TT-budget S-1401

TT-budget S-1401 from TechnoTrend is a PCI card to watch digital satellite TV (DVB-S) on your pc.
The good news: With a new kernel it works.

This card is one of the cheapest, it only supports free channels (without some help ...).

All you need to watch TV you can find on http://linuxtv.org/.
For a first test you should install the dvb-apps package.

Now here are my tips for a quick try-out:

You should have a working channels.conf file (http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Testing_your_DVB_device)
I tried mplayer and xine, both can work with a dvb stream.

The apps search for the channels.conf in there config directory, so simply create a symbolic link:
(1) mplayer (2) xine

(1) $ cp -s ~/channels.conf ~/.mplayer/channels.conf
(2) $ cp -s ~/channels.conf ~/.xine/channels.conf

Start the app:

(1) $ mplayer -cache 4096 dvb://ProSieben
(2) $ xine dvb://ProSieben

Attention: The channel names are case sensitive !

Notes about mplayer:
Without -cache the video appears to jitter.

Notes about xine:
xine will crash if call without a channel name on command line or if the you click on the dvb button.


With these apps you can only watch TV, no EPG, no teletext and so on. My next try will be MythTV.

SANYO CA6 Xacti (VPC-CA6)

My mother bought herself a nice, tiny digi cam SANYO CA6 Xacti (VPC-CA6). The offer was a special offer and so I think the price is ok for that what you get. Else you would get the same cheaper, normally you pay more just for the brand name. The manufacturer says that it is the first water proof digi cam. I haven't tried it out.


The test:

Of course, I tried it out with Linux: Reading/writing from/to the memory card and playing the videos worked without any problems. Then i tried to use it as a web cam, plug in the cam, selected the entry at the display and looked at my log file:

kernel: usb 1-5: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
kernel: usb 1-5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
kernel: Linux video capture interface: v2.00
kernel: uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device SANYO Digital Camera (0474:024f)
kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
kernel: USB Video Class driver (v0.1.0)

That's fine, Linux has a driver for it.


Now my problem was, that i hadn't any program to test it.
I found xawtv, usually for watching TV but should also work with web cams. It didn't worked.

After a long search i found on a page which i couldn't read but has the cam's picture.
There was a link to LUVCview. I complied the program, connected the cam, started the program and it worked.
Also a picture of Ekiga is on the site, so i think it will work too.


The results:

The resolution is only 320x240, but enough for a web cam. I haven't tried the Windows version, maybe better resolutions are possible.
When you close the program, it is not possible to open it again, the following message is logged:

kernel: uvcvideo: Failed to query (1) UVC control 1 (unit 0) : -110 (exp. 26).

The workaround is to unplug the cam.


Links:

• The Webcam HOWTO - http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Webcam-HOWTO/
• (for me) Unreadable site - http://d.hatena.ne.jp/junkawa/20070901/1188629722
• LUVCview source code - http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca50x/Investigation/uvc/luvcview-20070512.tar.gz