ATI/AMD TV Wonder HD 600 USB

AMD ATI TV Wonder 600 USB

A hybrid ATSC USB 2.0 device by ATI/AMD.

Support for this device was added to the LinuxTV codebase on July 26, 2008 (hg 8492), targeted for inclusion in the 2.6.27 kernel. There is also a third party driver available (see the Drivers section below for details).

Overview/Features

This device supports ATSC (i.e. OTA Digital TV) and analog NTSC. It also has a connector on the side for an A/V cable dongle. The package includes a small dipole antenna and a short USB extension cable.

Components used:

• Xceive xc3028LCQ (tuner & analog demodulator)
• LG DT3303 (digital demodulator)
• Texas Instruments tvp5150 (video decoder)
• Empiatech em2883 (USB bridge and analog audio)

Identification

The device identifies itself as a "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc" and the subsystem information provided by lsusb -v is 0438:b002.

Making it Work

Firmware

In order to use the LinuxTV driver, you need to download and install the firmware. Here is the procedure to follow:

Download the firmware with something like:

wget http://steventoth.net/linux/hvr1400/xc3028L-v36.fw

copy the file so it can be picked up by the Linux kernel:

cp xc3028L-v36.fw /lib/firmware

Drivers

There are two potential sources of drivers for this device:

• Use a recent snapshot of LinuxTV's v4l-dvb drivers
  • Both analog and ATSC digital reception are supported
  • Read the above mentioned Firmware section for details on installing the proper firmware.
• Seek out support provided by Mrec's drivers: see: mcentral

Analog Audio Issue

Analog audio appears to be problematic so you will likely need to employ SOX as a helper application, prior to starting the viewing app, in order to get any sound in popular apps like tvtime etc.

sox -r 48000 -w -c 2 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp1 -t ossdsp /dev/dsp

Note that there may be an associated delay (i.e. not in sync).

The root of the problem is that the em28xx presents itself as a USB audio device, and applications such as tvtime do not know to associate the video stream with the audio stream.

Note that Markus Rechberger maintains a version of tvtime that is patched to work around this limitation: Mcentral.de tvtime

Sample kernel output

provide the relevant portion of dmesg here

Remote Control Support

The ATI/AMD TV Wonder HD 600 USB ships with a remote control, for which support in the LinuxTV driver was added in hg version 9629 (November 16, 2008).

It is unknown whether it is supported in the mrec driver.

External Links

• http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder600/usb/index.html
• http://mcentral.de/wiki/index.php5/Em2880

ATSC USB Devices