Cx88 devices (cx2388x)

Introduction

The cx2388x chip is the successor to the bt87x chips; cf. PCI interface chipsets used for v4l cards.

There is also support in the kernel for a cx23416 mpeg encoder via the cx2388x host port though the blackbird driver, cx88-blackbird.c, which includes parts from the ivtv driver.

The pcHDTV3000 card supports both analog and digital capture; see also Peter Knaggs excellent configuration guide with further references.

Supported cards

For an up-to-date list of v4l supported cx88 devices, see the Hg version of the kernel documentation. Devices supported by your current kernel are listed in your local kernel source Documentation/video4linux/CARDLIST.cx88.

If your card is not listed, see How to add support for a new card.

Current status

Video

• Basically works.
• Some minor image quality glitches
• See Color problem patch
• For now only capture; overlay support isn't completed yet.

Audio

• The chip specs for the on-chip TV sound decoder are next to useless :-/
• Nevertheless, the built-in TV sound decoder starts working now, at least for PAL-BG. Other TV norms need other code ...

FOR ANY REPORTS ON THIS PLEASE MENTION THE TV NORM YOU ARE USING.

• Most tuner chips do provide mono sound, which may or may not be useable depending on the board design. With the Hauppauge cards it works, so there is mono sound available as fallback.
• audio data dma (i.e. recording without loopback cable to the sound card) is supported since 2.6.16 (CONFIG_VIDEO_CX88_ALSA). It only works with boards with function 01 enabled. To check if your board supports it, issue lspci -n. If supported, you should see a 1471:8801 or 1471:8811 PCI device.

vbi (cf. text capture)

• Undocumented, but likely works in recent kernels (at least 2.6.19 and likely earlier).

TV audio types

For an up-to-date list of TV audio types, see the latest Hg version of the kernel sources. The list currently looks like this:

WW_NONE         1
WW_BTSC         2
WW_BG           3
WW_DK           4
WW_I            5
WW_L            6
WW_EIAJ         7
WW_I2SPT        8
WW_FM           9

Hue_Saturation_Brightness

There was a problem in the cx88 code that resulted in the need to set hue to either 0% or 100% in order to avoid seeing green and blue men on the screen. This problem has been corrected as of the CVS commit on Wed Jun 29 16:28:17 2005 UTC. We have collected information regarding this on Hue_Saturation_Brightness page.

Installation notes

Until someone writes a generic card installation page, please refer to Generic SAA7134 Card Installation. For details, see the individual cards below -- and please add your own!

DViCO FusionHDTV 5 Gold

I have successfully configured this card using both the x86 and AMD64 arches. I use Gentoo as my distribution but it should be intelligible enough to convert to any other distribution. You'll see that all of the TV tuner related drivers are being compiled as modules. This allows MythTV to detect the TV tuner card and let you send parameters to the modules.

Kernel

When compiling the kernel, here are the options you need to tick:

Device Drivers->Multimedia devices:

[*] Video For Linux

Video Capture Adapters:

[*] Autoselect pertinent encoders/decoders and other helper chips 
<M> Conexant 2388x (bt878 successor) support
<M>   Conexant 2388x DMA audio support
<M>   DVB/ATSC Support for cx2388x based TV cards

Digital Video Broadcasting Devices:

[*] DVB for Linux 
<M> DVB Core Support

Don't tick "Load and attach front-end modules as needed" unless for some reason you don't want the front-end automatically loaded when the cx88 driver is loaded. If you check this, then you will need to load the lgdt330x module in addition to the other modules.

Modules to Load on Boot

Here are the modules that should be loaded when booting (/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6):

cx88xx
cx8800
tuner
dvb-core
cx88-dvb

Sound

When tuning analog channels, you have two ways you can receive the sound. You can get it through the cable that connects to the board or through the cx88-alsa driver.

Physical Cable Connection

In order to get the sound through the cable, you need to have an auxiliary jack on your motherboard or sound card so you can hook the card up to that auxiliary port. Then you need to plug some kind of device into the analog stereo jack on your motherboard or sound card.

Note: The sound is only output to the analog jack with this method. If you use something other than the analog jack like SPDIF or any other kind of digital audio jack for your speakers, you will need to have some way of switching to the input on your speakers or amp to the analog jack when you want to tune analog channels.

Alsa

MSI TV-@nywhere Master

This card is not able to do the default QuasiSplitSound demulation, so force the IF to Intercarrier when inserting the driver module:

options tda9887 qss=0

In addition, set hue full up or down and then adjust the rest. There is a bug nobody has found so far.