ATI/AMD HDTV Wonder

The ATI HDTV Wonder is an ATSC PCI card, and is supported under Linux (added to kernel 2.6.15).

Overview

Highlights of its capabilities include support for analog video (TV and A/V-in), OTA digital (ATSC; 8-VSB) and digital cable (SCTE 07; 64/256-QAM).

lspci -vn will reveal that the card has a subsystem PCI ID of 1002:a101

Note: There apparently are also some HDTV Wonder cards, that were packaged in HP z556 Media Center PCs, that have subsystem ID of 1002:a103. These latter variants are, unfortunately, presently not supported. The actual differences between these and the "regular" HDTV Wonder cards are currently unknown -- although it may quite possibly be a trivial matter. If you have further information on these variants, please contact the mailing list, as it would be nice to be able to extend support for them as well.

• It is a trivial matter: just add:

options cx88xx card=34
 
to /etc/modules.conf

Note: Unfortunately, it is entirely unclear whether the person who inserted the note immediately above was merely making a suggestion on how they thought the issue could be resolved or whether they were writing from a position of experience and had indeed enabled support for their own 1002:a103 card. The "card=34" option for the cx88 module is, of course, the 1002:a101 HDTV Wonder card

Components Used

• Philips TUV1236D (NIM)
  • Infineon TUA6034 (RF tuner)
  • Philips TDA9887 (analog IF demodulator)
  • ATI Nxt2004 (digital demodulator for 8VSB & 256/64-QAM)
• Conexant CX2388x (broadcast audio & analog video decoder, and PCI bridge)
• AKM AK5355 (audio decoder)
• ? (8pin eeprom ... located on back of card)

The card also features a mini DIN input connector, to which you attach the included purple breakout dongle that features S-Video, composite, and L/R audio inputs. External audio inputs are currently not supported, although someone is looking into enabling this feature.

Also included in the retail package were an indoor antenna (Terk), and ATI's Remote Wonder, a USB based RF remote control.

Firmware

This card requires a firmware file (dvb-fe-nxt2004.fw¹) for the demodulator, which can be obtained using the get_dvb_firmware perl script included in the kernel sources:

# cd /[kernel source directory]/Documentation/dvb/
# perl get_dvb_firmware nxt2004

Once the download is complete, place a copy of the firmware file in your /lib/firmware directory. (This directory may differ with some distros; consult your distro's documentation for the appropriate location).

Note 1: All devices that use the Nxt2004 demodulator are currently using a firmware version from the AVerMedia AVerTVHD MCE A180. As the firmware's code has not been discerned, it is unclear whether other firmware for the Nxt2004 (i.e. those provided by other devices) would have any affect on reception performance.

Miscellaneous Info

Although not as common an occurrence anymore, many sellers on ebay have, or will, advertised these cards with reference to "pre June '05 stock" or "no Broadcast Flag chip" or some other variation. Potential buyers of these cards should not heed any attention to these claims, as they are little more then either shaddy sales tactics or ignorance (the choice is your's to decide which is the applicable case).

External Links

• AMD product page