The DVBSky T980C DVB-T2/T/C PCIe with CI card is a nice match for watching cable TV on a Linux machine since it is natively supported since kernel 3.19. It comes with a CI slot that allows watching of Pay TV channels. Even though it is supported by the kernel several installation steps are required that are outlined below.
As outlined on the linuxtv page of the card there are two versions that require different firmeware files. Those files can be downloaded from the OpenELEC firmware collection.
In contrast to what is noted on the linuxtv page the
Version 2 of the card requires the following two files to be copied
into the /lib/firmware
folder:
After a reboot the command dmesg
should contain a line like this:
cx23885: CORE cx23885[0]: subsystem: 4254:980c, board: DVBSky T980C [card=46,autodetected]
The card is shipped with an infrared remote control. In order to setup this device lirc needs to be installed:
sudo apt-get install lirc
However, in Focal Fossa the lirc package has a bug that leads to a segmentation fault
in the installation process. To solve this, copy the following files into
the folder /etc/lirc
and re-installing the lirc package.
The IR controller is disabled by default in the cx23885
kernel module.
It can be enabled by setting the module option enable_885_ir
to 1.
This can be achieved permanently by copying the file
cx23885.conf to the folder /etc/modprobe.d
.
Check if the currently logged in user is in the video
group with the command id
.
If this is not the case, add the currently logged in user with the following command:
sudo usermod -a -G video $(whoami)
The package ir-keytable
is required to operate the IR:
sudo apt-get install ir-keytable
It comes with a keymap for the DVBSky IR that maps
scan codes to key codes. The codes do not match exactly the ones of the
remote shipped with the T980C card. This can be solved by replacing
the file /lib/udev/rc_keymaps/dvbsky.toml
with the following file
dvbsky.toml
After another reboot the IR should be recognized by the kernel.
The commands sudo ir-keytable -t
and irw
should return
scan codes and key codes, respectively.
In order to interact properly with a media player irexec needs to be
configured and started.
For Kaffeine
this can be achieved by copying the file
lircrc to the folder ~/.config
.
In order to permanently start irexec open the gnome session properties
with the command
gnome-session-properties
and add an entry with the following properties:
- Name: irexec
- Command: irexec -d
- Comment: IR-Remote
The irexec configuration relies on qdbus-qt5
and xte
to be installed.
Note that xte is part of the xautomation package.
sudo apt-get install qdbus-qt5
sudo apt-get install xautomation
After a suspend to ram and subsequent resume there is no TV signal and the IR remote stops working.
This seems to be related to a bug in the cx23885 module.
A workaround is to unload and load the module with a script.
Copy the file dvbsky-sleep.service to the folder
/etc/systemd/system
and enable the service:
sudo cp dvbsky-sleep.service /etc/systemd/system
sudo systemctl enable dvbsky-sleep.service