Digital DVB-T on Raspbian

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.

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