Saa713x devices

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saa713x devices are collectively those PCI cards that are based upon one of the SAA713x chips, and which are supported under Linux by the saa7134 and associated kernel driver modules.


saa7134 and associated kernel driver modules

TV cards based on the saa713x chips are well supported by the saa7134 driver. The picture quality is typically high, and the sound can be taken directly from the TV card or through a patch cable to your sound card. On the text capture front, both teletext and NTSC closed captioning are supported.

Sound support

Support for DMA sound, or sound taken directly off the PCI bus, has improved in the 2.6.16 kernel, thanks to the work of Ricardo Cerqueira and others. There are now two separate drivers for DMA sound, saa7134-alsa and saa7134-oss. In order to enable these in the kernel, you must first have selected support for ALSA and/or OSS under Sound. If you build both DMA devices as modules, you can use both alternately, though they cannot both be loaded at the same time.

While the saa7134-oss is listed as deprecated, there are still programs that have difficulties using ALSA's device enumeration, and the oss module remains useful.

These modules do not require parameters during insertion; for details see saa7134-alsa.

Supported saa713x devices

An up-to-date list of saa713x devices supported by V4L-DVB drivers is found in the CARDLIST.saa7134 file in the master development repository.

Devices supported by the kernel running on your system are listed in your local <path_to_your_kernel_sources>/Documentation/video4linux/CARDLIST.saa7134. If you don't find your device listed here, but support for it is cited in the up-to-date sources (see above), then you will need to either upgrade to a more recent kernel that has already absorbed support for the device or, more simply, just get the latest V4L-DVB drivers. You can install the V4L-DVB modules on top of your existing kernel (see: detailed instructions), however, note that support for some devices may also require use of a newer kernel.

Getting an unlisted card to work

If your card is not listed, see the "How to add support for a device" article.

this part needs to be edited:

  • ask for assistance on the v4l mailing list
  • searchable archives.
  • It may be a clone of a listed card ... card= entries may work for several similar cards.
  • Full card names can be cross-referenced from drivers/media/video/saa7134/saa7134-cards.c.

Before buying a new TV card, it's always worth checking its support status on V4L documentation. However, be advised that, since some producers label with the same product name boards that, inside, are actually different, there is always some risk of buying an un- (or non-completely) supported card even if it appears to be. Spending some more time searching newsgroups and mailing lists for complains is recommended.

Make sure you post the findings of your investigations here and on the video4linux mailing list (video4linux-list@redhat.com) so that saa7134-cards.c can be updated with a new card= entry for your card.

Installation notes

See Saa713x devices: Generic SAA7134 Card Installation for how to properly setup your saa7134-based tv tuner card or use the installation instructions for your specific card:

ASUS

AVerMedia

As described in AVerTV 305/307 Linux user guide (Russian language), the following cards are supported:

  • AVerTV 305
  • AVerTV Studio 305
  • AVerTV 307
  • AVerTV Studio 307

In addition, the following cards are known to work:

Bona

The brand is also refered to as Mentor. Bona Website

Canopus

Compro

Hercules

KNC One (KNC1)

KWorld

LifeView

MSI

Mercury

Pearl

Pinnacle

Sabrent

TerraTec

Tevion

Vivanco

Other

External Links

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