Hauppauge WinTV HVR-950

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Introduction

The WinTV HVR-950 is a cheap usb ATSC tuner. Apparently there are different versions of the hardware with different tuner chips, so your mileage may vary. In lsusb, it shows up as "WinTV HVR-980".

Currently this wiki page only focuses on getting ATSC DVB working, the hardware does have analog capabilities but for now they are ignored.

[edit] Configure your kernel

The kernel used for this guide was vanilla 2.6.24.4, and is confirmed working. Make sure to deselect the V4L and DVB options in the kernel.

Device Drivers --->
     Multimedia Devices --->
          < > Video For Linux
              Digital Video Broadcasting Devices --->
                  [ ] DVB For Linux
          < > DABUSB Driver

Make and boot into your new kernel, this allows v4l-dvb-experimental to correctly auto-detect your kernel for its build.

Kernels 2.6.25 and higher appear to have built in drivers that supports HVR-950. However, as of 2.6.25, they do NOT work. See the talk page for information on getting the HVR-950 working under 2.6.25.

Device Drivers --->
     Multimedia Devices --->
          < > Video For Linux
          [ ]   Video capture adapters  --->
                [ ]   Autoselect pertinent encoders/decoders and other helper chips 
                [ ]   V4L USB devices  ---> 
                     < >   Empia EM2800/2820/2840 USB video capture support 
                     < >     Empia EM28xx ALSA audio module

[edit] v4l-dvb-experimental from portage

 emerge -av v4l-dvb-hg

You may have to install the firmware for the xc3028 chip, see below to do that.

If it fails to build, you can manually create a .config file that has just the modules you need.

Edit the /usr/portage/media-tv/v4l-dvb-hg/v4l-dvb-hg-0.1-r2.ebuild and change the "make allmodconfig ${BUILD_PARAMS}" line to "make ${BUILD_PARAMS}".

 cd /var/tmp/portage/media-tv/v4l-dvb-hg-0.1-r2/work/v4l-dvb/
 make menuconfig

Select "Video For Linux", "DVB for Linux", "Autoselect pertinent encoders/decoders and other helper chips", the em28xx modules, and the v4l ABI 1 compatibly if you get symbols errors. The config options change from month to month, so read carefully and select what you need. Select "DVB/ATSC adapters" even though there are no modules selected under there. This ensures the DVB support modules are built. Exit and save the .config file.

 diff -uN .config.new .config > /usr/portage/local/v4l-dvb-experimental_config.patch
 DVB_LOCAL_PATCHES="/usr/portage/local/v4l-dvb-experimental_config.patch" emerge -av v4l-dvb-hg --digest

If you are upgrading/reinstalling/reemerging, make sure to remove outdated modules before emerging. Modules names have changed from month to month and can cause conflicts/symbols errors.

 rm -r /lib/modules/<kernel version>/v4l-dvb

[edit] Obtain v4l-dvb-experimental

emerge -av mercurial

Then checkout the dvb-experimental sources.

cd /usr/src
hg clone http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-experimental

[edit] Build DVB modules

If you want you can customize exactly what modules are built.

make menuconfig

For simplicity, we will just build them all.

make && make install

If you get the following error:

v4l-dvb-experimental # make
make -C /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l'
scripts/make_makefile.pl
./scripts/make_myconfig.pl
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l'
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l'
perl scripts/make_config_compat.pl /lib/modules/2.6.24.4/build ./.myconfig ./config-compat.h
creating symbolic links...
ln -sf . oss
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.24.4/build SUBDIRS=/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l  modules
make[2]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.24.4'
 CC [M]  /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/flexcop-pci.o
In file included from /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/flexcop-common.h:23,
                from /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/flexcop-pci.c:10:
/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/dvb_frontend.h:42:33: error: media/v4l_dvb_tuner.h: No such file or directory
In file included from /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/flexcop-common.h:23,
                from /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/flexcop-pci.c:10:
/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/dvb_frontend.h:165: error: field 'tuner_ops' has incomplete type
make[3]: *** [/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l/flexcop-pci.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [_module_/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.24.4'
make[1]: *** [default] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l'
make: *** [all] Error 2

Then perform the following operation.

cd /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental/v4l
ln -s ../linux/include/linux
ln -s ../linux/include/media
ln -s ../linux/include/sound
cd /usr/src/v4l-dvb-experimental
make && make install

You'll get some fixdep (xxxxxx.o.d generation) warnings, but don't worry about those unless you are modifying the source.

[edit] Getting firmware for the xc3028 chip

cd /root
mkdir xc3028
cd xc3028
wget http://konstantin.filtschew.de/v4l-firmware/firmware_v4.tgz
md5sum firmware_v4.tgz

Assert that the md5sum is 15c5da09380a130381e65834337da49a. The firmware file has also been mirrored here http://deadlyninja.com/mirror/firmware_v4.tgz.

tar xzvf firmware_v4.tgz
mkdir /lib/firmware
mv xc3028_*.fw /lib/firmware

[edit] Loading the modules

You can test immediately by installing the new modules.

modprobe em28xx

em28xx pulls in em2880_dvb, which permits dvb operation.

To load the modules at boot add the following to your autoload.d.

em28xx

Then run update-modules.

update-modules

[edit] Viewing TV

You can use mplayer to view TV.

For NTSC TV, pre-digital over the air broadcast:

mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:alsa:immediatemode=0:adevice=hw.1,0:norm=ntsc:chanlist=us-bcast

Use the "h" and "k" keys to tune through the channels.

For the new digital (ATSC/HD) broadcasts, you need to scan the channels first.

dvbscan is part of the linuxtv-dvb-apps package.

emerge -av linuxtv-dvb-apps

dvbscan /usr/share/dvb/atsc/us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB

At the end of the scan, there should be some lines like this:

dumping lists (2 services)
WTHI-DT:533028615:8VSB:49:52:3
WTHI-DT:533028615:8VSB:33:36:4
Done.

Add those lines to ~/.mplayer/channels.conf

WTHI-DT:533028615:8VSB:49:52:3
WTHI-DT:533028615:8VSB:33:36:4

Now you can view ATSC tv with:

mplayer dvb://

Use "h" and "k" keys to tune the channels.

If you have xvmc hardware accelation:

mplayer -vo xvmc -vc ffmpeg12mc dvb://

If you have some playback problems, try increasing the cache

mplayer -vo xvmc -vc ffmpeg12mc -cache 65536 dvb://

You may have to add -monitoraspect 16:10 for some wide screen, 1440x900, laptops to get the proper aspect ratio displayed.

mplayer -vo xvmc -vc ffmpeg12mc -monitoraspect 16:10 -cache 65536 dvb://

-monitoraspect tells mplayer what aspect ratio the laptop/monitor screen is, NOT the broadcast aspect ratio.