DVB-T on the EeePC

Another thing not working out of the box was a USB-DVB-T-Stick I had in my hardware grab-bag. Popular, cheap DVB-T-Sticks like Terratecs Cinergy Hybrid XS or Pinnacles PCTV DVB-T Stick Solo (72e) are based on the EM2880 chipset. You can use them with a driver in development. It depends on an updated v4l-stack. While compiling the EM2880 driver is nearly straight forward using the guides on that website, the new v4l-stack will break the webcam. The module won't load anymore due to mismatching symbols.

The Pinnacle Stick was really cheap at the german Saturn markets (22 Euros) so I think it is widespread in the meantime. It won't work with the current EM2880-driver. A solution would be a patched EM2880-driver which you can download here. It also includes the necessary firmware which you need to copy to the firmware-directory after extracting the archive: sudo cp firmware/dvb-usb-dib0700-1.10.fw /lib/firmware/.

For making the webcam work again e.g. for Skype you have to fetch the sources of the linux UVC driver and compile them yourself, too. That won't help as there are still mismatching symbols. The solution: you have to copy the file Module.symvers from the EM2880-sources after compiling that driver over to the UVC directory. The driver will compile with the correct symbols and both devices work.

Because I didn't want to install KDE-libraries like Qt on the tiny SSD, I was looking for a TV-Software which is easy to use, allows for usual TV watching and even to record TV. The solution I found is Me-TV. You can install it if you add the repositories

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/lamothe/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/lamothe/ubuntu gutsy main

with apt-get or synaptic. Now that I got the stick to work I'll make it a present for a friend.