Tuesday, November 21, 2006

PCMCIA TV-Tuner

Just a quick little update-- my father has a pcmcia tv tuner based on the saa7134 chipset that he doesn't use so I took it and decided "I'm gonna make this work with ubuntu!" Basically what needed to be done was as follows: (this is after all the trial and error of course)



1. Place the pcmcia card in the slot with the cable plugged in

2. Make sure that if the modules are loaded you unload them by typing each line into terminal and hitting enter after each:

sudo rmmod saa7134_alsa

sudo rmmod saa7134



3. Load the modules with correct parameters:

sudo modprobe saa7134

sudo modprobe saa7134_alsa


4. download tvtime to watch the t.v.

sudo apt-get install tvtime


5. Now, you could run this as it stands but you will likely find that the audio does not work to fix that you must make a launcher that will point tvtime and your card to use the correct sound. to do that do as follows:

5(a) Make create launcher file:

gedit launcher.sh

5(b) Paste the following inside, save, then exit:

#!/bin/sh

sox -c 2 -s -w -r 32000 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -t ossdsp -w -r 32000 /dev/dsp />tvtime --mixer=/dev/mixer:pcm

wait tvtime

t=`pidof sox`;

kill $t;

amixer -c 0 sset PCM 80%,80% unmute

to play tv you can just type:

sh launcher.sh





If you have any questions or need help just comment or email-- aesnyder@gmail.com



I am lucky enough to have a second T42 which I will be setting up as a "MythTV" using this card so check back here sometime and check out the post pertaining to that!

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