Well it certainly won’t hurt to try, but I think they are talking about the xc3028-v27.fw firmware for DVB TV cards.
I’m now more convinced than ever that it is a driver issue… the sub device in VLC should have a full name, not just “device (0)”
I’ll keep looking, but when you say you googled the specific error message… it would be handy if you posted what that was, and the command you are using to switch VLC to composite.
The more info the better 
Hi again, and thanks
I googled
“em28xx #0: Unknown AC97 audio processor detected!”
Top answer was
This was reported to be a duplicate of
Googling
em28xx audio
Takes me to a few obscure sites but on the 2nd search page I’m led to the same launchpad page as quoted just above.
The command I am using to switch to composite is
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -i 1
That seems to work a treat.
Have to be honest that this
http://www.smartdv.co.uk/product.php/123/0
is looking pretty good right now
Heh… a female composite (RCA) <—> 3.5mm mini-jack “Y” cable would be cheaper…
and at £0.85p it won’t hurt to try one with the onboard soundcard as the “audio” capture device, and your USB thingy as the “video” capture device… certainly less painful than £141.00p 
I’ve seen them mentioned on other forums as a “working” solution
I agree, but the machine is a laptop with only a Mic input, which I suspect won’t do.
Having said that I also have a 3.5mm jack/usb connector so I suppose that might be the best entry point.
Ps - at that price, I’ve ordered one!
I suppose it just depends on whether the Mic socket is stereo… they are on most modern lappies, as the mic socket usually doubles as audio-in
What make /model of laptop ?
at 85p, I’d give it a whirl anyway. <— Oh, you are
[EDIT]
I’d be interested to know if the 3.5mm jack/usb connector is required and gets you any further, but suspect that it too would require drivers, and I have no idea if there are any.
It’s a Dell Inspiron 630m laptop, Centrino processor 2gb Ram 60Gb HDD and the (infamous) i915 graphics card.
It’s not much, but it’s all mine, and with Kubuntu (now 11.04) it punches well above it’s weight. About 2 years ago I relegated the pre-installed XP Media Center to a Virtualbox VM as I need to update a TomTom from time to time. The only other thing I do with it is to update the virus scanner.
It has one huge redeeming feature - a firewire port. This means I can connect my camcorder to it and capture the video with ease in kdenlive. That was the attraction of the Canopus, I’ve read it works extremely well, but if I can solve it for 85p then that is worth a go.
Thanks for your help
This may be a daft suggestion, but just in case audio is muted or set too low, try this:
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -i 1
and
v4l2-ctl --set-ctrl=volume=65500,mute=0
maybe you can string them together like:
v4l2-ctl -d /dev/video0 -i 1 --set-ctrl=volume=65500,mute=0
Your quote
“I’d be interested to know if the 3.5mm jack/usb connector is required and gets you any further, but suspect that it too would require drivers, and I have no idea if there are any.”
I already know this works - it’s simple plug and play.
It’s slightly different to this one, but you will see the penultimate in the description is a magic one
Well that’s that put to bed then … and nice to see Linux advertised in the OS list too.
Did you try the above command(s) ?
Not got home yet, will try tonight and thanks very much
Well I tried it but the card is silent. Couple of points:
If I do a modprobe card 64 it seems I generally get video without having to set to composite first, so that’s good. Not so good is that my messing with audio appears to have done something bad in that my laptop now appears to be constantly at full volume - I’m going to try and delete the kde config file that controls this to enable the setting to be re-spawned as it’s all got very messy with what seem to be multiple instances of this card. Maybe that’s not helping.
One thing that is also interesting is this
I’m not entirely certain what they are saying but they seem to be suggesting that the card is being controlled by usb_snd_audio? In the thread you will see reference to the OP getting the sound working at some point. I’ll have 1 last go tonight and if I can’t get this thing going I’ll wait for the postman to deliver tha amazon package
Hi
After my last posting above I received an e-mail (8 July at 18.46) to say I had had a response. However when I tried to login it seemed that the site was unavailable and when I did eventually get back in there wasn’t any reply there.
Anyway, since my last posting I have had a few more goes without success - it’s video only- so I’ve given up on it and will await the postman!
There was a power cut at the data centre … they got most stuff back up pretty quickly, but it took them a while to get round to a hard reset on the box this site is hosted on.
As for the missing message… I think I posted something… realised it made no sense… and removed it :o
Can’t remember what it was though.
No probs, thanks for your help with this, without you working with me I very much doubt I would have got as far as I have.
I haven’t given up yet … I’m pretty sure the sound chip is a Realtek ALC202, maybe ALC202A … I’m trying to find if there is a way to “inject” the device ID into sommat (not 100% sure what yet though), so it’s properly recognised.
Let me know what happens when the cable comes… meanwhile I’ll keep looking
Hmmm… take a look at this (French I’m afraid):
http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/em28xx_generique
or
Same page through Google Translate
First of all…YES, I do realise thats a D60 not a D60+, but bear with me…
After reading that, I decided to have a second look at what was in the newer em28xx-cards.c
(BTW, it is now slightly different, so a direct copy isn’t possible)
So I downloaded the latest v4l-dvb by following the instructions in the “Tarball download from a mercurial repository” section here:
http://www.linuxtv.org/repo/
After unpacking and opening the /v4l-dvb-3724e93f7af5/linux/drivers/media/video/em28xx/em28xx-cards.c file in gedit, I noticed that towards the bottom of the file your cards device ID:
{ USB_DEVICE(0xeb1a, 0x2861), .driver_info = EM2820_BOARD_UNKNOWN },
points back up the file to the section:
[EM2820_BOARD_UNKNOWN] = { .name = "Unknown EM2750/28xx video grabber", .tuner_type = TUNER_ABSENT, .is_webcam = 1, /* To enable sensor probe */ },
now if you compare that to all the other sections for (TUNER_ABSENT) grabber cards, you’ll notice it doesn’t contain a section relating to input (and in particular amux)… I reckon that section needs changing to:
[EM2820_BOARD_UNKNOWN] = { .name = "Unknown EM2750/28xx video grabber", .tuner_type = TUNER_ABSENT, .is_webcam = 1, /* To enable sensor probe */ .input = { { .type = EM28XX_VMUX_COMPOSITE1, .vmux = 0, .amux = EM28XX_AMUX_VIDEO, } }, },
Then the driver recompiling/reinstalling
BTW, the added input part came from the:
[EM2820_BOARD_VIDEOLOGY_20K14XUSB] = { .name = "Videology 20K14XUSB USB2.0", .valid = EM28XX_BOARD_NOT_VALIDATED, .tuner_type = TUNER_ABSENT, .is_webcam = 1, [b].input = { {[/b] [b].type = EM28XX_VMUX_COMPOSITE1,[/b] [b].vmux = 0,[/b] [b].amux = EM28XX_AMUX_VIDEO,[/b] [b]} },[/b] },
section a little further down.
Does that make sense, and what do you reckon ??
It may be a better idea just to wait for the cable, but I thought I’d post it anyway… even if it’s only something to try if the cable doesn’t work…
BTW, have you ever tested the mic input socket on your built-in soundcard ? … the reason I ask is that it’s an Intel HD audio device, so that may need a little tweaking to make work too… that should be a fairly easy fix though, if it’s necessary at all
[EDIT]
Thinking about it… maybe just changing the sudo modprobe em28xx card=(n) to whatever the Videology 20K14XUSB USB2.0 is, would do the trick ?
I know it’s going back a bit but…
I’ve just read all of this thread with great interest and some hope, I’d like to get the WinTV-HVR 900 (R2) working.
I’ve just made a clean install of Ubuntu 11.04 and was wondering if I performed the kernel upgrade to 2.6.39.0 to get the drivers, what stages from the instructions would I still need to complete?
Tom
If I were you I’d wait till Ubuntu 11.10 is released (scheduled for October 13th), and hopefully it will “just work”
Hi
Sorry not been back for a while but your latest response came whilst I was away on holiday (seems an awful long time off now).
Anyway, the cable arrived and I plugged it into the USB gizmo. I did in fact get some sound but it was awful. Indistinct, screechy and with a load of interference. There was silence when I plugged it into the Mic socket.
I have left it for a while and have now revisited it. It turns out that the usb card, being cheap and (not so) cheerful, delivers a load of interference whenever it is selected as the input, whether anything is connected at all, so I’ve sent for a better one. It’s fine for output though.
Alternatively, if I can get this thing working with the fix you have posted that would be very nice and I’m willing to give it a go. I would very much appreciate some guidance on this, or is this something that might “just work” with the newer kernel?
Did you try the:
sudo modprobe em28xx card=30
also, can you run this command WITHOUT the device plugged in:
ls -a /dev | grep dsp*
and post the output
the run it again WITH the device plugged in, and post the output.