Etch & Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T XS

As Linux is my main OS I always wanted to make my USB DVB-T stick work with it. Luckily this worked and thanks to some very good HOWTOs (look here and here) I managed to watch TV with Etch. First of all you should have a look at the Em2880 wiki and see if your USB device is supported. Then make sure those packages are installed on your system:

• build-essentials
• linux-kernel-headers
• mercurial
• dvb-utils
• kaffein and/or xine

Download the correct firmware package for your device from here. You’ll need

• “firmware.tgz” for:
  • Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T XS (french edition)
  • Terratec Cinergy T XS
  • DNT DA2 Hybrid
  • Kworld 350U
• “firmware_v2.tgz” for:
  • MSI DigiVox A/D
  • Kworld 310U
  • Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T XS (USB ID=0ccd:005e)
• “firmware_v3.tgz” for:
  • HVR 900 B2C0 (sticker on the dev.)
  • HVR 900 A1C0
  • Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T XS
  • Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid Pro
  • Pinnacle PCTV Hybrid Pro Stick (320e) (USB ID=eb1a:2881)
• “firmware_v4.tgz” for:
  • Pinnacle HD Pro Stick (North American version, NTSC/ATSC)

For my “Terratec Cinergy Hybrid T XS” USB stick I downloaded firmware V3. Now unpack the firmware package to a temporary folder and copy all files to “/lib/firmware”:

$ cd /temporary/folder
tar xvzf /path/to/firmware.tgz

as root:

$ mkdir /lib/firmware  #if the "firmware" folder does not exist
$ cp  /temporary/folder/* /lib/firmware/

Now we need to get the v4l-dvb-kernel sources. Again, create a temporary folder in your home directory and download the sources via mercurial (you don’t need to be root):

$ mkdir ~/tempfolder
$ cd ~/tempfolder
$ hg clone http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-kernel

This will download the sources to “~/tempfolder. Change to the new directory and compile everything via:

$ cd  ~/tempfolder/v4l-dvb-kernel
$ make

If no errors appear, install as root:

$ make install

Then reboot! (This is important)

After that you should be able to load the module (as root):

$ modprobe em28xx

Plugin your DVB-T device and type

$ dmesg

to see if your device is listed.

The last thing we need to do is configuring our player software. I’d recommend Kaffeine or Xine. If not already installed, use synaptic to do so. Now let’s see which channels we’re able to receive! To configure Xine, scan for channels and write the output to “~/.xine/channels.conf” (this should be one line):

$ scan -n -o zap -p /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/de-Muenchen > ~/.xine/channels.conf

(replace “de-Muenchen” with what fit’s best for your region)

You may then start Xine and watch TV. If you prefer Kaffeine, it’s even simpler. If Kaffeine is started for the first time it’ll show up a configuration wizard which is very easy to follow. I had some problems with Kaffeine at the beginning though, because I used it before without DVB-T device and Kaffeine wouldn’t recognize it. So I deleted “~/.kde/share/apps/kaffeine” and “~/.kde/share/config/kaffeinerc”, started Kaffeine again and this time it would show up with it’s configuration wizard.

Now that should be it, enjoy watching TV with Etch!