TerraTec Cinergy 1400 DVB-T

I'd like to tell you the following experiences I have made with Cinergy 1400 DVB-T, which is a PCI card.

I got it working on Mandrake 10.1 with a 2.6.14 kernel configured. 2.6.12 and the standard 2.6.8 kernel did not work. I configured the kernel with make oldconfig and the options under Device Drivers -> Multimedia -> Video4Linux -> Connexant 2388 and DVB support for cx2388x based cards. After booting I made a "modprobe cx88-dvb", which is the only kernel module to be started. I did not manage to get it loaded from /etc/modules during boot.

With this module loaded, I had the device nodes created under /dev/dvb/adapter0. Kaffeine 0.7.1 then recognized the dvb card and presented me a configure dialog after starting, in which I was able to tell kaffeine to use a "de-Koeln-Bonn" setting (for DVB in Cologne).

In the menu "DVB" I chose "Channels" and made a "Start scan". Kaffeine finds the channels itself, so I did not need to find a channels.conf or something.

Afterwards I was able to switch channels by menu "DVB" and (great) - without doing anything else - by infrared, which comes with the card. In "Configuring Shortcuts" I was able to configure some other actions for the infrared, but kaffeine does not recognize all buttons.

Pro:

• Very good and fluent picture, good sound, with kaffeine (on a 1GHz Athlon machine)
• Very quick zapping with kaffeine
• Timeshifting works without trouble
• Recording (instantly and timed) works with kaffeine
• OSD working

Contra:

• I need kernel 2.6.14, which is awfully slow booting (boot time increased from 1 minute to 10)
• Infrared only partly supported. I wonder if there are people out there understanding lirc...
• No teletext
• Antenna-Out not working

(March 27, 2006; updated September 1, 2007) Beside DVB-T (worked automagically in Fedora Core 4), this Terratec card also has an S-Video/Composite (adapter included) input connector: to make them work, a recent version of v4l2 is needed. There are two patches on the video4linux mailing list which make those inputs selectable, then the viewer application should be told to use the appropriate input (e.g. to use composite input in mplayer 1.0rc1 I use

 mplayer -tv driver=v4l2:normid=2:input=1:brightness=60:hue=50 tv://

(June 2, 2006) The infrared remote works perfectly. The needed configuration file for lirc should be available soon in the official place [1], for the time being it can be downloaded from [2]

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Cinergy 1400: The Signature DVB-T details are:

The main Conexant chip is "Conexant/Broadcast".

lspci reveals: (linux-2.6.12)

   0000:00:13.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP (rev 05)
   0000:00:13.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8802 (rev 05)

0000:00:13.0

   Multimedia video controller: Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP (rev 05)
   Subsystem: TERRATEC Electronic GmbH: Unknown device 1166
   Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 9
   Memory at d5000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
   Capabilities: [44] Vital Product Data

0000:00:13.2

       Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8802 (rev 05)
       Subsystem: TERRATEC Electronic GmbH: Unknown device 1166
       Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 9
       Memory at d4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
       Capabilities: [4c] Power Management version 2

the final goal of the kernel module magic is to get an entry in /dev/dvb

uname -r

2.6.14.2

cat /var/log/messages

Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx2388x v4l2 driver version 0.0.5 loaded
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0a.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: CORE cx88[0]: subsystem: 153b:1166, board: Conexant DVB-T reference design [card=19,insmod option]
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: TV tuner 4 at 0x1fe, Radio tuner -1 at 0x1fe
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx88[0]/0: found at 0000:00:0a.0, rev: 5, irq: 20, latency: 32, mmio: 0xea000000
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx88[0]/0: registered device video0 [v4l2]
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx88[0]/0: registered device vbi0
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx2388x dvb driver version 0.0.5 loaded
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0a.2[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx88[0]/2: found at 0000:00:0a.2, rev: 5, irq: 20, latency: 32, mmio: 0xeb000000
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx88[0]/2: cx2388x based dvb card
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: DVB: registering new adapter (cx88[0]).
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: DVB: registering frontend 0 (Conexant CX22702 DVB-T)...
Nov 15 03:05:05 localhost kernel: cx2388x blackbird driver version 0.0.5 loaded

(with modprobe cx88xx card=19, also works with autodetect, card=30)

lsmod | grep dvb

cx8802                 12420  2 cx88_blackbird,cx88_dvb
mt352                   7044  1 cx88_dvb
or51132                10244  1 cx88_dvb
video_buf_dvb           6724  1 cx88_dvb
dvb_core               86056  1 video_buf_dvb
lgdt330x                8348  1 cx88_dvb
cx22702                 6788  1 cx88_dvb
dvb_pll                 9476  3 cx88_dvb,or51132,cx22702
cx88xx                 59936  4 cx88_blackbird,cx88_dvb,cx8802,cx8800
video_buf              22340  6 cx88_blackbird,cx88_dvb,cx8802,video_buf_dvb,cx8800,cx88xx
i2c_core               23056  8 cx88_dvb,mt352,or51132,lgdt330x,cx22702,cx88xx,i2c_algo_bit,tveeprom

cx88_dvb should generate the entries in /dev/dvb/*. you have to assure the module gets compiled in the kernel:

/usr/src/linux# make menuconfig

Multimedia devices  ---> Video For Linux  --->
<M> Conexant 2388x (bt878 successor) support
<M>   DVB Support for cx2388x based TV cards

After a kernel recompile you should be able to continue with f.e. kaffeine.