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) Beside DVB-T (worked automagically in Fedora Core 4), this Terratec card also has an S-Video/Composite (adapter included) input connector: unfortunately, it does not work. There is a patch on the video4linux mailing list which makes those inputs selectable, but result is only a b/w image in S-Video mode, no image in Composite mode.

(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]

---

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.