6.2. PCI drivers

The PCI boards are identified by an identification called PCI ID. The PCI ID is actually composed by two parts:

  • Vendor ID and device ID;

  • Subsystem ID and Subsystem device ID;

The lspci -nn command allows identifying the vendor/device PCI IDs:

 $ lspci -nn
 ...
 00:0a.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Philips Semiconductors SAA7131/SAA7133/SAA7135 Video Broadcast Decoder [1131:7133] (rev d1)
 00:0b.0 Multimedia controller [0480]: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture [109e:0878] (rev 11)
 01:00.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23887/8 PCIe Broadcast Audio and Video Decoder with 3D Comb [14f1:8880] (rev 0f)
 02:01.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Internext Compression Inc iTVC15 (CX23415) Video Decoder [4444:0803] (rev 01)
 02:02.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Conexant Systems, Inc. CX23418 Single-Chip MPEG-2 Encoder with Integrated Analog Video/Broadcast Audio Decoder [14f1:5b7a]
 02:03.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture [109e:036e] (rev 11)
 ...

The subsystem IDs can be obtained using lspci -vn

 $ lspci -vn
 ...
     00:0a.0 0480: 1131:7133 (rev d1)
             Subsystem: 1461:f01d
             Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 209
             Memory at e2002000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
             Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
 ...

At the above example, the first card uses the saa7134 driver, and has a vendor/device PCI ID equal to 1131:7133 and a PCI subsystem ID equal to 1461:f01d (see Saa7134 card list).

Unfortunately, sometimes the same PCI subsystem ID is used by different products. So, several media drivers allow passing a card= parameter, in order to setup a card number that would match the correct settings for an specific board.

The current supported PCI/PCIe cards (not including staging drivers) are listed below[1].

Driver

Name

altera-ci

Altera FPGA based CI module

b2c2-flexcop-pci

Technisat/B2C2 Air/Sky/Cable2PC PCI

bt878

DVB/ATSC Support for bt878 based TV cards

bttv

BT8x8 Video For Linux

cobalt

Cisco Cobalt

cx18

Conexant cx23418 MPEG encoder

cx23885

Conexant cx23885 (2388x successor)

cx25821

Conexant cx25821

cx88xx

Conexant 2388x (bt878 successor)

ddbridge

Digital Devices bridge

dm1105

SDMC DM1105 based PCI cards

dt3155

DT3155 frame grabber

dvb-ttpci

AV7110 cards

earth-pt1

PT1 cards

earth-pt3

Earthsoft PT3 cards

hexium_gemini

Hexium Gemini frame grabber

hexium_orion

Hexium HV-PCI6 and Orion frame grabber

hopper

HOPPER based cards

ipu3-cio2

Intel ipu3-cio2 driver

ivtv

Conexant cx23416/cx23415 MPEG encoder/decoder

ivtvfb

Conexant cx23415 framebuffer

mantis

MANTIS based cards

mgb4

Digiteq Automotive MGB4 frame grabber

mxb

Siemens-Nixdorf ‘Multimedia eXtension Board’

netup-unidvb

NetUP Universal DVB card

ngene

Micronas nGene

pluto2

Pluto2 cards

saa7134

Philips SAA7134

saa7164

NXP SAA7164

smipcie

SMI PCIe DVBSky cards

solo6x10

Bluecherry / Softlogic 6x10 capture cards (MPEG-4/H.264)

sta2x11_vip

STA2X11 VIP Video For Linux

tw5864

Techwell TW5864 video/audio grabber and encoder

tw686x

Intersil/Techwell TW686x

tw68

Techwell tw68x Video For Linux

zoran

Zoran-36057/36067 JPEG codec

Some of those drivers support multiple devices, as shown at the card lists below: