FF Rev. 2.1 DVB-S Cards
A, so called, "full-featured", revision 2.1, DVB-S PCI card.
Linux Support for these cards is quite stable.
Overview/Features
Originally derived from the old Siemens DVB-C card design. The Rev. 2.2 is Sold by:
- Hauppauge as the WinTV-NEXUS-S.
The, so called, "full-featured" cards look quite old-fashioned now, but nonetheless, they have worked reliably for a long time and have been the base for Projects like VDR. However, a major drawback of the "full-featured" card design is the low maximum Bus Bandwidth limit inherent to the AV711x, and which effectively means that, because of this, HDTV receiption or raw MPEG-2 Transport Stream access is not possible. Since even MPEG-2 decoders implemented in software perform well on HDTV sources when run on modern PC systems, there is usually no need for cards with onboard MPEG-2 Decoder today. An exception may be special software that relies on proprietary card features like VDR (although, even in that case, you can also use the VDR Software Decoder Plugin which effectively allows you to use any card you want with VDR).
Components Used
- Over time these cards have used many different demodulators and tuner modules; some examples include the STV0299 and the TDA8083.
- SAA7146 PCI bridge
- AV711x MPEG-2 Decoder.
Making it Work
A Firmware is required and available for download on http://www.linuxtv.org/.
(stv0299/ALPS BSRU6(tsa5059) OR ves1893/ALPS BSRV2(sp5659))
features: decoder, partialts
card driver: dvb-ttpci
interface: PCI
PCI device id: 1131:7146
PCI subsystem id: 13c2:0003
Bridge: Philips SAA7146A
audio DAC: Texas Instruments TLC320AD80C
frontend possibility 1:
tin box: ALPS BSRU6
frontend driver: stv0299
demodulator location: tin box
demodulator: ST stv0299b @0x68
PLL: Philips tsa5059 @0x61
frontend possibility 2:
tin box: ALPS BSRV2
frontend driver: ves1x93
demodulator location: tin box
demodulator: ves1893 @0x08
PLL: Mitel sp5659 @0x61
Notes: This card has only one frontend - but there are two possibilities
This card has the same PCI ID as the other rev2.X DVB-S cards