FF Rev. 2.1 DVB-S Cards
A, so called, "full-featured", revision 2.1, DVB-S PCI card.
Linux Support for these cards is quite stable.
Overview/Features
Originally derived from the old Siemens cards, the Rev. 2.1 is Sold by Hauppauge as the WinTV Nexus-S.
Based on an SAA7146 PCI bridge and an onboard AV711x MPEG2 Decoder. Over time these cards have used many different demodulators and tuner modules; some examples include the STV0299 and the TDA8083.
They look quite old-fashioned now but have worked reliably for a long time and been the base for Projects like VDR. However, a major drawback of this design is the low maximum Bus Bandwidth limit inherent to the AV711x, and which effectively means that, because of this, HDTV receiption or raw MPEG2 Transport Stream access is not possible. Since even MPEG2 decoders implemented in software perform well on HDTV sources when run on modern PC systems, there is usually no need for cards with onboard MPEG2 Decoder today. An exception may be special software that relies on proprietary card features like VDR.
A Firmware is required and available for download on http://www.linuxtv.org/.
(stv0299/ALPS BSRU6(tsa5059) OR ves1893/ALPS BSRV2(sp5659)) features: decoder, partialts card driver: dvb-ttpci interface: PCI PCI device id: 1131:7146 PCI subsystem id: 13c2:0003 Bridge: Philips SAA7146A audio DAC: Texas Instruments TLC320AD80C frontend possibility 1: tin box: ALPS BSRU6 frontend driver: stv0299 demodulator location: tin box demodulator: ST stv0299b @0x68 PLL: Philips tsa5059 @0x61 frontend possibility 2: tin box: ALPS BSRV2 frontend driver: ves1x93 demodulator location: tin box demodulator: ves1893 @0x08 PLL: Mitel sp5659 @0x61 Notes: This card has only one frontend - but there are two possibilities This card has the same PCI ID as the other rev2.X DVB-S cards