AVerMedia AVerTV Hybrid+FM PCI (A16AR)

There are actually two different DVB-T PCI cards produced by AVerMedia that bear the identical name AVerTV Hybrid+FM PCI. The first, model A16D, is currently not supported by LinuxTV (though experimental support for the device does exist; see below). The second, model A16A, is supported by LinuxTV drivers. Coincidently, the second version is also the sole recipient of direct Linux support from AVerMedia -- however, said support is very limited/constrained at best (binary drivers, listed as beta, and which apply only for Fedora 3 & 4, Mandriva 2006, and SUSE 10.0).

A16D

The A16D model consists of the following hardware components:

• Xceive XC3018 (tuner & analog demodulator)
• Philips SAA7135HL (A/V decoder)
• Zarlink MT352 (DVB-T demodulator)

Links:

• Experimental support on mcentral
• AVer product page
• Russian Review

A16A

Support for this card was added to kernel 2.6.19.

The A16D model consists of the following hardware components:

• Philips TD1316A (tuner)
• Philips TDA9887 (analog demodulator)
• Philips SAA7135HL (A/V decoder)
• Zarlink MT352 (DVB-T demodulator)

Pictures of the card are available in the this mail list post and duplicated in the resourceful bttv gallery.

Section that needs work

Note: these two examples are less then ideal:

• we need output from lspci that shows the card being properly detected ... what is currently shown is what would be output by the command when the card is NOT automagically recognized! Second, the capabilities section of the output is incomplete
• the grep of dmesg shows a case where the card was automagically detected (this is good), however, the info really isn't providing anymore insight then what lspci would provide if the card was being detected properly.

If you have an A16AR then "lspci -v" should reveal:

01:05.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder (rev d1)
Subsystem: Avermedia Technologies Inc Unknown device 2c00
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 21
Memory at e8002000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
Capabilities: <access denied>[/code]

If the card is setup correctly, then if you run "dmesg | grep saa" you will see:

[  555.864000] saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.2.14 loaded
[  555.864000] saa7133[0]: found at 0000:01:05.0, rev: 209, irq: 21, latency: 32, mmio: 0xe8002000
[  555.864000] saa7133[0]: subsystem: 1461:2c00, board: AVerMedia TV Hybrid A16AR [card=99,insmod option][/code]

Links:

• AVer product page
• AVer's binary Linux drivers for the card

If you're using a kernel >2.6.19 and the card is not automagically detected

If the card is not automagically detected, when you run "dmesg | grep saa" you you will see:

[   39.847928] saa7130/34: v4l2 driver version 0.2.14 loaded
[   39.848432] saa7133[0]: found at 0000:01:05.0, rev: 209, irq: 21, latency: 32, mmio: 0xe8002000
[   39.848437] saa7133[0]: subsystem: 1461:2c00, board: UNKNOWN/GENERIC [card=0,autodetected] [/code] 

In this case, you will need to do the following steps. Type:

sudo rmmod saa7134_alsa saa7134-dvb saa7134

Note: For all those who do not know what sudo is, it is used to elevate one's self to root user. rmmod removes loaded modules from memory.

If you can't remove the running modules from memory (which will likely happen because saa1734 will be used by any mixers and artsd)

fuser -v /dev/snd/* /dev/dsp/*

and then

killall -9 <process names>.

Now you need to reload the modules with the following:

sudo modprobe saa7134 card=99
sudo modprobe saa7134_alsa
sudo modprobe saa7134-dvb

Now you should be able load your favorite TV application and watch TV!