I am planning to get back into Linux after a hiatus of over 10 years now. My first project is to build a PC that has some decent horsepower and can record HDTV in the US.
Since we are receiving HDTV via cable, we need a QAM capable card. I found the card referenced above at a decent price, but don't know if there is a chance to make it work with Linux (Planning on using the Ubuntu dist.).
All the standard hardware lists etc. do not mention this card as either working or not. The only card that I am certain of will work with Linux for me is the pcHDTV card. But it is considerably more pricey and is made by a really small company.

So, I am willing to experiment and try a little bit, but what are the chances that the Kworld card will work?

Thanks!

STS

In my experience the best reference is the linuxtv site. The DVB-wiki list of supported hardware says:

and the 110 model is on the list of working devices.

Thanks Maroonbaboon,

After some more digging on LinuxTV I actually found the passage you quoted:

"KWorld ATSC 115 ... (aka KWorld PlusTV HD PCI 115) ... appears identical to the 110 model ...different label, remote and new Windows software (ArcSoft) only?"

So I ordered the ATSC 115. But looking at the KWorld website, it appears that the ATSC 110 does not support QAM, while the ATSC 115 does. Is this due to the different software, or is the hardware responsible?

Thanks!

Had to look up QAM to see what it was - no experience with cable at all. But the same DVB-wiki says that the 110 does support QAM. It's quite possible the hardware has the feature but the Windows driver does not make it available.

Alright, I got all the pieces and built the machine. Kubuntu seems to be running rather nicely too!
Of course my challenges lie with the hardware side of things. I can't figure out how to get my KWorld ATSC 115 working. Looking for my card using "lsmod" I could locate lots of metnioning of the saa7134 which is I believe the chip on the card, but the word "KWorld" is nowhere to be found.
Here is a part of the lsmod listing:

I also don't have the "/dev/dvb" directory which all leads me to believe that something with the installation is not correct.

It almost sounds like my kernel does not support the card, but from all I read, it should- I am using Kubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. The Kernel Version is 2.6.20-16

How can I proceed with diagnosing this?

Thanks!

Stefan

Not really sure if my experience is valid since I am using dvb-t/PAL and not cable/ATSC, but certainly the missing /dev/dvb entry looks suspicious. You could have a scroll through the output of 'dmesg' to see if there are any error messages.

You could just try running some app to see what happens. If you have a configuration file showing the available channels you can try to tune to one of them.

I my case I can do this with

tzap -c <conf-file> <channel-name>

In your case I guess you use 'czap' instead.

I also seem to have an app just called 'scan' which scans for channels, which might be worth a try if you have no info to start with.