Hello all this is not an issue with linux per se...but I am using linux and have just sucessfully gotten my tv tuning card to work, the picture is brilliant and I love it. The only problem is, the TV card is designed such that you must use an "internal audio cable" (like those cables that you have to attach to the sound card from older cdroms). The problem is that my motherboard has a built in sound card...and it does not have anywhere to attach an internal audio cable. It has a line in 3.5mm jack and a 3.5mm microphone jack on the back panel. Also, there are some pins on the motherboard to attach front audio jacks. However, there is NO place to hook up the internal audio cable. For reference, the tv card is the pinnacle pctv stereo with the SAA7134HL chipset. My motherboard is the d945gntlr with onboard intel pro audio. Has anyone else run into a similar issue? There must be a way to connect the bugger to the sound card... I just have no idea what that might be. If I am terribly unclear...please let me know. (this all makes perfect sense to me...)

if anyone is interested...i can post a pin out of the front audio jack pins on the mobo, mabey someone better with circuitry than me could help me find a way to rout the sound from the tv card through that... (grabs frantically at straws...)

I don't really know how to solve your problem, but just some ideas.

Can you get digital audio? Some tv cards also show up as digital audio capture device, and you may be able to route that directly to your speakers without having to run a physical cable. I'm not sure how, but try poking around in /proc/asound

I have a similar problem on a similar chipset, explained here. My TV card wants me to connect it to the microphone, but the back one won't work and the front mic works, but I can't get it to play directly to the speakers.

Currently my workaround is to run "sox -p -r 32000 -v 0.5 -w -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp", where /dev/dsp1 is my TV card's audio capture and /dev/dsp the OSS mixer. It produces a 0.5 second lag in the audio, which is very annoying.

I think thats a no go on the digital audio capture device. I dont have any dsp1 in my devices. You probably have a different model of the same card I have. I know one comes with a plug to route it to the mic, and the other comes with the internal audio cable, like I have, and its sort of a grab bag which one you end up with... Which is lame...you should be able to know what your getting...!!! I wonder if it is possible for you to route yours through an internal audio cable... Check the back of your card and see if you have four little pins sticking out the back. If you do, then you can hook an "internal audio cable" to it and then hook that to your soundcard or motherboard or whatever. But then...if you have intel high def audio...then you would be in the same boat as me!!

I wonder if there is an adaptor made to go from the molex and of the internal audio cable to a 3.5mm jack that could be plugged into the mic input. For me that would not be a terribly elegant solution, but I think it would work... Anyone out there familiar with such a product? It might be possible for me to make one myself, but I dont think i would know what to put where!
The four output pins from the back or the card are labeled on the plastic: L (left), R (right) and those two are seperated by two in the middle, both labeled ground. I wonder if it is possible to even hook up a 3.5mm plug to a left right ground? Is that the way they work as well?

My card is a pretty old Hauppage Bt87x card. Don't despair yet, I had to recompile my kernel with it checked under sound devices (not multimedia), for it to turn up as a capture device. And some other tweaking too.

I don't think I have any internal connectors, but, as you say, I do have Intel HDA as well, so...

I'm afraid I cannot comment on whether you hook it up to a mic connector; I don't know if it is analog or digital etc. Have you checked the manufacturer's web site? They might have a FAQ or similar addressing the issue.