Saa7146 devices

Saa7146 devices are collectively those PCI cards that are based upon the Philips SAA7146 chip, and which are supported under Linux by the SAA7146 driver package (details outlined below).

SAA7146 Driver Package Information

In contrast to the drivers for other popular PCI interface chipsets, such as the bttv and saa7134 kernel driver modules, there is no unified saa7146 driver. Instead, there is a driver core where so-called extension can be hooked on. The driver core is split up into non-video (pci core, i2c) and video parts.

The most popular extension is "ttpci" (budget, budget-ci, etc) for the popular Technotrend/Siemens/Hauppauge DVB cards.

Installation

The saa7146 driver package is part of the 2.6 kernel series. If you have a recent distribution, you already have the drivers for free.

The driver's author has a dedicated webpage with some further information.

Supported SAA7146 based cards

As explained above, you don't see "the" saa7146 driver. Instead, you directly select the necessary extension driver for your hardware.

The following drivers use the saa7146 driver architecture:

• Multimedia eXtension Board' by Siemens-Nixdorf
• 'Orion' and 'Gemini' frame grabber cards by Hexium
• CM7326 PC/104-plus frame grabber' by Real Time Devices USA, Inc. (not included in 2.6 yet)
• TechniSat Mediafocus II ... not included in kernel; see here for information regarding a Mediafocus II Linux driver
• Various DVB boards with and without on-board MPEG decoder following the Technotrend/Siemens/Hauppauge design

Have a look at the webpage mentioned above for further information about the individual drivers.