ASUS My Cinema-U3100 Mini

This is my newbie contribution to the ASUS My Cinema U3100 Mini (USB stick). It is only to display a few basic stuff, how I got this thing partially working, maybe someone can improve the page later with more details. I tested it on Debian wheezy and jessie distribution and the module seems to be integrated into the Debian stock kernel, so I didn't have to recompile the kernel.

First you need to install proper non-free "dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw" firmware. You need to have the Debian non-free depository enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list . After updating the sources, with "apt-get update" install the package "firmware-linux-nonfree".

I plug in the stick and dmesg shows this information:

# dmesg
usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci_hcd
usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=0b05, idProduct=173f
usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 1-3: Product: ASUS DVBT Tuner
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: ASUSTeK
usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 8500500875
dvb-usb: found a 'ASUS My Cinema U3100 Mini DVBT Tuner' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw'
dib0700: firmware started successfully.
dvb-usb: found a 'ASUS My Cinema U3100 Mini DVBT Tuner' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (ASUS My Cinema U3100 Mini DVBT Tuner)
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (DiBcom 7000PC)...
DiB0070: successfully identified
Registered IR keymap rc-dib0700-rc5
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/rc/rc3/input14
rc3: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-3/rc/rc3
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 50 msecs.
dvb-usb: ASUS My Cinema U3100 Mini DVBT Tuner successfully initialized and connected.

At this point replugging the USB stick into computer will have the green light enabled.

I had problems using (dvb)scan, but w_scan works. I used it to create the channels.conf file for MPlayer. It is important that you add the -M parameter otherwise you will receive default w_scan init strings, which will not work for MPlayer. Creating such config file works also for VLC player.

# w_scan -ft -M >> ~/.mplayer/channels.conf

Then to start MPlayer just type:

# mplayer dvb://

At this point I get some partial reception with errors, I am not sure either because of bad reception (weak signal/antenna) or due to some bugs, which I wasn't able to resolve yet. I have noticed that indoor antenna will give some errors, but trying the reception outside will give a much better signal with less errors, you can also spot that cubes in the picture will go away, when there is better reception and the picture becomes more clear. Alternativelly I tried also using VLC software which gives me better results than using MPlayer, where I receive stream with sound/partial image, but I get lots of cubes so the picture isn't clear there. If you get scrambled reception with framedrop it might be because of the weak signal (if you are trying it indoors). So test it somewhere outside or on the balcony to see if this is the issue for the bad quality video. This was the problem in my case, even having opened balcony doors or windows stenghtens the signal.