Plextor PX-TV402U

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This page is about the Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U and PX-M402U.

The Plextor ConvertX PX-TV402U and PX-M402U products are external USB2.0 devices based on the WIS GO7007SB multi-format encoder ASIC. The devices accept input from a composite or S-Video analog source and encode the video into MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, or MJPEG video elementary streams to be delivered over the USB bus. The TV402U model also has an on-board standard-def TV tuner and is available in several flavors localized by TV frequency bands: North America (NTSC), Europe (PAL), and Japan (NTSC-J). The TV402U and M402U devices have audio inputs as well which generate the audio sampling clock from the input video signal clock for proper A/V synchronization, but the hardware does not have an internal audio encoder so the digital audio is delivered to the host as raw PCM. Except for the TV tuner, the M402U and the various flavors of TV402U are all identical.

M402U: http://www.plextor.com/english/products/ConvertX2.htm

TV402U-NA: http://www.plextor.com/english/products/TV402U.htm

TV402U-EU: http://www.plextor.be/products/px-tv402u.asp?choice=ConvertX%20PVR%20PX-TV402U

TV402U-JP: http://plextor.jp/product/pxtv402u/index.php

The internal hardware components are further described in two third-party reviews:

http://www.thenoisereport.com/content-14-page1.html

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews/Specific.aspx?Article Id=10154&Page Id=0

Linux Drivers

WISchip distributes open-source Linux drivers for the M402U and TV402U. The driver itself is licensed under the GPL, the example source code is reusable without attribution, and the firmware is freely redistributable without modification.

The driver delivers video through V4L2 and audio through ALSA. Kernel 2.6 is required.

http://oss.wischip.com/

The main contact for the driver is Nathan Lutchansky who can be found at http://forums.divx.com/eve/ubb.x/a/frm/f/996105602

MythTV Support

MythTV supports these devices as of version 0.18.

Make sure to set up the recording profiles for the device. As of 0.18.1, at least, video doesn't work until you do.

Note: Restarting the mythbackend may solve the problem of "Remote encoder not responding"

Gentoo Linux

For help setting up your ConvertX in MythTV, see the Gentoo Wiki: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_go7007#MythTV

== Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper)

Ubuntu no longer uses hotplug as of Dapper, to successfully build and install the Plextor drives issue the make install like: "make install USE_UDEV=y"