KWorld ATSC 115

Front view of ATSC 115

An ATSC PCI card from KWorld.

The ATSC 115 is supported under Linux.

Overview/Features

This device, which is also known as the KWorld PlusTV HD PCI-115, is physically identical to the earlier released KWorld ATSC 110. The only differences between the ATSC 115 and ATSC 110 appear to be:

• The ATSC 115 has a new PCI subsystem ID ... this has some ramifications for getting the ATSC 115 to work straight out of the box (see below for further details).
• The ATSC 115 card also ships with a different remote than the ATSC 110; it is currently unknown if the same keycodes are used.
• The ATSC 115 has a shiny new label on the tuner module which graphically displays the word "PlusTV", reflecting the name branding that KWorld has recently begun applying to their products
• The ATSC 115 comes with new software (ArcSoft) for Windows based OS Platforms ... which probably won't matter to many Linux users

Components Used

• Philips TUV1236D NIM
  • Infineon TUA6034 (tuner)
  • Philips TDA9887 (analog IF demodulator)
  • ATI Nxt2004 (digital demodulator for 8VSB & 256/64-QAM)
• Philips SAA7135 (A/V decoder & PCI bridge)
• ? KS007 (remote control)

Identification

The ATSC 115 has a PCI subsystem ID of 17de:7352, as shown in the output of lspci -vvnn :

02:09.0 0480: 1131:7133 (rev d1)
        Subsystem: 17de:7352
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 64 (63750ns min, 63750ns max)
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16
        Region 0: Memory at fcfdf800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=3 PME-

Information has been submitted to the Linux PCI Repository that will provide exact identification, but it has not yet been applied. Once it is accepted, you will need to update your PCIID database in order to gain this greater level of clarity.

Making it Work

Firmware

This card requires a firmware file (dvb-fe-nxt2004.fw¹) for the demodulator, which can be obtained using the get_dvb_firmware perl script included in the kernel sources:

# cd /[kernel source directory]/Documentation/dvb/
# perl get_dvb_firmware nxt2004

Once the download is complete, place a copy of the firmware file in your /lib/firmware directory. (This directory may differ with some distros; consult your distro's documentation for the appropriate location).

Note 1: All devices that use the Nxt2004 demodulator are currently using a firmware version from the AVerMedia AVerTVHD MCE A180. As the firmware's code has not been discerned, it is unclear whether other firmware for the Nxt2004 (i.e. those provided by other devices) would have any affect on reception performance.

Drivers

Although physically identical to the earlier ATSC 110 card, consequent to the fact that the ATSC 115 has a slightly different PCI subsystem ID (stored in the card's eeprom), the ATSC 115 was detected as a generic saa7134 card by the saa7134 driver. However, if you load the saa7134 module with the "card=90" parameter, the card will be set up exactly the same as a ATSC 110.

A patch which added the ATSC 115's subsystem ID to the necessary spots in the drivers (thereby allowing the device to be automagically detected) was submitted to LinuxTV (in Oct '07). Users who have installed recent versions of the LinuxTV v4l-dvb drivers, or who are using 2.6.24 release candidate kernels, will benefit from that patch's inclusion and, thus, should now find that the device is detected and setup appropriately as the KWorld ATSC110/115.

Sample kernel output

As mentioned above, older un-patched driver sets will only detect the device as a generic saa7134 card.

With newer driver sets, the card should be auto-recognized, and the relevant output from dmesg should be similar to:

saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.2.14 loaded
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:09.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
saa7133[0]: found at 0000:00:09.0, rev: 240, irq: 177, latency: 32, mmio: 0xfa021000
saa7133[0]: subsystem: 17de:7352, board: Kworld ATSC110/115 [card=90,autodetected]
saa7133[0]: board init: gpio is 100
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 00: de 17 50 73 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 10: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 20: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff 
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 30: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 40: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 50: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 60: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 70: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
tuner 0-0061: chip found @ 0xc2 (saa7133[0])
tuner 0-0061: type set to 68 (Philips TUV1236D ATSC/NTSC dual in)
saa7133[0]: registered device video0 [v4l2]
saa7133[0]: registered device vbi0

With the firmware properly loaded, the relevant output from dmesg should be similar to:

nxt200x: NXT2004 Detected
DVB: registering new adapter (saa7133[0]).
DVB: registering frontend 0 (Nextwave NXT200X VSB/QAM frontend)...

Remote control support

The ATSC 115 comes with a different remote controller then the older ATSC 110 device. Whether or not that makes a difference is not known.

As it stands, remote control support for the ATSC 110 has not been finalized (see that device's article for further details).

External Links

• KWorld product page