Philips TUV1236D

The Philips TUV1236D is a NIM featuring dual RF inputs and containing an:

Infineon TUA6034 (RF tuner)
Philips TDA9887 (analog IF demodulator)
ATI Nxt2004 (digital demodulator for 8VSB & 256/64-QAM)

Devices known to be using the TUV1236D

The TUV1236D is found on several ATSC PCI cards, including the:

RF Input Selection

The dvb-pll driver now has a module loading option, called "input", that allows the user to select which RF input, on devices possessing a tuner module with dual RF inputs (such as the TUV1236D NIM found on cards like the ATI HDTV Wonder etc.), will be used for digital transmission sources.

It is currently available in the following mercurial tree: http://linuxtv.org/hg/~mkrufky/dvb-pll. Build & install the new drivers as per the usual instructions (outlined here).

After installation of the new drivers, you can view the module loading options for dvb-pll with:

/sbin/modinfo dvb-pll

dvb-pll's "input" Module Loading Option

The newly added "input" option uses the following syntax:

input=card 1 value,card 2 value,....,card n value

where a card's value is either

0 for autoselection of the appropriate RF input .... this is the default option

1 for selection of RF input #1

2 for selection of RF input #2

Also added is a module option to force dvb-pll to use a dvb_pll_desc other than the one picked by default. This is useful in some cases, where the vendor may release an alternate revision of the hardware using a different tuner, but without changing the pci subsystem / usb device ids. This option should be used for debugging purposes, ONLY.

Note 1: Unfortunately, this module loading option does not allow for REVERSING the input selection -- "input= " will only force the module to use one or the other RF inputs in digital mode. If anybody has some ideas as to how to reverse the default selection in a clean way, I am open to suggestions.

Note 2: Envoking the input option of the dvb-pll module requires that you set the RF input for ALL cards in your system

Note 3: If you have multiple cards in the system, using dvb-pll module's "debug=1" loading option will show you the instance ID of the tuner module in your system logs. This is helpful when trying to determine the order of the input option array to pass via modprobe. For example, if you have used the debug=1 option, then in dmesg you should see something like this

[ 3023.695903] dvb-pll[0] 0-0061: id# 11 (LG TDVS-H06xF) attached, autodetected

for each tuner module in you system.

Usage Overview:

First load the dvb-pll module via:

modprobe dvb-pll [options]

where options includes the "input" feature discussed above and any other appropriate setting you wish to utilise with dvb-pll.

Next, you will have to modprobe the dvb driver module for the decoder/bridge IC used by your card: For example:

modprobe cx88-dvb -or- modprobe saa7134-dvb

Some Practical Examples:

(a) If you have only one card in the system, you may do:

modprobe dvb-pll input=1

then, modprobe the appropriate decoder module used by your card. For example, if you were using the ATI HDTV Wonder, then you would

modprobe cx88-dvb

After these steps, your card will use RF input #1 regardless of whether you are using VSB or QAM.

(b) If you have multiple DVB cards installed in your computer system:
Suppose that the second DVB card in the system has dual RF inputs (such as an ATSC11[0/5] or HDTV Wonder). Then, to specify that the dvb-pll module should autoselect the input used for the first (single RF input) DVB card, and use RF input #2 for the second (dual RF input) DVB card (i.e. the ATSC11[0/5] or HDTV Wonder), do:

modprobe dvb-pll input=0,2

or alternatively, one may wish to add the debug option:

modprobe dvb-pll input=0,2 debug=1

Then modprobe the appropriate decoder module(s) used by your cards.