Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro USB Stick
From MythTV
Updates: This card now has ATSC support in the V4L main tree. A recent V4L cvs will have support for this tuner. Also note there are bugs in Ubuntu Hardy which prevent building the mrec driver for this tuner properly, Markus Rechberger has provided prebuilt .debs to solve that problem. Check out the links to the precompiled packages that can be found here.
This card uses the em28xx drivers that many other USB sticks use. In Ubuntu and most other distros, some custom dvb module installation is needed. See here for step by step instructions. If you install the drivers properly, this card will work with the latest version of mythtv (as of Dec 12 2007).
According to Linux TV.org, this card has the same chipset as the Hauppage hvr 950 usb. Product link.
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Main Features
- OTA digital tuning (ATSC/8VSB)
- Analog tuner built in
- Included antenna is adequate
- Comes with USB extension cable, remote, and aux input cable
- remote acts as an input device in X (LIRC not needed)
Main Disadvantages
- Analog tuning does not work for many people in Linux / causes mythbackend to crash
- Remote is tiny / few buttons
- It appears that it may not tune QAM, although it may be capable of this; perhaps the drivers do not support it yet.
- Does not coexist with IVTV on some systems
Installation Gotchas
- As mentioned above, on some systems (including at least two other people on the net and my system, making three documented cases) this tuner will not coexist with Hauppage PVR-150 cards. Upon rebooting the machine during the em28xx install process, the machine will hang during the boot process, and will only boot to single-user mode upon canceling init with cntrl-alt-del. Removing the two PVR-150 cards in my system solved the problem for me. I considered this acceptable since I canceled my cable service and analog channels were unwatchable over my antenna. If you are unsure about the compatibility problem, buy the tuner locally and test it out. Return it if it doesn't work with your Hauppage cards.
- Mythtv will not find any channels using its built-in scanner. Instead, you must create a channels.conf file using scan, a program included inside the dvb-utils package of most distros. Warning: the package may be called dvb-apps on some distros, and scan may be called dvb-scan. Make a channels.conf like this:
scan /usr/share/dvb-apps/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB > channels.conf
and then import the channels.conf into mythtv using the channel scanner in mythtv-setup. It should find all your channels instantly.
Other than these problems, digital TV works flawlessly in mythtv.
