Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T Stick under Linux

I just got myself a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T Stick (USB) and tried to get it working in Linux. With a bit of fiddling, I've got everything working, and also found an application to extract EPG info that can be displayed with OnTV.

First of all, you need to get the correct firmware. The file you need should be in the "dmesg" output after plugging in the stick. For me, the firmware file I needed was dvb-usb-dib0700-01.fw, so I googled around for it, found it and placed it in /lib/firmware/. After re-connecting the stick, the "dmesg" output should tell you that the firmware has been loaded. To get a working list of channels, I used w_scan with the "-X" parameter to generate a channels.conf.

Then, I downloaded xine (actually, I installed xine-ui in Debian) and placed the previously-generated channels.conf into ~/.xine/. This should already make things working: Start up xine, select "DVB" and wait for the channel to load. I had to change my window manager from Compiz to Metacity to prevent some errors related to the video stuff. With Metacity as window manager and xine, I get very good and performant video.

For EPG/XMLTV, I checked out the current Subversion trunk head of tv_grab_dvb. Compile it. To get the EPG data, you can't just simply tv_grab_dvb (or you can, but you would have to tune in somehow, which I didn't figure out). I solved this problem by simply running xine and watching TV, which tunes in into the right station, then running "tv_grab_dvb -e utf-8 -t 2 > ~/tv-guide.xml". This should result in a nice XMLTV file that can be parsed by other applications to give you EPG info. You can load this file into OnTV and have an EPG. To get OnTV for Debian, I downloaded the Ubuntu source package for "ontv" and compiled it on Debian. Then, add "OnTV" to your gnome-panel and configure it with the XMLTV you generated above. Then, select the TV channels to monitor and click on the TV icon. You should see the list of current programs.

So, DVB-T on Linux works fine with the Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T Stick. Neat!

Update: The stick was only for testing compatibility on Linux, I don't use it anymore. Please see the Linux TV websites for more information.