Recommend Hardware

Adam Sutton

I've created a wiki page [[DVBCards]] to make a note about known working cards, and peoples general thoughts etc...

So far it only include [[TBS6981]] as that's what I use, but hopefuly we'll add stuff over time.

If you provide a post here about a card that you like/dislike reasons why etc... Any pointers on getting it working, that sort of thing. I'll try and move stuff over to the wiki.

Regards
Adam

George -

I use a TechniSat CableStar HD 2 PCI card. I have it working under Ubuntu since version 10.something. No additional installs needed, works out of the box with TVH.

Stefan Strobel

I use a TBS 6920 ("TBS-6920" on Ubuntu 10.10 - 12.04 (64bit) without problems.
I also tested the card under Gentoo. Works out of the box with TVH and no problems occured so far.

Ben .

TBS 6280 (DVB-T/T2) works great with TVHeadend too, on a 11.10 64-bit Ubuntu system. Needs to have drivers installed, but instructions can be found here:

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6280

Onzi SAT

I'm using four TBS 6921 and four TBS 5921 cards and have no issues with version 3.0.

OpenSuSE 12.1 32bit Kernel 3.1.10-pae

Drivers from http://www.tbsdtv.com/download/

Liquid Sky

I use a Hauppauge WinTV Nova HD-S2 PCI card on Ubuntu 11.04 - 32bit.
No issue with TVH. Additional driver installs needed. Instructions and informations can be found here: http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2

Alex .

+Silicon Dust "HD Homerun Dual"+

I use a Silicon Dust "HD Homerun Dual" ethernet tuner for dvb-c/t, on a Gentoo AMD64 kernel 3.5.0 system.

http://www.silicondust.com/products/models/hdhr3-eu/

Since it is a network-tuner, you need a special driver to get it to show up in /dev/dvb as a virtual tuner which can be found here:

https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/dvbhdhomerun/

Works fine so far with the newest driver in combination with TVHeadend 3.1
(but only started using the newest driver in combination with the newest TVHeadend version recently; up to now only used older versions of both, which worked fine).

Alex .

+Pinnacle PCTV 72e+

I also use a Pinnacle PCTV 72e, single DVB-T tuner, USB connection.

http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_72e

One issue is that it only seems to work when connected to a USB2 port, and not on a USB3 port.
(no problem by itself, but it is a bit weird i would say).

wet willy

Hauppauge PCTV Nanostick T2 HD 290e

This USB-tuner supports both DVB-T2 and DVB-C by creating one frontend for each, /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0 and frontend1.

Tvheadend will only work with one of the frontend at a time, I have only tried out the DVB-T2 frontend and it looks nice.

Martin Bednar

DVB-T : "Evolve Venus" Based on the af9015 chip works pretty well (dvb_usb_af9015 module). I'd give it bronze rating :
* The dual adapter feature works
* logs full of i2c read/write errors, and from time to time the adapter needs to be hotplugged.
* You need to get firmware manually.
Suggestion : make the list a table with ratings/known issues; maybe cooperate with other lists such as http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_USB_Devices ?

B. J.

Digital Devices Cine CT V6 PCIe (Dual Tuner Cable/Terestrial) works too. Very good and stable tuners with excellent sensivity.
Note that the driver must compiled manually because it isn't (at this time) part of the linux kernel. This card has/is a low-profile design.

B. J.

On another machine TeVii S464 PCIe (DVB-S2) works OOTB. This comes also as low-profile card.

Anonymous

Genpix Skywalker-II works great out of the box. No issues whatsoever and gets qpsk and 8psk. Does others as well of course, but those are the two I use.

Cub

Oliver Schnatz

TeVii s480 (DVB-S2) Twin Card works after getting firmware files.

System Debian, Kernel (now) 3.5, Intel i3.

Keep in mind card is an USB card with two USB S660 adapters. You'll find them with 'lsusb' not 'lspci' !

jody gugelhop

I'm using the TBS 6991 on ubuntu 12.04 64 bit machine, got the tbs drivers from their website. created a directory called TBS in my homedirectory and copied the follwing files into it:
linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2
v4l-cx23885-avcore-01.fw

then open up a terminal and do this:

tar xjvf linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2

cd linux-tbs-drivers

as I have a 64 bit machine I have to do this (differs on 32bit):

sudo ./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh
sudo make

sudo make install

now your TBS6991 is installed, reboot your machine

mpmc

-Currently using a TBS5922 USB device on Debian x64 unstable without any issues. :)-

Sigurd J Ingvaldsen

Ubuntu Server 12.04
2 x TBS 6984
TBS drivers v120827

XBMC PVR as frontend

Stabilty around 95%

John Nevill

Using a HDHomeRun Prime with 3 ATSC tuners. It's a networked box and requires software available from silicondust to get a device in /dev/. Shows up fine in tvheadend, but I am having problems getting certain channels to the front-end (xbmc). It may be a cable company issue although the channels appear to have "0" for CCI Protection suggesting they are copy-free. Still hacking at it though.

Frans Rampen

I have 2x Digital Devices Cine S2 V6 in my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server. These cards are automatically recognised and initialised as the kernel contains working drivers!

I replaced my TBS6984 with these cards for 2 reasons:

- the TBS needs compiled drivers; everytime a security update is installed (which in our case installs automatically) we need to compile the TBS drivers for the card to work again

- the TBS is slow compared to the Cine S2 cards. Scanning and EPG updates are faster and also zap-times are faster

Very happy with these cards!

Bengt Madeberg

One TBS6925 (Freesat) and one TB6284 (Boxer). Also using one PCTV290e and one AverTV 777. No problem with any HW. Run a Fedora 16 Server (Kernel 3.6.2) and Tvheadend 3.2.18. Will upgrade this winter to Fedora 18.
XBMCbuntu as frontend. Also tried Openelec v2 but my "old" Samsung TV don't accept the HDMI audio for some unknown reason...