CX88 Blackbird Drivers

This page was written by Pluto and imported with their permission when LinuxMCE branched off in February, 2007. In general any information should apply to LinuxMCE. However, this page should be edited to reflect changes to LinuxMCE and remove old references to Pluto.

What is it?

The IVTV project contains drivers for several PVR cards with hardware MPEG encoding, such as the Hauppauge PVR-250. However, there are many newer generation PVR cards, such as the PVR-250MC, that are based on the "Blackbird" reference design by Connexant, which aren't supported by ivtv. These drivers are for those cards.

The main Video4Linux and CX88 project is http://linux.bytesex.org/v4l2/cx88.html

The drivers we have included here include the Video4Linux project with Blackbird patches, plus some additional patches and an ivtv emulation layer allowing the drivers to be used in a PVR, such as MythTV.

How to get it/use it?

If you are going to setup a PC as a dedicated PVR, the easiest solution is just to install Pluto. Even if you're not interested in the other aspects of Pluto (home automation, security, telecom, etc.), it's a very quick way to get a PVR up and going. Just download the Kick-Start CD and boot--it will automatically install & configure a Debian OS, the Pluto software, the PVR software, and, if you wish, all the source code. This way your PVR is very easy to configure using a web-based configuration front-end--you don't even need to login to a console. And it will update itself automatically with the latest versions. http://www.plutohome.com/support

To download the drivers or source code manually, click the Download button above. Or get a patch file http://www.plutohome.com/download/cx88patches.pat