5.2. 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].

[1]some of the drivers have sub-drivers, not shown at this table
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
meye Sony Vaio Picturebook Motion Eye
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: