TV support

[Nathan Howell]

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 22:35:34 +0000, rkimber wrote:

> Is there much likelihood of Ubuntu supporting the PVR350 TV card in the
> near future (e.g. this year)?  By 'support' I mean 'out of the box' as it
> were, without having to re-compile vast amounts of stuff, as seems to be
> the case with many distributions at present.
> 
> I ask because I foolishly bought one of these cards and am thinking of
> getting a Win-TV card instead if the PVR isn't likely to work in the
> reasonably near future.

FWIW, the PVRx50 cards work fine, and you don't have to compile all that
much stuff to make it happen. I just set up a PVR250 on hoary myself, and
it's working great. The basic steps are:

- install build-essential and the appropriate linux-headers package
- download the ivtv source from
http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-index.php?page=DownloadIvyTv (I used the 0.2x
version at the bottom)
- build and install the ivtv modules (don't forget to replace the stock
msp3400 module with the ivtv version)
- get the firmware for the card as directed at
http://ivtv.writeme.ch/tiki-view_faq.php?faqId=1#q29
- load ivtv with modprobe ivtv and add it to /etc/modules so that it gets
loaded at every boot

That's about all I did, and it's working great with mythtv. I may get
around to packaging it myself, since I've been wanting to learn debian
packaging anyway, but I don't know when I'll get a chance. I also don't
know what issues there are with that firmware and packaging it legally.

Nathan