It took me considerable effort to get this far so I thought I'd document it.

I needed to install dvb-utils, kaffeine, vlc, and others. I've added debian-multimedia.org repositories, but for stable, no mythtv, and other quirks. Mercurial is too old, although it may not be relevant at this point. Unless you want to hg revert by date.

Issues first.

udev appears to be shy a few rules for /dev/dvb/* and other prospects. I got the below from other sources I found with google.

I added these lines to /etc/udev/permissions.rules

# video CUSTOM - 10/12/2008
KERNEL=="video*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="radio*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="winradio*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="vtx*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="vbi*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="video/*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="vttuner*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="v4l/*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="dvb/*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="dvb", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"
KERNEL=="dvb/adapter*", MODE="0660", GROUP="video"

I added this to /etc/udev/udev.rules
KERNEL=="dvb*", PROGRAM=="/etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh %k", NAME="%c", GROUP="video", MODE="0660"

There appears to also be a dvb.rules, but I may have added that as part of my attempts over the two days to get this going.

I added this script to /etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh

#!/bin/sh
/bin/echo $1 | /bin/sed -e 's,dvb\((0-9)\)\.\([^0-9]*\)\([0-9]\),dvd/adapter\1/\2\3,'

And of course:

# /etc/init.d/udev restart

to have the changes take affect. Or reboot.



Now on to the driver.

http://devinjh.livejournal.com/140981.html

Debian caveat. Mercurial is old, and you can't revert by date unless you upgrade. And the patch doesn't apply unless revert ( hg revert -d '8/26/2008' --all ). But with that old version and the patch, you don't have compatible modules with 2.6.27.

So just use the current v4l-dvb sources. But still some issues. SAA52* something or other doesn't compile. The solution is to edit ./v4l/.config. Comment out (#) the SAA52* entries and change the =m to " is not set" if you want to keep to tradition. And now it should compile.

$ make
# make install

reboot, or just rmmod any previously attempted related modules. One issue for me was that v4l* modules seemed to interact weird with X. But you don't need them as the driver does not currently support analog.

modprobe dvb-usb-dib0700
modprobe s5h1411
modprobe xc5000
modprobe s5h1420
(and probably some other modules as needed.)

Caveat, the driver for my card uses s5h1411. BUT, the firmware doesn't seem to load if I don't have s5h1420 also modprobed. This driver is supposed to get merged with 2.6.28, so it'll likely get fixed / cleaned up before then.

My related lsmod entries:

dvb_usb_dib0700 35464 8
xc5000 11784 1
s5h1411 9540 1
s5h1420 11972 0

dib7000p 16648 1 dvb_usb_dib0700
dib7000m 14340 1 dvb_usb_dib0700
dvb_usb 22028 1 dvb_usb_dib0700
dvb_core 85824 1 dvb_usb
dib3000mc 12808 1 dvb_usb_dib0700
dibx000_common 3972 3 dib7000p,dib7000m,dib3000mc
dib0070 7876 1 dvb_usb_dib0700

ehci_hcd 34956 0
ohci_hcd 24068 0
i2c_piix4 9036 0
usbcore 138544 8 dvb_usb_dib0700,dvb_usb,snd_usb_audio,snd_usb_lib,ndiswrapper,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd
video 19664 0
output 3712 1 video


Once driver-ized on to using. I'm a DVB virgin, so this took quite a few attempts to figure and I guess this thread is to ID other options.

For me step 1:
scan ./kde/share/apps/kaffeine/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB | tee channels.conf

And step 2:
Separate out each entry to it's own .conf file.

And step 3:
vlc individual_channel.conf

And I can watch TV on my laptop. Even 720p content at about 60% cpu usage (2GHz) for some of the HD channels. But not out of the woods yet. No other apps seem to work yet. And I compiled vlc from source and --disable-dbus on it. But when it launches, it pulls up dbus-launch and friends. So if I change channels I need to kill vlc and dbus-launch before restarting on a different channel. Well, it works at least. Partially anyway.

Being a TV card newbie, it'd be nice to know what my other options are for DVB playback. With a complete setup / play by play hopefully. Vlc works so I guess I'm alright for now. Ultimately I want to archive some old VHS tapes to DVD. But the driver doesn't currently support analog. Hopefully this helps someone get it working in less time than the two days it took me.

HTH

/etc/udev/udev.rules

KERNEL=="dvb*", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c 'K=%k; K=$${K#dvb}; \
printf dvb/adapter%%i/%%s $${K%%%%.*} $${K#*.}", ACTION=="add", \
NAME="%c", GROUP="video", MODE="0660"

The other once created /dev/dvb.*, this one creates /dev/dvb/*

Some more progress.

$ mkdir ~/.czap
$ cp channels.conf ~/.czap/channels.conf
$ czap -l > mpchannels.conf
# cp mpchannels.conf /etc/mplayer/channels.conf

And now mplayer dvb:// plays something. I don't seem to be able to switch channels or use dvb://channel or anything. But it's progress. vlc seems to go freaky if I play a single channel for very long.

Seems like a hallow victory at this point. I only get so many minutes before that player gets weird.

Symptom: video artifacts and increased performance load.
Errors: [00000458] main decoder error: decoder is leaking pictures, resetting the heap

Probably a driver issue IMO. But it works.

With my individual .conf files for each channel I made a script to make vlc watching less cryptic.

$ sh tv.sh #

#!/bin/sh

#launch with $ sh tv.sh 1

killall dbus-launch;
sleep 3;

if [ ! $1 ]; then
echo "Needs one channel number / name";
exit 1;
fi

#vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/0008.conf
#vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/0009.conf
if [ $1 == "1" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/Pentago.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "2" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/KNCT-SD.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "3" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/KWTX-CW.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "4" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/Telemun.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "5" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/25WXNOW.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "6" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/KXXV-HD.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "7" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/KNCT-HD.conf
fi
if [ $1 == "8" ]; then
vlc --swscale-mode 0 --no-ffmpeg-hurry-up --ffmpeg-skiploopfilter 4 /home/user/media/channels/KWTX-HD.conf
fi

#---END---

If it weren't for the dbus woes, I could just vlc all_channels.conf as generated by scan. And switch within VLC. But since the driver seems to bomb after less than an hour (15 minutes), I'm not really loosing anything going this route. I really want / need analog input. Otherwise I might be better off getting / using a different device. As the point of the device was to not get another TV when I have several desktops just laying around idle. And otherwise need the ability to archive some analog inputs to dvd.

The scan results for my location.

$ scan .kde/share/apps/kaffeine/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB | tee channels.conf

$ cat channels.conf
KXXV-HD·:545028615:8VSB:49:52:1
Telemun·:545028615:8VSB:65:68:2
25WXNOW·:545028615:8VSB:81:84:3
KNCT-HD·:617028615:8VSB:65:68:2
KNCT-SD:617028615:8VSB:81:84:3
Pentago:617028615:8VSB:97:100:4
[0008]:617028615:8VSB:0:0:8
[0009]:617028615:8VSB:0:0:9
KWTX-HD:707028615:8VSB:49:51:1
KWTX-CW:707028615:8VSB:65:67:2

I put each resulting line in it's own .conf file to make the above script function.

It looks like it's a libdvbpsi issue for the longevity of playback. And perhaps not a driver issue. Although I wouldn't imagine that all drivers / configuration would be bombing out in twenty minutes. Some channels quicker than others.

I get 13 channels on the desktop. More processing power(cpus+RAM), higer resolution monitor, nvidia video which doesn't pink out part of the screen like the laptops ATI driver, and closer to the window. And I took all of the above ifs out and just put vlc launches in sequence. ^Q or ^C to advance to the next channel. On the desktop I have the qt4 and skins2 disabled in vlc, so I don't get the dbus issue on it. About three channels with content that doesn't render, one with no audio, one that's not in english, and the rest are fairly usable. If only in the PBS sense of the content. I guess I'll watch the driver status like a hawk for radio and analog additions. (or just return it for one that's better supported)

Or maybe it was a driver issue. I got the more recent sources (10/13), previously (10/11). "$ hg pull --update". And I no longer have the drop out issue. Or the SAA52* compile issue. I had the local channel 25 (weather) up for over four hours last night while I slept, and it was still going this morning. I guess I'll need to invest in some storage devices for increased content. Not that I'll be saving much content until analog support gets implemented (low priority according to the drivers author).

Some more progress I guess. Supposedly Kaffeine 0.8.7 supports channel scanning. And of course debian stable comes with 0.8.3. Mplayer can now play other channels: see below.

$ scan -n -o zap -p .kde/share/apps/kaffeine/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB | tee mpchannels.conf

$ nano mpchannels.conf
(edit out any strange characters in the names since you'll need to type dvb://<name> to use it)

# cp mpchannels.conf /etc/mplayer/channels.conf
(you can also use the ~/.mplayer/ location as well)

$ mplayer dvb://KYLE-TV
(one of my local channels)

vlc still seems to launch dbus-launch which for some reason interferes with the device. While dbus-launch and dbus-daemon are running the device is "in use" so you can't even remove and replug the device and have it usable if you don't also killall dbus-launch. dbus-launch starts with gaim/pidgin and other apps as well. One other issue, mplayer leaves Eterm in a weird state after using it. It does not display the CLI entries, even though they appear to function. You type, nothing gets displayed. You scroll up through previous commands and nothing gets displayed, but you appear to be selecting those, and they launch if you press enter. You just don't know what you've selected.

I guess I'll give the updated kaffeine a try later. And install mythtv from sources as well.

Despite the mplayer / Eterm quirk, mplayer is rather cooler for playback. And I seem to have 13 channels from the above on the laptop. It might just be a time of day thing. But seeing Fox and other channels not previously usable is cool. And I can try recording with mencoder now. And various other things -vo aa or -vo caca.

Mplayer officially rocks. I already knew that. But it's more official now.

mplayer -vo xv -ao alsa -monitoraspect 1.6 -nocache -idx -vf scale -zoom -brightness +0 -contrast +0 -alang en dvb://Pentago dvb://25WXNOW dvb://KXXV-HD dvb://KNCT-HD dvb://KNCT-SD dvb://KWTX-HD dvb://KWTX-CW dvb://KWKT-DT dvb://KYLE-TV dvb://Telemun dvb://KTBC-DT dvb://0008 dvb://0009

with a /etc/mplayer/channels.conf of:

Pentago:617028615:8VSB:97:100:4
KXXV-HD:545028615:8VSB:49:52:1
KNCT-HD:617028615:8VSB:65:68:2
KNCT-SD:617028615:8VSB:81:84:3
KWTX-HD:707028615:8VSB:49:51:1
KWTX-CW:707028615:8VSB:65:67:2
KWKT-DT:731028615:8VSB:49:52:3
KYLE-TV:731028615:8VSB:65:68:65534
25WXNOW:545028615:8VSB:81:84:3
Telemun:545028615:8VSB:65:68:2
0008:617028615:8VSB:0:0:8
0009:617028615:8VSB:0:0:9
KTBC-DT:725028615:8VSB:49:52:3

I had to change a few names which had strange characters not easily reproduced. But the output of scan was usable. Now I can just < and > through the channels and all of them play. Except for 8,9, and sometimes KTBC-DT. I even have two 1920x1080 channels, and a couple 1280x720 channels. House in 720p is very cool. And Pentago has audio, which vlc seems to not be able to play. There still seems to be a few issues with some channels, I guess I'll see if they persist on my 64 bit desktop. But I can at least see some of what I'm missing.

The best part about mplayer is mencoder. I can save the media fairly easily. Now to figure out how to play while recording. I suppose on the dual core desktop I can just play the resultant file (time lagged) while the other cpu takes care of the encoding / saving. Not an option on the single core laptop. Although a second tv card might also work. It's the best part because you can record 1920x1080 content, even if your machine can't play it back in realtime. So you can convert it to a more playable media type and/or resolution. And otherwise not completely miss out on the available shows.

mencoder dvb://KYLE-TV -oac copy -ovc copy -o output.mpeg

Some details on my local channels.

Pentago - 704x480 - Military - Video looks very interlaced, audio gets choppy at times.
KXXV-HD - 1280x720 - ABC / News 25 - Works fairly well, some a/v sync issues that can be corrected by rescrolling channels.
KNCT-HD - 1920x1080 - Works good. Works better on the desktop that's better equiped for this content.
KNCT-SD - 704x480 - Same content as KNCT-HD
KWTX-HD - 1920x1080 - CBS - looks good.
KWTX-CW - 1280x720 - the CW - content differs from KWTX-HD. But looks good.
KWKT-DT - 1280x720 - FOX - some a/v sync issues that can be corrected by rescrolling.
KYLE-TV - 480x480 - FOX - same content as KWKT-DT.
25WXNOW - 704x480 - Ch. 25 Weather - Been the default / working one since day one.
Telemun - 704x480 - Spanish - Looks good. But don't understand most words.
KTBC-DT - 1280x720 - Unknown - Decoder issues, but it gets some content, some of the time.
0008 - ???
0009 - ???

Here's hoping that the next generation ATI driver doesn't pink out part of an oversized video. Even if scaled -zoom 0.75 in vlc. As long as it doesn't exceed screen resolution it seems okay. But the laptop only has a 1280x800 display. Fortunately the desktop has an onboard nVidia card, and a larger display. Although mplayer and ATI cards seem to interact better with brightness/contrast control (1,2,3,4) while playing.

Kaffeine 0.8.7 seems to work. And for some channels that have audio / video sync issues, it works better. But ultimately the channels end up in some sort of fps render slow mo and never recovers. Probably aided by signal strength and current weather patterns. But usable to a limited extent. As you can change channels and back to correct. With a nifty little record button (floppy disk image) if you want to save what you're seeing.

The Kaffeine interface is NOT intuitive. To add a channel to the playlist, you have to double click it in the channels popup. Which brings up the edit popup for that channel. Click OK/Done on that popup. Click OK/Done on the channels popup, and that one channel appears in the playlist. Repeat for however many channels you have/want. Fullscreen doesn't seem to be a menu option or keyboard hotkey. So on that side margin where you can select from various sources, double click on the portion of the sidebar with nothing on it and it goes to full screen. Double click again and it returns. Only like other KDE apps it resizes itself for some reason. So correct that annoyance. Ktorrent does something similar if I roll-up / roll-down the window. This might just be with IceWM, although I don't know why it would differ in any other WM.

As I continue to wait for analog support so I can archive my old VHS tapes using mplayer, vlc, or ffmpeg. Stick with what you know and all. As opposed to running Vista which will likely fail mid process like it always does. Thus ultimately taking fives time longer than it should have to do any one task. Oh well. Progress for now. If only October TV programming didn't suck so bad, there might be something worth recording. Horror month on Sci-Fi, Oh Joy, not that this differs from any other months programming.

$ scan -n -o zap -p .kde/share/apps/kaffeine/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB | tee mpchannels.conf

Using the mplayer channels.conf in ~/.xine/channels.conf gives xine the DVB capabilities.

Still waiting on Analog support. But kind of neat to watch House in 720p and the Price is Right with Drew in full HD. Still some stability issues, every player eventually becomes unusable if left unattended. Mplayer gets out of sync video to audio wise the longer it runs. Kaffeine eventually goes into a slow motion video mode and drops audio completely. Xine rebuffers and keeps sync, but still freezes up over time.

Some of this is signal strength. But you'd think that there would be at least one channel I can watch for more than an hour without retuning the channel, or restarting the viewer. Some of it might also be my 1.9GHz dual core. But it shouldn't be an issue IMO. I can watch / record the channels in windows without issue on the same machine. And my distro install is a lot more optimized IMO.

I guess I'm no longer waiting. One month to the day from the date of purchase and the device no longer functions. In windows or linux. I guess I'm making a trip to Office Depot today. Otherwise I'll have to ship it to get pinnacle to honor the 24 month warranty. Which could ultimately cost more than the device. Hopefully I can just get my money back, this device sucks in analog in windows. Everything is sort of washed out and the codec it saves into is loaded with artifacts. Or at least was, when it worked.

Fortunately Office Depot took the device back with a full refund. And a slight hint that normally their return policy is 14 days, otherwise everything else is done through the manufacturer.

Hello all,

Some discussion I have been having with Andrej Falout has prompted me
to consider finally adding analog support for dib0700 based devices?
As a result, I am interested in trying to figure out how many people
care about this. In particular, this is a rather large project, so I
want to get an idea how many people would actually benefit from this
support (and might be willing to donate a couple of dollars toward the
effort).

I've got all the specs and information required to do the work - it's
just a matter of deciding whether it is worth spending three or four
weeks of my time that could be spent doing stuff that I would almost
certainly consider more interesting.

If you are interested in seeing this work, please reply here, or email
me privately. Also, include what dib0700 based device you have (and
what video decoder and tuner chips it uses if you happen to know).

Thanks,

Devin

--
Devin J. Heitmueller - Kernel Labs
http://www.kernellabs.com

Please respond to Linux Media Mailing List <linux-media@vger.kernel.org>

Hello Devin,
I just recently purchased this device (Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick (801e),
and I am still hopeful that analog support is still in the works. I really want to be able to convert my old home videos to digital. I have been following some of your posts in other places, and it seems you have given up on working on this. I hope not. But, either way, thanks for all the work you put into the drivers for this device. The digital driver works great!

pid: 022a

Hi Devin,
I will be very much interested in an analog driver for this device. I am willing to help out for driver testing. I do have some basic Linux knowledge.
Thanks

Hi guys,

I actually didn't post the message in question. It is a message I wrote to the linux-media mailing list that appears to have been pasted as-is into this forum without making it clear that I wasn't the post originator (surprisingly bad netiquette). In fact, the only reason I knew about it at all is because of referrer logs at Kernellabs.com.

Regarding the 801e analog support, it isn't coming anytime soon. I discuss the reasoning in the kernellabs.com blog (which I apparently cannot put a link to in this post because I'm too new a member of the forum).

Cheers,

Devin