## 16.5 Setting Up TV Cards 

***Original contribution by Josef El-Rayes. Enhanced and adapted by Marc Fonvieille. ***

### 16.5.1 Introduction 

TV cards allow you to watch broadcast or cable TV on your computer. Most of them accept composite video via an RCA or S-video input and some of these cards come with a FM radio tuner.

DragonFly provides support for PCI-based TV cards using a Brooktree Bt848/849/878/879 or a Conexant CN-878/Fusion 878a Video Capture Chip with the [bktr(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#bktr&section4) driver. You must also ensure the board comes with a supported tuner, consult the [bktr(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=bktr&section=4) manual page for a list of supported tuners.

### 16.5.2 Adding the Driver 

To use your card, you will need to load the [bktr(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#bktr&section4) driver, this can be done by adding the following line to the `/boot/loader.conf` file like this:

    
    bktr_load="YES"


Alternatively, you may statically compile the support for the TV card in your kernel, in that case add the following lines to your kernel configuration:

    
    device	bktr
    device	iicbus
    device	iicbb
    device	smbus


These additional device drivers are necessary because of the card components being interconnected via an I2C bus. Then build and install a new kernel.

Once the support was added to your system, you have to reboot your machine. During the boot process, your TV card should show up, like this:

    
    bktr0: <BrookTree 848A> mem 0xd7000000-0xd7000fff irq 10 at device 10.0 on pci0
    iicbb0: <I2C bit-banging driver on bti2c0
    iicbus0: <Philips I2C bus> on iicbb0 master-only
    iicbus1: <Philips I2C bus> on iicbb0 master-only>
    smbus0: <System Management Bus&> on bti2c0
    bktr0: Pinnacle/Miro TV, Philips SECAM tuner.


Of course these messages can differ according to your hardware. However you should check if the tuner is correctly detected; it is still possible to override some of the detected parameters with [sysctl(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#sysctl&section8) MIBs and kernel configuration file options. For example, if you want to force the tuner to a Philips SECAM tuner, you should add the following line to your kernel configuration file:

    
    options OVERRIDE_TUNER=6


or you can directly use [sysctl(8)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#sysctl&section8):

    
    # sysctl hw.bt848.tuner=6


See the [bktr(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#bktr&section4) manual page and the `/usr/src/sys/config/LINT` file for more details on the available options.

### 16.5.3 Useful Applications 

To use your TV card you need to install one of the following applications:


* [multimedia/fxtv](http://pkgsrc.se/multimedia/fxtv) provides TV-in-a-window and image/audio/video capture capabilities.

* [multimedia/xawtv](http://pkgsrc.se/multimedia/xawtv) is also a TV application, with the same features as  **fxtv** .

* [multimedia/alevt](http://pkgsrc.se/multimedia/alevt) decodes and displays Videotext/Teletext.

* [audio/xmradio](http://pkgsrc.se/audio/xmradio), an application to use the FM radio tuner coming with some TV cards.

More applications are available in the pkgsrc® tree.

### 16.5.4 Troubleshooting 

If you encounter any problem with your TV card, you should check at first if the video capture chip and the tuner are really supported by the [bktr(4)](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command#bktr&section4) driver and if you used the right configuration options. For more support and various questions about your TV card you may want to contact and use the archives of the [DragonFly User related mailing list](http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/).



CategoryHandbook
CategoryHandbook-multimedia