[clug] DVB-T USB stick - looking for info

[David Howe]

Mike Carden wrote:

>I took a punt at the computer fair on the weekend and bought an
>inexpensive USB digital TV tuner stick. With an infrared remote, mini
>antenna, and a Belling-Lee antenna adaptor, this experiment cost me
>$45. The packaging was utterly silent on brand name, chipset etc. Made
>in China and some Windows PC specs were all I could see.
>
>So I got it home, plugged it in to an Ubuntu Feisty machine and took a
>gander at lsusb. Turns out it's a RealTek RTL2831U. There's no current
>support for it in video 4 linux, but some Googling revealed a recent
>thread on lkml about RealTek releasing the driver source and I finally
>obtained a copy of the code. From what I can tell, I'll need to
>compile it into a kernel module and cross my fingers, but first I'd
>really like to know if the little stick works at all. That way when
>I'm fiddling with my new kernel and probably the Kaffeine media player
>I'll know whether I'm chasing my tail or not.
>
>I have brought it to the office and set it up with its provided
>software (BlazeTV) on a fast, modern XP box. Plugged in an antenna,
>scanned for channels and got nothing. Plugged in my adaptor and a
>bigger antenna, still nothing. I'm at Mitchell with pretty much line
>of sight to Black Mountain Tower and and internal DVB card on another
>machine here can resolve a signal with a paperclip for an antenna. The
>stick flashes its blue LED ten times when first connected to a USB
>port and gets fairly warm during the channel scanning process.
>Otherwise it's cool to touch.
>
>So maybe some manual setup rather than scanning is the go. I have
>managed to uncover the Tx frequencies of the five free to air channels
>that ought to be available here, but I also have some settings
>available for constellation, code rate, tx mode, guard interval and
>offset frequency. Does anyone know where I might dig up these details
>for the local digital transmissions? My web searching has not
>succeeded.
>
>Okay, that isn't strictly a Linux question, but if I get it going I
>can post the steps needed to make it work under Linux and possibly
>others might end up with a cheap DVT-B tuner. Or I'll discover that
>it's a useless piece of junk and warn others not to waste cash like I
>did. :-)
>
>
>Cheers,
>MC
>  
>
http://www.dba.org.au/ might help :)