'Mediafocus II' analog satellite tv card by Technisat
A long time ago, Rolf Siebrecht has written a driver using an old version of my Video4Linux-1 driver for the
saa7146. Unfortunatley, he has shut down his webpage, and he no longer responds to e-mails.
In 2004, Torsten Tittman ported Rolf's driver to my new saa7146 core. Torsten has decided to stop working on the
driver in the meantime. Thanks for the time and energy you put into the driver to keep it alive, Torsten!
The driver is still availble via the the LinuxTV.org CVS, but it's suffering heavy bit rot. I don't think it's in a usable
state right now. It has not been ported to the 2.6 Linux kernel series yet.
I don't have that card and I cannot actively maintain this driver, so I'm looking for a new maintainer.
If you own a MediaFoucs II and are interested in Linux kernel development, please drop me a line.
In the meantime if you have questions concerning this driver, drop me a line directly at
michael@mihu.de.
Official informations from the manufacturer of this card can be found at:
This page keeps a more user-friendly german description about the 'Mediafocus II':
This page will be
a gathering point (see below) for technical informations about the MediafocusII, too.
Here are some pictures (click them for larger versions):
Compile and installation instructions
Please note that these instructions are included for historical reasons only.
The latest official driver version was mediafocusII-0.0.9.tar.gz.
The driver in the LinuxTV.org CVS is based on that version.
You can compile and install the driver against a running 2.4 kernel, a kernel >= 2.4.22 is
necessary, though.
cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@linuxtv.org:/cvs/linuxtv co dvb-kernel
cd dvb-kernel/mediafocusII-2.4/
./getlinks
make
This will fetch the CVS tree and build all drivers in the mediafocusII-2.4 directory against your
currently installed kernel.
Please note that this sometimes does not work if you are using
a precompiled kernel from your distribution. The reason for this is, that the Makefile relies on
some Makefile-magic from the kernel's Makefile. If this is not present or the Kernel configuration is
not present, then this won't work unfortunately.
xawtv adaption
The latest official driver version "mediafocusII-0.0.9.tar.gz" delivers patches for the xawtv versions 2.46, 3.2x and 3.4x. These patches include frequency tables for ASTRA, EUTELSAT, ... and correct some other code.
Since xawtv version 3.79 the frequency tables are moved into config files instead of having them compiled-in.
And, at least, since version 3.88 no patches are necessary to receive ASTRA with xawtv.
Maybe the "no-overflow-patch" is still necessary for other satellites:
xawtv-3.88/common/channel.c --> int get_freq(int i):
change "return chanlist[i].freq*16/1000;" to "return chanlist[i].freq/1000*16;"
To include additional frequency tables to xawtv you have to add the tables itself and modify xawtv's Index.map file. Usually you will find these file at "/usr/local/share/xawtv".
You can download transcribed frequency tables here.
These frequency tables are generated by this code fragment.
You can use and modify this code to create table for other satellites.
Additional you find an example configuration file for xawtv here.
Of course, you have to change the configuration to fit your special environment.
BTW, you can also use the framebuffer application "fbtv".
If hardware scaling is supported by your graphic card, try the option "fbtv -M".
Technical Information
Chip Specifications
- SAA 7146 A - Multimedia bridge, high performance Scaler and PCI circuit (SPCI) 648 kByte
- SAA 7113 H - 9bit video input processor (including Teletext decoder) 300 kByte
- DRP 3510 A - Digital Radio Processor 200 kByte
- MSP 3400 C - Multistandard Sound Processor 368 kByte
- STV 0056 A - B-Band Video Processor and FM Demodulation (Application note) 660 kByte
- SP 5055 - 2.6 GHz Frequency Synthesizer 168 kByte
- LNBP 16SP - LNBP Supply and Control Voltage Regulator 600 kByte
Official Technisat Information
