn't the tuner=-1 mean that the tuner isn't detected and
>> that you therefore can't use the card? I also see that you have got that
>> firmware upload thing done, but i'm not sure what the
>> currently-supported way of doing that is?


I put the firmware in
/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/dvb-fe-sp887x.fw
and the driver picks it up. I think that this is the
default location. The fw is a copy of a file from the
windows driver distro, I forget the name. But do look in
linux/Documentation/dvb/get_dvb_firmware


>> If you have some time, check out my post over at Fedora Forums:
>> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=94615


As I said, Fedora is not my area and it may have done this
differently.


>> Any tips you have would be really appreciated.


I have established that this card has a very insensitive tuner
which makes it lose reception too easily. The newer card (newer
as of two years ago) is the 771 which is much better (I have one
of these too alongside the 761). The current model is the 777
(I think).

So give it a good antenna.


>> Cheers
>> JP


Good luck.

-- Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal@...)

abi.allan
2008-10-31, 01:10 PM CDT
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