Its actually full of nonsense

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Heh, I bought a new Pinnacle PCTV Stereo. I was wondering if it would work with linux. I love ubuntu but am still scared while buying new hardware, its still not as easy as clicking “next, next, next, finish”. I’ll blame the companies for not supporting Linux.

I quickly wanted to make sure the card was working, so loaded up windows. Snap, no sound. Ofcourse the audio cable wasn’t connected and without the motherboard manual (that mysteriously disappeared due to someone’s lazyness) I someone managed to connect it.

Now back on ubuntu, the tv card was detected, but I had no idea what apps I had to use. After some googling, mythtv seemed to stand out. After a lot of configuring and troubleshooting, it just didn’t work. Decided to go with tvtime. At first it didn’t work, but after changing frequency to custom and doing a tvtime-scanner, it worked. And LIRC works like a charm for the TV Remote.
Don’t know why, but a certain “irexec”, which was necessary for the remote to work, didn’t seem to be on. Had to turn it on manually with

irexec .lircrc –daemon

A small and brief howto for people who have the same card and have difficulties getting it to work

Type these out in terminal. You will, ofcourse, need super user access.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tvtime lirc

If the default options aren’t working for you,

sudo gedit /etc/lirc/hardware.conf

edit these

LOAD_MODULES=”false”

DRIVER=”pinsys”

DEVICE=”/dev/ttyS0″ # Depending on your device, COM1, COM2

Now you need to edit ~/.lircrc . You can find an example file here.

Well, Here is the one I’m using right now.

begin
prog = irexec
button = POWER
config = tvtime &
config = tvtime-command QUIT
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = Info
config = tvtime-command DISPLAY_INFO
repeat = 1
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = Fullscreen
config = tvtime-command TOGGLE_FULLSCREEN
end

begin
prog = irexec
button = Mute
config = tvtime-command TOGGLE_MUTE
end

# Menu navigation.
begin
prog = irexec
button = channel+
config = tvtime-command UP
repeat = 1
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = Chan+Play
config = tvtime-command UP
repeat = 1
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = channel-
config = tvtime-command DOWN
repeat = 1
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = Chan+Stop
config = tvtime-command DOWN
repeat = 1
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = vol+
config = tvtime-command RIGHT
repeat = 2
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = Vol+FF
config = tvtime-command RIGHT
repeat = 2
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = vol-
config = tvtime-command LEFT
repeat = 2
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = Vol+Rew
config = tvtime-command LEFT
repeat = 2
end

begin
prog = irexec
button = Chan_Last
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_JUMP
repeat = 1
end

begin
prog = irexec
button = 1
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_1
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 2
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_2
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 3
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_3
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 4
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_4
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 5
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_5
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 6
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_6
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 7
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_7
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 8
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_8
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 9
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_9
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = 0/AV
config = tvtime-command CHANNEL_0
end
begin
prog = irexec
button = middle
config = tvtime-command ENTER
end

Start up tvtime with

tvtime

Right-click on screen and configure to your needs