Sony PlayTV dual tuner DVB-T

Sony PlayTV

The Sony PlayTV is a USB 2.0 device containing dual DVB-T tuners. It is sold without a remote, as an accessory for the Playstation 3.

It is supported under Linux.

Overview

This device, vendor id 0x1415, product id 0x0003, is based around the DiBcom STK7070PD reference design and has a STK7070PD frontend and two DIB7070p tuners.

It has two distinct advantages over its sibling devices:

• the use of a single external antenna connected, which is internally used to drive both tuners, rather than requiring an external splitter
• its packaging in a well designed and sufficiently shielded external casing that reduces any risk of electromagnetic interference

See Wikipedia [1] for more info on the device itself.

Making it Work

Linux

Firmware

You will need the dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw firmware file in /lib/firmware or the relevant place for your distribution.

Drivers

It requires the dib0700 driver, updated to include support for this variant of the reference design.

Supported in kernel since 2.6.30

Support for 2.6.28 is available via the original patch for the 2.6.28.4 kernel or from the v4l-dvb tree since changeset 10824 by using Mercurial and following the How to Obtain, Build and Install V4L-DVB Device Drivers instructions.

A patch has also been generated against the 2.6.28-11 kernel package in Ubuntu jaunty and a bug raised for its addition to that release as a backport here.

Windows

Support in Windows is available by patching the .inf file of either the 32-bit or 64-bit Pinnacle_PCTV_Dual_DVB-T_Diversity_Stick_(2001e) drivers, to add the additional 0x1415/0x0003 ids.

User Experiences

Forget about scandvb, as it won't find any channel, failing every tune.

Prefer w_scan (look for your country code with w_scan -c ? ):

[#] w_scan -c FR -X > channels.conf
w_scan version 20140118 (compiled for DVB API 5.10)
using settings for FRANCE
DVB aerial
DVB-T FR
scan type TERRESTRIAL, channellist 5
output format czap/tzap/szap/xine
output charset 'UTF-8', use -C <charset> to override
Info: using DVB adapter auto detection.
	/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0 -> TERRESTRIAL "DiBcom 7000PC": good :-)
	/dev/dvb/adapter1/frontend0 -> TERRESTRIAL "DiBcom 7000PC": good :-)
Using TERRESTRIAL frontend (adapter /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0)
-_-_-_-_ Getting frontend capabilities-_-_-_-_ 
Using DVB API 5.a
frontend 'DiBcom 7000PC' supports
INVERSION_AUTO
QAM_AUTO
TRANSMISSION_MODE_AUTO
GUARD_INTERVAL_AUTO
HIERARCHY_AUTO
FEC_AUTO
FREQ (45.00MHz ... 860.00MHz)
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ 
Scanning 8MHz frequencies...
474000: (time: 00:00) 
[…]

Can take more than 30 minutes to finish.

Also, see the talk page

References

Useful information is available from the pages of these similar/identical devices:

• Hauppauge_WinTV-NOVA-TD-Stick
• TerraTec_Cinergy_DT_USB_XS_Diversity
• Pinnacle_PCTV_Dual_DVB-T_Diversity_Stick_(2001e)