Hercules Smart TV Satellite

Card information

This card is a clone of Twinhan VP-1030A PCTV Sat CI card.

So far the difference are:

• different sticker on tuner
• Firmware returns a "DST-CI" identifier instead of the "DSTMCI" identifier returned by VP-1030A firmware

Connectors:

• Sat input
• CI connector for CAM module
• Internal 8 pins connector (unknown purpose. Anyone knows ?)
• Internal sat output

Front view

Rear view

Required software

Stable kernel

The card works perfectly in FTA mode with 2.6.7 or later kernel. De-scrambling is not supported.

In development

De-scrambling support is provided by the experimental dst_ca module. This driver is working but some polishing is still required. To de-scramble programs, you must have:

• Linux kernel 2.6.9 or greater
• DVB CVS

Required modules

Add dvb-bt8xx in your /etc/modules files and add these lines in you modprobe.conf:

options bttv i2c_hw=1 card=0x71 
options dst_ca   new_ca=1
install dvb-bt8xx /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install dvb-bt8xx; /sbin/modprobe dst

The dst_ca line and module is required only for de-scrambling (still in developement)

CAM tests

Feel free to update this table with other types of CAMs.

CAM tests on Hercules Smart TV Satellite

Type	HW version	Firmware version	Results
SCM Red Viaccess	1.0	1.06	Working, but random failures are observed every few hours with TPS
Aston Viaccess	?	?	Not working

For the record, I've similar results with Windows XP: Aston CAM does not work, and SCM CAM sometimes decode.

But SCM CAM is working much better with experimental Linux driver than with Windows.

As the dst_ca driver is still under development, the results of this page may change.