Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-950Q

A hybrid ATSC USB 2.0 device by Hauppauge.

The digital side of the device is supported under Linux since kernel 2.6.26. Analog support was merged into the mainline v4l-dvb tree on March 18, 2009.

Note: This device, the HVR-950Q, is significantly different from the older HVR-950 model, so please be sure to differentiate between the two. For information on the older model, see the WinTV-HVR-950 article.

Overview/Features

The device supports NTSC, 8-VSB and QAM.

Components Used

• Xceive XC5000 (tuner and analog demodulator)
• Auvitek AU8522 (A/V decoder analog demodulator [not used], and digital demodulator)
• Auvitek AU0828 (USB bridge)

Identification

Output of lsusb -v:

Making it Work

Firmware

In order to use the LinuxTV driver, you need to download and install the firmware for the xc5000.

Note: The firmware is now bundled with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), so users of that distro/version and newer do not need the following steps.

 wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/xc5000/HVR-12x0-14x0-17x0_1_25_25271_WHQL.zip
 wget http://www.steventoth.net/linux/xc5000/extract.sh
 sh extract.sh
 cp dvb-fe-xc5000-1.1.fw /lib/firmware

Note: Though the usual directory location in which the firmware file is placed is /lib/firmware, this may differ in the case of some distros; consult your distro's documentation for the appropriate location.

The firmware will be added lazily (on-demand) when you first use the driver.

Drivers

The xc5000 driver needed for this WinTV-HVR-950Q is already part of the latest Linux kernel (part of v4l-dvb drivers).

Analog support was merged into the mainline v4l-dvb tree on March 18, 2009.

Note: the HVR-950Q has known issues with MythTV that prevent it from working. These are being actively worked by the 950q maintainer (Devin Heitmueller). Keep an eye on the KernelLabs blog for status updates: KernelLabs Blog

Sample Kernel Output

After you plug-in the device on a USB 2.0 port (it won't work with a USB 1.1) and use the driver for the first time (eg, by scanning channels), you may see something like this on dmesg:

usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
usb 1-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
au0828: i2c bus registered
tveeprom 0-0050: Hauppauge model 72001, rev B3F0, serial# 5280879
tveeprom 0-0050: MAC address is 00-0D-FE-XX-XX-XX
tveeprom 0-0050: tuner model is Xceive XC5000 (idx 150, type 4)
tveeprom 0-0050: TV standards NTSC(M) ATSC/DVB Digital (eeprom 0x88)
tveeprom 0-0050: audio processor is AU8522 (idx 44)
tveeprom 0-0050: decoder processor is AU8522 (idx 42)
tveeprom 0-0050: has no radio, has IR receiver, has no IR transmitter
hauppauge_eeprom: hauppauge eeprom: model=72001
xc5000 0-0061: creating new instance
xc5000: Successfully identified at address 0x61
xc5000: Firmware has not been loaded previously
DVB: registering new adapter (au0828)
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Auvitek AU8522 QAM/8VSB Frontend)...
Registered device AU0828 [Hauppauge HVR950Q]
usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=2040, idProduct=7200
usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=10
usb 1-3: Product: WinTV HVR-950
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: Hauppauge
usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 000000000

After an application open the device the first time, the module will load the firmware. You will see:

xc5000: waiting for firmware upload (dvb-fe-xc5000-1.1.fw)...
i2c-adapter i2c-2: firmware: requesting dvb-fe-xc5000-1.1.fw
xc5000: firmware read 12332 bytes.
xc5000: firmware upload

External Links

Hauppauge 950Q product page