Saa7162 devices

Introduction

In March 2005, Philips Semiconductors announced "the industry's first integrated PCI Express dual global video and stereo decoder for digital home PC desktops and notebooks" (press release). The new analog decoder chip, the saa7162, uses the increased bandwidth of the PCI Express bus to capture to two simultaneous analog channels of live tv or baseband video (cf. product flyer) or up to four independent simultaneous digital TV streams (cf. Philips/NXP SAA7162 product brief).

In Oct 2006, NXP created a saa7162 product page that includes, amongst other information, an 18 page "preliminary short data sheet" for download: SAA7162 Product Description.

The PCI-SIG lists SAA7162 (dual A/V decoder) and SAA7160/SAA7161 (multimedia A/V bridge) as PCIe devices.

Supported Cards

Currently there is no Linux driver for the saa7162, and hence no support for PCIe cards bearing the sa7162.

Interestingly, according to the information outlined in Philips' reference design, Philips themselves have produced a Linux driver. But obtaining this driver from Philips has proven to be another matter altogether. As of Dec 27 2006, attempts by Richard Dale (outlined here) to acquire the Philips produced saa7162 Linux driver, or for further information from NXP needed in order to independently develop a driver, have proven to be futile. Hopefully this can be resolved.

Examples of saa7162 Based Cards

DNTV PCI Express cards

• DNTV Live! Dual Hybrid PCI Express (a rebadge of the FlyTV Express X1 MST-T2A2EX)
• DNTV Live! QuattroS PCI Express

For now, to get the low-level driver, one need to "contact local NXP representative to arrange the non disclosure agreement".

FlyTV Express cards

• FlyTV Express X1

Philips PCV290

Dual DVB-T and Dual DVB-S Reference Design

Uses 2xTDA8263 DVB-S Tuner, 1 x TDA10093 Dual Channel DVB-S channel decoder, 2xTDA8275A DVB-T Tuner, 2xTDA10046A DVB-T channel decoder, 1xSAA7162E TV video/audio decoder/PCI express interface)

KWorld PCI Express Hybrid

An early example of a card that uses the saa7162 decoder chip is this hybrid card, which also supports Intel's serial digital video out (SDVO):

See product page.

(Someone needs to tell them it's hybrid, not hybird!)

ViXS Diamond Reference Design

In August 2005, ViXS Systems announced the Diamond PCI Express TV tuner reference design. The design provides for analog and hybrid (analog/digital) video processing, combining ViXS' XCode II-L Dual MPEG Encoder with Philips' SAA7162 Dual Video Decoder and Philips' TV tuner (press release).