AVerMedia AVerTV GO 007 FM

Quick start

The *latest revision*(PCI ID 1461:f31f) of the Avermedia AVerTV GO 007 FM works "out of the box" in recent kernels. Earlier revisions WILL work, but you must currently use them once on Windows with the official drivers to load the internal EEPROM, and manually specify the card type as 57 and tuner as 54. Otherwise, to prepare the card to work, type in two lines:

modprobe saa7134-oss
sox -c 2 -sw -r 32000 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp

Closer look

Using configuration tool DrakConf (drakxtv) in Mandriva Linux resulted in new line in /etc/modprobe.conf :

options saa7134 card=57 tuner=54 gbuffers=4

It seems that tuner value should be "61" instead, but it turned out this option did nothing wrong. Also commenting out this whole line has no visible effect, so I assume it may be skipped.

Command modprobe saa7134 does the job with a trace in /var/log/messages as follows:

Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.2.14 loaded
Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:05.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: found at 0000:00:05.0, rev: 208, irq: 17, latency: 32, mmio: 0xdffff800
Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: subsystem: 1461:f31f, board: Avermedia AVerTV GO 007 FM [card=57,insmod option]
Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: board init: gpio is 803c5
Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: input: saa7134 IR (Avermedia AVerTV GO as /class/input/input7
Feb 24 20:40:53 auriga kernel: tuner 0-004b: chip found @ 0x96 (saa7133[0])
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: tuner 0-004b: setting tuner address to 61
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: tuner 0-004b: tuner: type set to tda8290+75
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 00: 61 14 1f f3 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 10: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 20: ff d2 fe ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 30: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 40: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 50: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 60: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:54 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 70: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Feb 24 20:40:55 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: registered device video0 [v4l2]
Feb 24 20:40:55 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: registered device vbi0
Feb 24 20:40:55 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: registered device radio0

There's no sound yet, so the next command is modprobe saa7134-oss, and the result is:

Feb 24 20:41:44 auriga kernel: saa7134 OSS driver for DMA sound loaded
Feb 24 20:41:44 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: registered device dsp1
Feb 24 20:41:44 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]: registered device mixer1

There's also a saa7134-alsa module, but in my case it was useless, because the sound quality was much worse; modprobe saa7134-alsa gives the following output:

Feb 24 20:05:44 auriga kernel: saa7134 ALSA driver for DMA sound loaded
Feb 24 20:05:44 auriga kernel: saa7133[0]/alsa: saa7133[0] at 0xdffff800 irq 17 registered as card -1

It may work better some day, but for now I had to stick to saa7134-oss module. In a matter of fact modprobe saa7134 may be totally skipped, because while probing for saa7134-oss or saa7134-alsa the main module will be automatically loaded in the background.

The hardware is now perfectly ready, but although you can watch TV, the sound is still not there. As found in AVerMedia Cardbus E500 instructions I did the simple trick, which dumps the sound from TV card (/dev/dsp1) to the real sound card (/dev/dsp):

sox -c 2 -sw -r 32000 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp

See also saa7134-alsa.

Now everything is in place and I can do basic things - watch and listen TV channels.

Configuring for Revision PCI ID 1461:f31d

Place the following in /etc/modprobe.conf(or /etc/modprobe.d/options, or wherever your distribution keeps module parameters):

options saa7134 gbuffers=2 card=57 tuner=54

Note that you may wish to change gbuffers to a larger value, such as 8, or even 32. I'm not sure how this affects latency, though it may reduce dropped frames on heavily loaded systems...

Output from /var/log/messages(this may be useful if you wish to try to load the EEPROM manually if you don't have a Windows machine available!):

Mar 17 02:46:34 gaia kernel: [  801.319037] saa7134 ALSA driver for DMA sound unloaded
Mar 17 02:46:49 gaia kernel: [  816.608799] saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.2.14 loaded
Mar 17 02:46:49 gaia kernel: [  816.610412] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:05:06.0[A] -> Link [APC1] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 74
Mar 17 02:46:49 gaia kernel: [  816.610421] saa7133[0]: found at 0000:05:06.0, rev: 209, irq: 74, latency: 32, mmio: 0xd0000000
Mar 17 02:46:49 gaia kernel: [  816.610431] saa7133[0]: subsystem: 1461:f31d, board: Avermedia AVerTV GO 007 FM [card=57,insmod option]
Mar 17 02:46:49 gaia kernel: [  816.611004] saa7133[0]: board init: gpio is 8068d
Mar 17 02:46:49 gaia kernel: [  816.659771] input: saa7134 IR (Avermedia AVerTV GO as /class/input/input4
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  816.892973] tuner 2-004b: chip found @ 0x96 (saa7133[0])
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  816.940965] tuner 2-004b: setting tuner address to 61
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  816.981032] tuner 2-004b: type set to tda8290+75a
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084942] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 00: 61 14 1d f3 ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084948] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 10: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084954] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 20: ff d2 fe ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084960] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 30: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084965] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 40: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084971] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 50: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084976] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 60: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:50 gaia kernel: [  817.084982] saa7133[0]: i2c eeprom 70: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff
Mar 17 02:46:52 gaia kernel: [  819.642929] saa7133[0]: registered device video0 [v4l2]
Mar 17 02:46:52 gaia kernel: [  819.643478] saa7133[0]: registered device vbi0
Mar 17 02:46:52 gaia kernel: [  819.643963] saa7133[0]: registered device radio0
Mar 17 02:46:53 gaia kernel: [  819.702393] saa7134 ALSA driver for DMA sound loaded
Mar 17 02:46:53 gaia kernel: [  819.702623] saa7133[0]/alsa: saa7133[0] at 0xd0000000 irq 74 registered as card -1

MythTV and AC '97 Issues (SBLive)

With the equivalent Bona/Mentor TV-PCI card connected via the line input of a Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! Platinum sound card, I had some issues getting MythTV to capture the audio. The tvtime application worked flawlessly without any of these procedures. I couldn't get the audio working for MythTV with the saa7134-alsa module and the sox workarounds.

On every boot-up, the card must be unmuted and the automute turned off. Some people had the same problems in similar reports for the Avermedia card. Consider putting the following on a boot-up script.

v4lctl setattr automute off
v4lctl setattr mute off

For the Sound Blaster Live card, the AC '97 volume playback control (through a card mixer, such as alsamixer) is to be completely put to 0 (zero), or else you hear the audio being played back twice (loopback). The AC '97 volume capture control should be put as high as possible. This information can be found in the Linux kernel documentation in the Documentation/sound/alsa/SB-Live-mixer.txt file.

I also had issues with the audio captured with MythTV because I was hear crackling noises constantly. The reason was how loaded the system was, so I reduced the capture resolution and quality, as put audio at 32kHz.

Discussion on MythTVtalk

Other Equivalent Cards

* Bona / Mentor TV-PCI