cx88 devices are collectively those PCI cards that are based upon one of the CX2388x chips, and which are supported under Linux by the cx88 and associated kernel driver modules.

• 1Supported cx88 devices
• 2Installation notes

At Sound Card the installer has already detected my onboard nForce2 sound card and installed the snd-intel8x0 module. If I click Play test sound I can hear a test sound. Click Next to continue. As I used the dvd to install there are no Additional CDs to install, so just click Next to get past the Additional CDs screen. TV Multi-Sound: is used to select the analog mono,stereo or Multi-Language. TV Audio Input: When you watch outer input(S-VHS,Video), you can set the input of sound card. Analog Audio Attenuation: Analog audio level can be adjustable. Digital Audio Output: is used to select the audio output: 2 CH SPEAKER, 5.1CH SPEAKERS or S/PDIF. Download driver C-Media CMI8738 PCI Audio Device Drivers version 8.17.40 for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 32-bit (x86), 64-bit (x64). File Name cmedia8738winallmxlxcustom.zip - manual install (26 mb) all versions.

Supported cx88 devices

An up-to-date list of cx88 devices supported by V4L-DVB drivers is found in the CARDLIST.cx88 file in the master development repository.

Devices supported by the kernel running on your system are listed in your local <path_to_your_kernel_sources>/Documentation/video4linux/CARDLIST.cx88.

Getting an unlisted card to work

If your card is not listed, see the 'How to add support for a device' article.

Installation notes

For details, see Generic Installation below and if necessary, the individual cards further down -- and please add your own if it differs from the generic installation!

Generic Installation

This installation method has been tested with a DViCO FusionHDTV5 Gold but I have been told that it can be used as generic installation instructions for any device that uses the cx88 driver.

Below you will see that all of the TV tuner related drivers are being compiled as modules. This allows MythTV to detect the TV tuner card and let you send parameters to the modules.

Kernel

When compiling the kernel, here are the options you need to tick:

Loadable module support:

Device Drivers->Multimedia devices:

Device Drivers->I2C support

Video Capture Adapters:

If your card supports has blackbird mpeg encoder support, you'll need to compile the module for that. The DViCO FusionHDTV 5 Gold card does not have the blackbird mpeg encoder, so it's not necessary to tick this option for that card.

Digital Video Broadcasting Devices:

If you are really familiar with the hardware, you can save some system memory by only selecting the DVB Frontends that the card needs. This is accomplished as follows:

Customise DVB Frontends--->

Then if you are using a DViCO FusionHDTV 5 Gold card, you would tick these two options:

Note: The current kernel, 2.6.20, does not automatically load the cx88-dvb driver when a program like mplayer requests to use it. This problem will most likely be fixed in kernel 2.6.21, but in the mean time, you will either need to load it using:

or you can specify it in your modprobe.conf file which in gentoo would be /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 so that it will load when the computer boots:

Sound

When tuning digital channels, all you need is a functioning sound card with no further configuration. When tuning analog channels, there are two ways you can capture the sound. You can capture it through the internal audio cable that connects the tuner board to the sound card or through DMA audio using the cx88-alsa driver.

Computer Sound Cards

Internal Audio Cable

In order to capture the sound through the internal audio cable, you need to have an audio port on your tuner card and an auxiliary jack on your motherboard or sound card so you can hook the tuner card up to that auxiliary port. Then you need to plug some kind of device like speakers, headphones, etc. into the analog stereo jack on your motherboard or sound card.

Note: The sound is only output to the analog jack with this method. If you use something other than the analog jack like SPDIF or any other kind of digital audio jack for your speakers, you will need to have some way of switching input on your speakers or amp to the analog jack when you are tuning analog channels.

Alsa

Using DMA audio with the cx88-alsa driver is probably the best choice for capturing the analog sound. It doesn't use internal ports on your motherboard or sound card and for some people it might be the only choice since they might only have one internal audio port that is already in use. It is also beneficial if you have multiple tuner cards while still having a finite or small number of internal audio ports.

Since many programs generally look for the output sound device as the first device, you will need to configure your sound card or onboard sound to be the first device. This requires knowledge of all the sound hardware connected to your computer. You can start by finding out what audio devices you have like this:

which will produce something like this:

Sound Cards 7.1

This shows that I have the Conexant CX23880 chip and the VIA VT8233 chip. Now that you have a listing of devices, you need to determine which device is your default output device. In this case, it would be the VIA VT8233 chip which is an onboard motherboard audio device.

Note: You cannot use alsaconf if you have more than one sound device because it is only capable of configuring one device. I suggest you get familiar with the alsa configuration of sound devices so that you can configure more than one sound device.

On gentoo, you configure the sound with /etc/modules.d/alsa and after you make changes to that file, you need to run modules-update. For other versions of linux, you will need to configure /etc/modprobe.conf. Here's an example of how an onboard VIA sound device should be configured with the DViCO FusionHDTV 5 Gold card:

Once you restart alsa (/etc/init.d/alsasound restart on gentoo) or reboot your computer, you should be able see all your sound devices. Make sure your onboard sound device or sound card is the first device listed:

should output the following using the above example:

This shows that everything is configured properly because the onboard sound device is the first device and the tv tuner audio decoder (CX8811 on the DViCO FusionHDTV 5 Gold card) is the second device. This second device is only a capture device so the output of this device will need to be piped to the onboard sound device (VIA8237 in this case) in order to hear the audio. This can be accomplished in a few different manners depending on the program you are using.

Tuning

If you have mplayer or mythtv installed, I would recommend you use one of these programs because they have the capacity to capture and output DMA audio. This is important because programs that don't have this ability will not be able to keep the audio and video in sync with each other.

With mplayer, this can be accomplished with this command:

You can then use 'H' or 'K' to change the channels.

If you don't care that the audio and video can go out of sync, you can use tvtime and arecord to tune analog channels. Run this command in the console and then start tvtime:

In addition, as stated above, tuning digital channels with the cx88 driver does not require cx88-alsa and can be accomplished by configuring a channels.conf file for mplayer and running this command:

Hauppauge

Leadtek

Mercury

MSI

• TV-@nywhere Master

This card is not able to do the default QuasiSplitSound demulation, so force the IF to Intercarrier when inserting the driver module:

As of kernel 2.16.18 the code for the above module was moved, so use the following instead:

In addition, set hue full up or down and then adjust the rest. There is a bug nobody has found so far.

pcHDTV

• The pcHDTV3000 card supports both analog and digital capture; see also Peter Knaggs excellent configuration guide with further references.

• Its possible to use the IrDA dongle with the pcHDTV HD5500 board. Locate cx88_input.c (v4l-dvb/linux/drivers/media/video/cx88/cx88_input.c). Edit the file, adding:

CX88_BOARD_PCHDTV_HD5500:

directly below anywhere 'CX88_BOARD_HAUPPAUGE_HVR3000:' is mentioned (2 places). Once you recompile the drivers, your IrDA receiver should be recognized. You can use it with Lirc using the dev/input driver. (Run lsinput to see which input the receiver has been assigned) (source)

Pinnacle

Pixelview

• Pixelview_PlayTV_MPEG (TV-8000GT)
  • Has a XC2028 Silicon Tuner

Powercolor

• Powercolor Real Angel 330
  • Has a XC2028 Silicon Tuner.