I have a very old Hauppauge WinTV card, model 44801 REV D110 that I want to set up in my Linux computer. Seems Windows 10 that is on my other computer can't run it but I found that Linux will, but wanted to make sure I don't need a specific program or set it up in some specific way.

Sounds like it that it will just be detected automatically, I just want to be sure before I boot it up with the card in it. Thanks,

What linux distribution are you using? I use Debian, which by default does not include the software necessary to utilize my Hauppauge PVR-150 (an old PCI video capture card with built in MPEG-2 encoding).

For me to use my Hauppage PVR-150, I do the following:


To install the software and firmware:

apt-get install ivtv-utils firmware-ivtv

To start it recording from input 2 (Composite input):

v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -i 2
cat /dev/video0 >current.mpg

To watch it using mpv (an mplayer based video player):

mpv --start=-12 --video-aspect=16:9 current.mpg

This automatically starts playback 12 seconds before the end of the file. I find that if I try to start it too close to the end of the file, it's more likely to suffer a hiccup (when watching over a file share, over wifi). But if you're just watching locally then really 1 second should be enough.

If you don't want to have this file just growing and growing, many video players can directly watch /dev/video0, or you can use something like netcat to stream the /dev/video0 to a video player over a network. I generally prefer to direct output to a file, though. That way, any number of computers can watch the video over the network, independently pausing/ff/rw/etc as far back as the start of the file.

Not all video players have command line arguments to allow starting playback near the end of the file, and not all video players intelligently autodetect when a file is growing (to update the end time and navigation bar).

Some other uses of v4l2-ctl which may be useful:

To set audio input:
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 --set-audio-input 1

# Lower the bitrate from default of 6000000, 8000000
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -c video_bitrate=1800000
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -c video_peak_bitrate=2400000

I have Kubuntu 18.04.01 loaded.

I don't know what Kubuntu has installed by default. Looking up Kubuntu + Hauppage, I get a lot of hits on advice and questions on the topic.

So just give it a try, and if it's not obvious how to get it to work try what I describe above. In order to do the software install, the Ubuntu style would be:

The "sudo" is the usual Ubuntu way of running a command with root privileges (the usual *nix method is to simply use "su" to log in as root first, or to log in directly as root at a non-GUI console login).

I'm not sure that the software packages will be named the same in the Ubuntu repositories as they are in the Debian repositories, but I think they'd be the same for these.

1 members found this post helpful.

OK, thanks.

https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge

A bit old information but seems to be fully supported.

Peek around on that web site, tends to be best site to start at.

Kodi/mythtv should work out of the box on that too. (unless kernel has dropped support but might be able to fix)

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i was looking for one year how to change the default 6mbps bitrate of wintv cards and you save my year!


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@thequicker : if you´re cannot made the card run, check in dmesg if the firmware is correctly load, if not put here the dmesg to help you to found it!

You're welcome!