pvrusb 1.2 review

pvrusb is a Linux driver for the WinTV PVR USB (not the plain WinTV USB), a USB MPEG2 encoder with a TV tuner

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Andreas Gal

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pvrusb is a Linux driver for the WinTV PVR USB (not the plain WinTV USB), a USB MPEG2 encoder with a TV tuner. The WinTV PVR USB is a video capture device attached to the USB bus. The purpose is similar to the PCI version (WinTV PVR), but this driver is for the USB version only. Follow this link for a Linux driver for the PCI version.

This device has also not much to do with the plain WinTV USB, because the WinTV PVR USB contains a MPEG2 encoder, which the simple WinTV USB does not contain. The higher compression ratio of the WinTV PVR USB gives much better video quality at higher resolutions than the WinTV USB. Support for the Pinnacle Bungee is still incomplete.

Some notes about the program:

You need the WinTV PVR firmware ROM from Hauppauge ("HCWUSB.UPD.ROM" or "USB_MPEG2_POPNOISEFIX.ROM"). I obtained the files by installing the WinTV software on a Windows machine. The files do not contain any copyright notice, but for now I just assume Hauppauge would not want me to distribute them and so I wont.
You can upload the firmware into the driver after inserting the module using:
dd if=USB_MPEG2_POPNOISEFIX.ROM of=/proc/pvrusb/firmware bs=256k
To display information about the currently loaded firmware:
cat /proc/pvrusb/firmware
The driver attaches itself to /dev/usb/lp0 (yes, the USB printer special file). YES, this is stupid. I will change it soon.
To save the MPEG2 stream try:
cat /dev/usb/lp0 > data.mpg
To watch TV attach a signal to the composite input and use MPlayer:
mplayer /dev/usb/lp0
The tuner is not programmed yet. I will probably add tuner support soon.
I have a WinTV with NTSC tuner. I cannot add PAL tuner support until I get access to a PAL WinTV.