Pinnacle TV card and other TV stuff
 

The TV card is Pinnacle PCTV 300i PAL Stereo DVB-T. What do I need to get it working? What programs do you suggest to use? If you need more info then just ask.

A good site for information is

http://www.linuxtv.org/

You need to figure out what drivers your card needs. If you are lucky they are already in the latest kernel. Once the card was working I could watch and record using dvbstream.

Hi guys,

Please help. I'm totally new to Linux and have the same problem as jaakkop. I'm running Mandriva Linux LE 2005. I've checked out that site, but there's so many files, I don't know which one to choose.

Sorry for being really dense but love to get my card working on Linux.
Cheers in advance.

Digital TV cards are pretty new in linux. When I dabbled in this a while back things were changing almost daily, with new cards and drivers getting added. The most useful documentation was the mailing lists on sites like linuxtv and other discussion forums. I doubt that things have changed much, except maybe more cards are supported in the current linux kernel.

But if you buy hardware without first checking for linux compatibility, chances are you will have to do some research, maybe install kernel patches, and perhaps even find that there is no current support for your card.

Even if your card has current kernel support, unless you have the very latest distro, you will still have to configure and compile a new kernel. In general there is no single file or package you can download to get things working.

The very latest knoppix live CD is always worth a try with new hardware, but still there are no guarantees.

Ok, thats fair enough.
I done some digging around and noticed that there is some support for my card.
Any good tutorials for compiling a kernel?

Since this is LQ there's this ...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...icle&artid=170

which looks fairly thorough. Note there are some issues changing from 2.4 systems to 2.6 systems (mentioned in the tutorial), so it may be easier to start with the latter if you are building a 2.6 kernel. So long as you make sure you do not overwrite your current kernel it is easy to revert if you screw up. Have fun!

Cheers for the help!

I found a correct link, http://dl.bytesex.org/patches/ , to place where to download a patch for my tv card, thou I didn't find a patch for my kernel, 2.6.12.2. Should I use another patch instead, or does 2.6.12.2 have it already?

Without really knowing the situation, I think the latest kernel would be a safer choice than older kernel+patches.

My kernel is 2.6.11-6, are there any from that list I could download or would it have to match my kernel version exactly?

I think the -6 is just the local label. It's probably just 2.6.11. Why not just use the latest kernel? You will have to get source code, configure and recompile anyway.

Howdy,

I might be looking at this wrong but I think I have the latest version of my kernel (for mandriva linux) or are they independent of the people who compiled them in the first place?

If I wanted to use the 2.6.11 files from that patch site, do I have to download them individually or is there a way to grab those files and download them automatically?

Ta.

2.6.12.2 has the SAA7134 module. I tried to enable it and make the modules but it gave me this:
What should I do?

Alright Jaakkop,

I've got that driver in the same location, how did you try to 'enable' it?

I edited the .config file with "make menuconfig" and enabled the module. Sry for the bad expression, just couldn't come up for anything else.