Recently, I have been asked to get working Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestria (DVB-T) tunner on Raspberry PI 3. The tunner is Cinergy DVB-T stick from Terratec. Below are my notes describing installation of the stick on Raspbian Linux 9.1 Stretch. I hope someone find them useful.
1. Copy Raspbian to SD CARD (on Ubuntu)
First, we need to copy Raspbian installation image to SD card. Below is the example using dd command on Linux.
$ sudo dd bs=4M if=2017-09-07-raspbian-stretch.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 status=progress conv=fsync
Insert SD card to Raspberry and power on the box. The default user is pi with the password raspberry. Enable SSH and VNC server for remote box administration. Navigate to Menu-> Preferences-> Raspberry PI Configuration.
2. Install Firmware
Inspect kernel for any error message connected with DVB-T tunner.
$ dmesg
Picture 1 - Missing firmware isdbt_rio.imp
Download firmware file isdbt_rio.imp (md5 - 9b762c1808fd8da81bbec3e24ddb04a3) from here. I have also uploaded it to Google disk. You can download and copy the file to the directory /lib/firmware with the command below.
$ sudo wget https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1MwDGSG4ZEm3eeJuf0gS686Be-ngx4rKR -O /lib/firmware/isdbt_rio.inp
Reboot PI and check kernel for any other kernel error messages.
Picture 2 - Missing firmware dvb_rio.imp
Download firmware file dvb_rio.imp (md5 - 146156b55ce6fc586470f28194add5a7) from here. or from Google disk. Alternatively, you can download and copy firmware to /lib/firmware with the command below.
$ sudo wget https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1IxpPmGiYEM7uHPs8ne3QIfxJHJiTYsN- -O /lib/firmware/dvb_rio.imp2
In order to get DVB-T tuner working, we need to set a default mode to 4 for the module smsmdtv. Without this setting, we get message no usable terrestrial card found.
Picture 3 - Terrestrial Card not found
$ echo "options smsmdtv default_mode=4" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/smsmdtv.conf
Afterwards, we can reboot Raspbian again.
2. Channel Tunning
We install a command-line scanning tool for DVB channels on Raspbian and we will try to search for transponders.
$ sudo apt-get install w-scan
Now, we can scan the channels.
$ w_scan -ft -x
-ft -> terrestrian [default]
-x -> generate initial tuning data for (dvb-) scan
Picture 4 - Searching for Channels
Now, we can install DVB-T player me-tv with the command below. The navigate to Menu -> Sound & Video -> Me TV.
$ sudo apt-get install me-tv
The very first time the player is started, the wizard is opened. Click option AutoScan and select your country. Then click Next button.
Picture 5 -Selecting Auto scan Option
The player will search channels for you.
Picture 6 -Searching for Channels
When searching is finished, just click Add button and then OK.
Picture 7 - Adding Channels
Once channels are added, you can start watching TV.
Picture 8 - Watching TV
Here is the output from lsmod command in case, it is needed for troubleshooting.