Hercules Smart TV Satellite

Front view

Rear view

A DVB-S PCI card by Hercules.

It is supported under Linux.

Overview/Feature

This card is a clone of Twinhan VP-1030A card.

Connectors:

• Sat input
• CI connector for CAM module
• Internal 8 pins connector (unknown purpose. Anyone knows ?)
• Internal sat output

Making it Work

Stable kernel

The card works perfectly in FTA mode with 2.6.7 or later kernel. De-scrambling is not supported. With a 2.6.19 and higher kernel, De-scrambling also works.

In development

De-scrambling support is provided by the experimental dst_ca module. (on 2.6.19 it seems not to be experimental anymore) This driver is working but some polishing is still required. To de-scramble programs, you must have:

• Linux kernel 2.6.9 or greater
• DVB CVS
• The ca_zap program (available in dvb CVS)

Required modules

Add dvb-bt8xx in your /etc/modules files and add these lines in you modprobe.conf:

On older kernels (like 2.6.7 to 2.6.9):

options bttv i2c_hw=1 card=0x71 
options dst_ca   new_ca=1
install dvb-bt8xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install dvb-bt8xx; /sbin/modprobe dst

The dst_ca line and module is required only for de-scrambling (still in developement)

---

On 2.6.19 and higher: (Tested on Fedora Core 6 with vanilla kernel)

options bttv i2c_hw=1 card=0x71
options dst dst_addons=32
install bt878 /sbin/modprobe bttv; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install bt878; /sbin/modprobe dst; /sbin/modprobe dst_ca; /sbin/modprobe dvb-bt8xx

• The bttv line is required for proper recognition of this card by the bttv driver and to prevent a complete kernel lock up during boot. (On Fedora Core the last line that can be seen is 'Starting udev' if this line is not available in /etc/modprobe.conf.).
• The dst_addons option set to 32(=DST_TYPE_HAS_CA) is required to make sure the card is reset on load time of the dst-driver. if omitted, the dst driver will not be able to communicate to the card during dst_probe() on a cold boot and loading the dst (and dst_ca) driver fails. (A soft reboot will load the driver after reboot without problems.)
• The install line is to prevent an annoying race where drivers are loaded in parallel, especially on SMP systems. On FC6, without this line, the loading of the bt878 driver may fail as it is loaded in parallel with the bttv driver. This install line guarantees the proper loading order of all the drivers required for this card.

CAM tests

Feel free to update this table with other types of CAMs.

CAM tests on Hercules Smart TV Satellite

Type	HW version	Viaccess version	Application version	Results
SCM Red Viaccess	1.0	V484	1.06	Working, but random failures are observed every few hours with TPS
Aston Viaccess	?	?	?	Not working
Canal-Digitaal CAM	?	?	MythTV 0.20	Full operational on FC6, 2.6.19 and higher, less stable on 2.6.18 kernel

For the record, I've similar results with Windows XP: Aston CAM does not work, and SCM CAM sometimes decode.

But SCM CAM is working much better with experimental Linux driver than with Windows.

As the dst_ca driver is still under development, the results of this page may change.