I’ve been fighting with my TV Tuner for almost a month now. There’s very little information on the intarwebs about my particular card (ATI TV Wonder), and even less information about getting it to run under Linux. I had it working under windows somewhat decently, but it was really only good for watching TV. I’m looking to record stuff while I’m not at home, and All the programs for that on Windows were hella expensive.

So, when I made the switch to Linux a couple months ago, I happily set upon the task of getting my TV Tuner to work.

Apparently, there’s some issues with Video4Linux and my Video Card. The Overlay mode causes X to crash, and sometimes the entire computer to either freeze up, or reboot. I then discovered a most wonderful program called “TVTime”.

I did some reading on the bttv module for the Linux kernel, and set up my ATI TV Wonder 100 different ways (Each website swore that this way worked for them). I was able to get a picture, and the channels to change, but I was unable to get sound. I fought with this sound issue for 2 solid weeks until I finally resolved the issue last night.

Apparently another kernel module was required in order to enable the sound on the TV Tuner. A most helpful gentleman discussed the module on the video4linux mailing list, without really telling me that that module was what was needed to fix my problem. All I needed was a hint, and he gave it to me!

I spent last night playing with Freevo, trying to get the Schedule set up correctly, and trying to get it to record programs for me. So far so good!

My next step is to run TV Out from my Radeon 9700 to a 19″ TV that’s sitting at the end of our bed. The TV has only coaxial input, so I now have a VCR sitting on my desk as well. The VCR, unfortunately, is so old that it only has composite input (RCA Cable) and my Video card has either DVI out, or S-video out.

So now, I need an adapter. And as you probably saw in my post on Saturday, I have no money.

Guess I need to wait until Next week…

… I hate waiting.