TechniSat Air2PC-ATSC-USB
There are actually two different ATSC USB boxes that were produced by TechniSat that bear the identical name Air2PC-ATSC-USB. Both Air2PC models are supported under Linux. These are older devices that are no longer manufactured, and have been superseded by the presently offered AirStar-HD5000-USB model.
The origianl "Air2PC ATSC USB" reference design was created by B2C2 and adopted by TechniSat for manufacturing. TechniSat never listed these Air2PC USB boxes on their own website's product pages. Rather, one finds information about these ATSC devices on the BBTI website (TechniSat's source for North American sales and distribution). Evidently, instead of marketing the cards using TechinSat's "*Stars" product lineup nomenclature, BBTI elected to use the orignial B2C2 naming scheme.
Instead of an A/V decoder, they utilize the B2C2 FlexCop IC for a bridge to the USB bus. The FlexCop PCI interface chipset completely lacks any analog input functionality, and this explains why these cards are barren of analog inputs.
Air2PC-ATSC-USB (1st rev)
The original Air2PC model used the B2C2 FlexCop2 or FlexCop2b PCI interface chipset with a Broadcom 3510 demodulator.
Firmware
This card requires a firmware file (dvb-fe-bcm3510-01.fw) for the demodulator, which can be obtained from the LinuxTV downloads section. Once the download is complete, place a copy of the firmware file in your /lib/firmware directory. (This directory may differ with some distros; consult your distro's documentation for the appropriate location).
Air2PC-ATSC-USB (2nd rev)
The later revision/variant of the Air2PC card also used the B2C2 FlexCop2 or FlexCop2b PCI interface chipset, but was updated with a Samsung TBMV30111IN NIM that featured a Nxt2002 demodulator.
Firmware
This card requires a firmware file (dvb-fe-nxt2002.fw) for the demodulator, which can be obtained using the get_dvb_firmware perl script included in the kernel sources:
# cd /[kernel source directory]/Documentation/dvb/ # perl get_dvb_firmware nxt2002
Once the download is complete, place a copy of the firmware file in your /lib/firmware directory. (This directory may differ with some distros; consult your distro's documentation for the appropriate location).