I have recently bought a PCTV Quatro Stick nano 520e, here is some notes about it.
Testing with dvbstream
For some reason tzap does not seem to function all that great with the 520e, but I managed to get a signal out by doing the following:
|
1 |
dvbstream <span style="color: #ff0000;">111</span> <span style="color: #ff0000;">121</span> <span style="color: #ff0000;">101</span> -f <span style="color: #0000ff;">626000000</span> -n 180 -o > /tmp/out.mpeg |
The first three numbers relate to the last tree numbers in the channels.conf file, e.g. created by w_scan. The first seems to video signal, the second audio, the third is some kind of service id.
-f is the frequency argument.
-n 180 means that 180 seconds will be recorded.
-o means output to file.
Example snippet from channels.conf:
|
1 |
DR1(DR):<span style="color: #0000ff;">626000000</span>:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_NONE:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4:HIERARCHY_NONE:<span style="color: #ff0000;">111</span>:<span style="color: #ff0000;">121</span>:<span style="color: #ff0000;">101</span> |
KDE’s kaffeine can also be used for testing.
Other notes
The device seems to be using the DVB-C frontend by default, however, using tzap will make the device switch to DVB-T.
Known bugs
I intended to use the 520e with my Raspberry Pi for viewing and recording TV, however, there is a problem with the RPI and USB transport streams. Hopefully work on this problem will start soon.
Update (10/11-2013): I have recently had good results using Raspbmc, which contains a patch which actually makes the Quatro stick close to usable. Occasionally errors still occurs, specially when the RPi is loaded by other processes, e.g. playing a video.