Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-T-500

WinTV-Nova-T-500

This is a dual tuner DVB-T PCI card from Hauppauge. In actuality, the receivers are USB devices, but there aren't any USB plugs or sockets involved -- the single PCI card itself sports on board dual USB based receivers that interface with a host USB 2.0 controller. (?? This unique design is also known as "Bristol" ??).

As it requires the dib0700 driver, native support for this card requires Linux 2.6.19 or higher.

Component Overview

• 2x Microtune MT2060 tuner
• 2x DiB3000P Dibcomm DVB-T demodulator & USB controller
• 1x VIA VT8xxx host USB 2.0 controller (USB-to-PCI)
• A single Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) is present for both channels, but needs to be manually activated (see below).

Some further technical details may be found in DiBcom USB2.0 DVB-T devices (based on the DiB0700)

You will find the model name and number on the box, under the bar code. Known to work cards have the following:

• WinTV-NOVA-T-500 model 289 SL-289-V2.0-UK
• List incomplete, please add

WinTV-NOVA-TD-500

Note: This is an unsupported revision!

Warning! WinTV-Nova-TD-500

This card appears to have been released, in low volumes, only in the UK, but unfortunately it seems that Hauppauge is shipping the Diversity card in regular NOVA-T-500 boxes!

This newer revision can be distinguished by:
On the box:

• You will find the model name and number under the bar code:
  • WinTV-NOVA-T-500 model 289 SL-289-V2.1-UK.
  • (List incomplete, please add)
• The box also has a sticker stating it is the diversity option and only suitable for intel cards. "When i put it in my athlon based XP box it blue screened as soon as i tried to load the drivers. I brought mine from Amazon.co.uk and there was no mention that this card was any different or wouldn't work with non-intel processors."

On the card:

• it is labeled with the 'Diversity' feature stickers and the actual model number on the printed circuit board is NOVA-TD-500 (WinTV-NOVA-TD-500 DVB-T 68109 LF rev C1B5)
• the card has two aerial connectors.
• it uses a DiB0710 host USB controller (USB-to-PCI controller) instead of a VIA controller

The DIBcom DiB0710 controller used by this newer revision was apparently never sold for mass-production and DIBcom has end-of-life'd the chip. Furthermore, DIBcom currently do not plan on providing support for this controller. Conseqeuntly, given the low shipping volume and the limited support options, development of a Linux driver for this revision would likely be a waste of effort. [1][2]

Old WinTV-NOVA-T-500 Issues

Disconnects

Some cards suffer from a serious problem. The USB DVB-T tuners seem to occasionally "disconnect" and reconnect during a tuning operation. In Linux 2.6.21 and earlier, this causes the kernel to oops requiring a reboot. With an old series of patches 1 2 3 (not needed anymore) then you won't get a kernel oops - instead, your Linux DVB application will just stop working. Exiting and restarting your application (more accurately, closing all the LinuxDVB devices and then waiting a second) should make everything work again.

Someone has 2 of these, which are different revisions of the board. This one is rock solid:

$ lspci
00:13.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61)
00:13.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61)
00:13.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63)

This one has the random USB disconnects problem:

$ lspci
00:13.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 62)
00:13.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 62)
00:13.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 65)

Note that USB controller chip is a different revision number.

There are now patches that should fix this. See below.

Scanning

Scanning (or tuning with any AUTO parameters) is known to be broken in kernel 2.6.20, and probably earlier kernels too. Fixed in kernel 2.6.21; try [this patch] for older kernels.

current Status

All issues have been resolved with new code and a new firmware in the current v4l-dvb tree.

Making it work

Firmware

You will need the dvb-usb-dib0700-03-pre1.fw firmware file in

/lib/firmware

or the relevant place for your distribution.

Get, compile and install the v4l-dvb tree

Status on August 2, 2007

Thanks for work by Patrick Boettcher, Olivier Danet, Janne Grunau, Jose Alberto Reguero and probably others.

All fixes have been merged into the current tree.

Just use Mercurial by following the How_to_install_DVB_device_drivers instructions.

Note: This patch still didn't make it into the tree, and has not received feedback after the latest merges. Use at your own risks if you feel you need it.

     * MT1060_IF1_freq_set.diff - 2.3K
             * Sets the MT2060 IF1 frequency according to the calibration values stored in the EEPROM. It is supposed to enhance the signal quality
             * Olivier Danet
             * Post: http://linuxtv.org/pipermail/linux-dvb/2006-December/014926.html

Please report on the list.

On-board amplifier

You may want/need to turn on the on-board amplifier:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/options

Add:

options dvb-usb-dib0700 force_lna_activation=1

Sample kernel output

[   30.965645] dib0700: loaded with support for 5 different device-types
[   30.965925] dvb-usb: found a 'Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
[   31.008899] dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-dib0700-03-pre1.fw'
[   31.015377] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1b.0[A] -> GSI 22 (level, low) -> IRQ 22
[   31.016189] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1b.0 to 64
[   31.206081] dib0700: firmware started successfully.
[   31.265279] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[   31.711176] dvb-usb: found a 'Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T' in warm state.
[   31.711222] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[   31.711325] DVB: registering new adapter (Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T)
[   31.831535] DVB: registering frontend 0 (DiBcom 3000MC/P)...
[   31.854890] MT2060: successfully identified (IF1 = 1220)
[   32.388673] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[   32.388853] DVB: registering new adapter (Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T)
[   32.394293] DVB: registering frontend 1 (DiBcom 3000MC/P)...
[   32.398790] MT2060: successfully identified (IF1 = 1220)
[   32.959607] input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /class/input/input4
[   32.959633] dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 150 msecs.
[   32.959637] dvb-usb: Hauppauge Nova-T 500 Dual DVB-T successfully initialized and connected.
[   32.959657] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_dib0700

Remote control

Grey top, black bottom, 45 buttons, snowboard shape.

It gives output into

/dev/input/eventX

where X is variable and depends on your system.

LIRC will use it without needing a special kernel module. use the following driver:

dev/input

Here is a proper lircd.conf file. (to be linked in soon, missing the |Power" button code)

External Links

• Hauppauge UK product page
• A slightly dated user page, but it may still be useful for some