Getting Avermedia Volar HD Nano (A867R) to work in Linux Mint 10 (Julia)

Pre-requisites

You need to be connected to the internet unless you have the necessary kernel source files already on your machine.

Here's what to do

• download driver source from Avermedia;
• extract it to a folder, perhaps in your home/documents directory;
• open a terminal window;
• download the linux kernel source code with 'sudo apt-get install linux-source';
• cd to '/usr/src/' and extract the source code with 'sudo tar -jxf linux-source-2.6.35.tar.bz2' - this will create a directory containing all the source code at /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.35;
• next we need to create the necessary symlink from where the makefile expects to find the dvb source code to where we extracted it - 'cd /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic' and then execute the command 'sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.35/ source';
• 'ls' and make sure there is now a symlink in /lib/modules/2.6.32-21-generic to /source;
• cd to where you extracted the avermedia driver source - we now need to edit a couple of source code files so that their references point to the right locations for Linux Mint 10
• Type 'gedit usb2impl.c' and change the first line from '#include ' to '#include '. Save and exit gedit.

Type 'gedit mxl5007t.c' and immediately after the line '#include ' add the following as a new line: '#include '. Save and exit gedit.

• type 'make' and if you've done everything right to this point then it should complete with out any stop errors - you may see a few "warnings" concerning the mxl5007t.c compilation but these will not prevent the driver from compiling or functioning correctly;
• 'sudo make install';
• plug the tuner in (if you haven't already) and check to see that its on the USB bus with 'lsusb'. You should see a line with 'AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.' in it;
• now test to see if the kernel driver module is up and running with 'lsmod | grep a867';
• you can also do a 'dmesg | grep AVer' which should reveal that:

[ nnnn.xxxxyy] AVerMedia A867 driver module V1.0.27 loaded.
[ nnnn.xxxxyy] dvb-usb: found a 'AVerMedia A867 DVB-T Recevier' in warm state.
[ nnnn.xxxxyy] DVB: registering new adapter (AVerMedia A867 DVB-T Recevier)
[ nnnn.xxxxyy] dvb-usb: AVerMedia A867 DVB-T Recevier successfully initialized and connected.
• a 'dmesg | grep DVB' should also give you some useful info like:

[ nnnn.xxxxyy] dvb-usb: found a 'AVerMedia A867 DVB-T Recevier' in warm state.
[ nnnn.xxxxyy] DVB: registering new adapter (AVerMedia A867 DVB-T Recevier)
[ nnnn.xxxxyy] DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (A867 USB DVB-T)...
[ nnnn.xxxxyy] dvb-usb: AVerMedia A867 DVB-T Recevier successfully initialized and connected.

Testing it out

If the driver build went all according to plan then its time to test it out. If you haven't already, then download and install 'dvb-apps' with 'sudo apt-get install dvb-apps'

Create a channels.conf file using 'scan' - 'scan /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/au-Canberra-Black-Mt > ~/.tzap/channels.conf.

Use 'tzap' to create a video TS stream that you can watch in mplayer by choosing an available channel from the scan and executing 'tzap -r "SBS ONE"' or something like that.

Watch the video stream in mplayer by entering in another terminal window 'mplayer /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0'

VLC

I found that VLC provided better TS stream playback then mplayer. You can install VLC by selecting the relevant option in the Synaptic Package Manager. VLC can scan for channels but it seems to do a fairly poor job of it. You can get VLC to use your channels.conf file by starting it from a terminal with 'vlc ~/.tzap/channels.conf' assuming you created your channels.conf in ~/.tzap/ .

The advantage with using VLC is that you are able to get sub-titles displaying.