Linux ATI TV Wonder Support

September, 2001

ATI TV Wonder VE (TV/Cable/Video Encoder)
BTTV (Driver)
XawTV (TV Watching/Recording APP)
Configuration Files (Sample Configs)

Be sure and see the newer version with WinTV and tvtime.

So you want to watch some TV while you work? Or you would like to turn that old pentium into a Personal Video Recorder (PVR)? Linux can do it, and quite well I might add. There are tons of projects out there for PVR systems just check http://www.freshmeat.net or http://www.sourceforge.net. At the moment I'm just using it to watch shows now and then, so I'll go over my configuration only.

My setup includes:

ATI TV Wonder VE PCI (~ $45)
Linux Kernel 2.4.19
BTTV kernel module (2.4.19 stock)
XawTV 3.82

ATI TV Wonder VE

While the market has tons of TV boards out there, this one is cheap and available at most stores and even in stock. It usually runs anywhere from $35 USD to $50 USD for the VE (Value Ed). Note that the Value is only mono and max resolution is 640x480. That being said, it's an all around good card. They have PCI and USB models but due to USB bandwidth, I recommend using the PCI version. The VE card also has audio output that must go to another device. For example, I'm using it to dump into my SBLive card's Line-IN and then map those to DSP channels. Since the TV card doesn't shut down the audio stream when you close XawTV I setup a script to just mute the input channel when it exits. IE: /usr/bin/aumix -i 0

BTTV

For almost all TV boards there is a great module included with the 2.4.x tree called BTTV (http://bytesex.org/bttv/. This supports a ton of chipset and has lots of nice tweakable features. And since it's included in the main kernel branch life is even better. Most distrubtions include it as a loadable module that you can just modprobe or insmod. There are a few settings for the VE version that you might want to set in your /etc/modules.conf file. These include the type of tuner you are using such as NTSC or PAL etc. See the config files below for examples.

XawTV

Click to Enlarge

Once you have your module installed, and tuner too if using insmod, you are ready to install and setup a TV viewer. I like XawTV (http://bytesex.org/xawtv/). It is a very robust group of programs for viewing, recording, and even streaming TV. As you can see from the screen shot, I'm running the newer Mofit-based Viewer that has channel preview window, and some more added tools. You can have it switch X to whatever screen resolution you want for "Full Screen" mode too even if you card is locked at say 640x480 like the ATI TV Wonder VE.

UPDATE: If your video doesn't scale when you maximize the window, insure you have load "v4l" in the modules section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config file.

Config Files

Here are the configuration for files I used to get everything working on boot. Please note that these are ADDED to the files, not the entire files.

/etc/modules.conf

alias char-major-81 bttv
options bttv card=1 autoload=0 radio=0
post-install bttv insmod tuner type=2

~/.xawtv

[global]
fullscreen = 640 x 480
ratio = 4:3
freqtab = us-bcast
pixsize = 128 x 96
pixcols = 1
jpeg-quality = 75
keypad-ntsc = yes
keypad-partial = yes
osd = yes

[defaults]
group = main
norm = NTSC
input = Television
capture = over
color = 44%
bright = 43%
hue = 40%
contrast = 40%

Note that fullscreen changes your X11 Screenmode so be sure and enable it in your /etc/X11/XF86Config file.