Sabrent Digital HDTV and ATSC Analog USB

English Multimedia
1

Hi All
I purchased one of the above devices via amazon.com on a whim to see if
it would work out of the box, alas no :frowning:

But fortunately with patching the appropriate module (au0828.ko) from
information supplied by http://linuxtv.org/hg/~mkrufky/teledongle it is
all working for Digital TV (didn’t try analogue…)

I have built a patched module which is now available here;
Download
Link

The unit I have has the following chipsets;
TDA18271HDC2
AU85522AA
AU0828A

After plugging into your USB port you should see output like;


usb 5-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
usb 5-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
au0828: i2c bus registered
tda18271 3-0060: creating new instance
TDA18271HD/C2 detected @ 3-0060
DVB: registering new adapter (au0828)
DVB: registering frontend 0 (Auvitek AU8522 QAM/8VSB Frontend)...
Registered device AU0828 [Syntek Teledongle [EXPERIMENTAL]]
usb 5-4: New USB device found, idVendor=05e1, idProduct=0400
usb 5-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 5-4: Product: USB 2.0 Video Capture Controller
usb 5-4: Manufacturer: Syntek Semiconductor
tda18271: performing RF tracking filter calibration
tda18271: RF tracking filter calibration complete

Once you install the dvb tools from packman and your preferred player,
run a channel scan for example;


scan /usr/share/dvb/atsc/us-NTSC-center-frequencies-8VSB -o zap | tee ~/channels.conf

After this, load the channels.conf as a playlist and you should be good
to go. I used VLC from the packman repository.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 x86 Kernel 2.6.27.7-9-default
up 2:16, 1 user, load average: 0.18, 0.38, 0.37
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 180.22

2

Hi Malcolm,
I am new to linux and first time on this forum. I have
a similar USB TV stick I purchased from ComputerGeeks
their Model DX-UATSC. It came with BlazeVideo software
and internally the circuit board exactly matches the photo at: Sabrent TV-USBHD - LinuxTVWiki

The supplied software running in windows XP works pretty
well in the NTSC mode both antenna and cable.
In ATSC mode the OTA part works but not the Cable.

I found though that I could get it to work very poorly
By using the Hauppauge Generic Qam driver in TSReader. It appears that the TDA tuner chip is not properly initialized by either software.

So Have come to Linux to see if I can get it working properly. I am currently trying Novel enterprise 10
on an older HP Omnibook 6000 and Knoppix 6.0.1 live CD
on my Dell D620 core 2 duo laptop.

The knoppix is using kernel 2.6.28. I tried to rpm your
i586 default au0868 patched driver, but it failed because
of a bunch of dependencies. When I plug in the USB TV
stick Knoppix shows the same device information as yours

New USB device found, idVendor=05e1, idProduct=0400
New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Product: USB 2.0 Video Capture Controller
Manufacturer: Syntek Semiconductor

and I have the same chip set as you do.

As I understand it from this
‘Re: [linux-dvb] [PATCH] Add syntek corp device to au0828’ - MARC](http://marc.info/?l=linux-dvb&m=122617795121243&w=2)

The Hauppauge “Woodbury” has the same chipset as ours and the driver is built into the kernel since 2.6.26 I think.

Is there a way with modprobe or some other utility to
experimentally get the knoppix to treat my USB TV as if
it were a Woodbury?

It looks a little overwhelming to me at this point to use
your patched driver as it looks like I have to have exactly the same version and patch level of linux that you have in order to get it to install.

Did you try your setup on cable or just on OTA? In other
words can you enable the QAM mode of operation?

Is openSUSE a good version of Linux to experiment with?

Any help you can give would be appreciated.

Paul

3

Hi Paul
Of course openSuSE is the best for you to try it out on :wink:

If your using an openSuSE version, you just need to download the src
rpm and ensure you have the kernel-source, linux-kernel-headers,
kernel-syms, module-init-tools, make and gcc installed for the kernel
your running.

Then you need to rebuild the rpm (as your user)


rpmbuild --rebuild au0828-1-4.1.src.rpm

Then you need to install manually;


sudo rpm -Uhv /usr/src/packages/RPMS/<arch>/au0828......

If you on a different distribution, then all you need to do is grab the
patches and apply to the distro kernel source au0828 and build from that
as per the methods used for that distro.

The kernel for SLED10 is probably too old to support that module and
the others required. I did try on SLED10 SP2 without luck, but have
since moved to SLED11 on that machine.

I didn’t try cable as the decoder is a pcmcia card in the TV here no
set-top box.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.19-3.2-pae
up 3 days 1:36, 1 user, load average: 0.20, 0.08, 0.12
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

4

Thanks Malcolm

I notice you have an update version of au0828-1-4.1.src.rpm so I got it with
rpm -ivh http://<path> /<filename>
and I got a warning about keys security? and this file
was created /var/tmp/rpm-xfer.OceNWm??

Later I found that the package in fact was received in
/usr/src/packages/SOURCES/

I think I will upgrade before trying anything else, but
many hours to download DVD! If I get the 11.1 DVD will I get the required files you mentioned? If not how do I
go about getting them? This is all really new to me.

Thanks

5

Hi
Yes you will get the kernel stuff off the DVD, however a new kernel is
now out as well as other updates.

What I suggest is once you have the DVD, setup your system, then update
the kernel. Then you can grab the updated module from the repository
other wise download the updated kernel sources etc and build from that.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 (i586) Kernel 2.6.27.21-0.1-pae
up 15:13, 1 user, load average: 0.36, 0.21, 0.18
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

6

I bought a card with an updated chipset (the Sabrent TV-DGUSB). It uses the AU8524 instead of the AU8522. The instructions I used to get it working are here:

Linux Hacks and Fixes: Sabrent TV-DGUSB

7

Hi
Just a thread bump to advise there is now an updated module in my OBS
Factory repository for running on the latest kernel version in 11.2 M5.
Also if your running a 2.6.31 kernel grab the Factory src rpm
(au0828-2) and build against that. Any others should use au0828-1 src
rpm.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31-rc5-git3-2-desktop
up 8:34, 2 users, load average: 0.13, 0.11, 0.08
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

8

Malcolm, you should submit your patch (see here for details as how) and get it included in the kernel … this way you will benefit all Linux users of the device, in addition to openSUSE users

9

Hi
That’s where I got the patches from as noted in the changelog :wink: They
were in there from 8 months ago, guess it’s a slow process to get them
included… Maybe I should advise the changes for the .31 kernel
though :slight_smile:

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31-rc5-git3-2-desktop
up 18:20, 2 users, load average: 0.14, 0.05, 0.02
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

10

A.

didn’t read your changelog as I’m not using it … just stopped by to encourage you to submit

That’s where I got the patches from
yes, I know the info source stems from LinuxTV, but it sounded more like you built a patch based upon the original work, rather then simply acquired pre-built code; recall from the initial thread post:

fortunately with patching the appropriate module (au0828.ko) from
information supplied by ~mkrufky/teledongle: log](http://linuxtv.org/hg/~mkrufky/teledongle) it is
all working for Digital TV (didn’t try analogue…)

I have built a patched module which is now available here

B.

They were in there from 8 months ago, guess it’s a slow process to get them included
That is just a development repo that was made available for end users to test out with – The important point is that end users should report that it works (see here), otherwise developers will never have anyway of knowing … and unconfirmed code does not get pushed … (well, unfortunately, some does, but that shouldn’t be the case)…anyway, I highly doubt that anyone has reported anything, and the code will continue to languish until otherwise.

Maybe I should advise the changes
I encourage you to do so

for the .31 kernel
too late for .31 – the merge window closes ~two weeks after the release of the prior dot release, i.e. .30 in our case. … but plenty of time for .32 though :slight_smile: … and, in any regard, the sooner its adopted into V4L-DVB, the sooner a wider audience base can easily access it (through the V4L-DVB drivers supplied by LinuxTV) even before it gets adopted into a kernel … and from eventually adoption into the kernel, it will, of course, subsequently lead to it being provided straight up by future distro releases

Cheers

11

Hi
Fair comments :slight_smile: In build the kmp module, it doesn’t include the
documentation patch. I did modfy an existing patch so I’ve posted
my patch to the 2.6.31-rc5-git3-2 kernel on the mailing list, so will
see how it goes :wink:

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.27.25-0.1-default
up 13 days 0:04, 2 users, load average: 0.13, 0.15, 0.12
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - Driver Version: 190.18