Tvheadend

I use a TechniSat CableStar HD 2 PCI card. I have it working under Ubuntu since version 10.something. No additional installs needed, works out of the box with TVH.

I use a TBS 6920 (TBS-6920) on Ubuntu 10.10 - 12.04 (64bit) without problems.
I also tested the card under Gentoo. Works out of the box with TVH and no problems occured so far.

TBS 6280 (DVB-T/T2) works great with TVHeadend too, on a 11.10 64-bit Ubuntu system. Needs to have drivers installed, but instructions can be found here:

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6280

I'm using four TBS 6921 and four TBS 5921 cards and have no issues with version 3.0.
OpenSuSE 12.1 32bit Kernel 3.1.10-pae

Drivers from http://www.tbsdtv.com/download/

I use a Hauppauge WinTV Nova HD-S2 PCI card on Ubuntu 11.04 - 32bit.
No issue with TVH. Additional driver installs needed. Instructions and informations can be found here: http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2

Silicon Dust "HD Homerun Dual"
I use a Silicon Dust "HD Homerun Dual" ethernet tuner for dvb-c/t, on a Gentoo AMD64 kernel 3.5.0 system.

http://www.silicondust.com/products/models/hdhr3-eu/

Since it is a network-tuner, you need a special driver to get it to show up in /dev/dvb as a virtual tuner which can be found here:
https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/dvbhdhomerun/

Works fine so far with the newest driver in combination with TVHeadend 3.1
(but only started using the newest driver in combination with the newest TVHeadend version recently; up to now only used older versions of both, which worked fine).

Pinnacle PCTV 72e

I also use a Pinnacle PCTV 72e, single DVB-T tuner, USB connection.
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_72e

One issue is that it only seems to work when connected to a USB2 port, and not on a USB3 port.
(no problem by itself, but it is a bit weird i would say).

Hauppauge PCTV Nanostick T2 HD 290e

This USB-tuner supports both DVB-T2 and DVB-C by creating one frontend for each, /dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0 and frontend1.

Tvheadend will only work with one of the frontend at a time, I have only tried out the DVB-T2 frontend and it looks nice.

• The dual adapter feature works
• logs full of i2c read/write errors, and from time to time the adapter needs to be hotplugged.
• You need to get firmware manually.

Suggestion : make the list a table with ratings/known issues; maybe cooperate with other lists such as http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_USB_Devices ?

Digital Devices Cine CT V6 PCIe (Dual Tuner Cable/Terestrial) works too. Very good and stable tuners with excellent sensivity.
Note that the driver must compiled manually because it isn't (at this time) part of the linux kernel. This card has/is a low-profile design.

On another machine TeVii S464 PCIe (DVB-S2) works OOTB. This comes also as low-profile card.

Genpix Skywalker-II works great out of the box. No issues whatsoever and gets qpsk and 8psk. Does others as well of course, but those are the two I use.

Cub

TeVii s480 (DVB-S2) Twin Card works after getting firmware files.
System Debian, Kernel (now) 3.5, Intel i3.

Keep in mind card is an USB card with two USB S660 adapters. You'll find them with 'lsusb' not 'lspci' !

I'm using the TBS 6991 on ubuntu 12.04 64 bit machine, got the tbs drivers from their website. created a directory called TBS in my homedirectory and copied the follwing files into it:
linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2
v4l-cx23885-avcore-01.fw
then open up a terminal and do this:

tar xjvf linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2
cd linux-tbs-drivers

as I have a 64 bit machine I have to do this (differs on 32bit):

sudo ./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh
sudo make
sudo make install

now your TBS6991 is installed, reboot your machine

Currently using a TBS5922 USB device on Debian x64 unstable without any issues. :)

Ubuntu Server 12.04
2 x TBS 6984
TBS drivers v120827
XBMC PVR as frontend

Stabilty around 95%

Using a HDHomeRun Prime with 3 ATSC tuners. It's a networked box and requires software available from silicondust to get a device in /dev/. Shows up fine in tvheadend, but I am having problems getting certain channels to the front-end (xbmc). It may be a cable company issue although the channels appear to have "0" for CCI Protection suggesting they are copy-free. Still hacking at it though.

I have 2x Digital Devices Cine S2 V6 in my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server. These cards are automatically recognised and initialised as the kernel contains working drivers!
I replaced my TBS6984 with these cards for 2 reasons:

- the TBS needs compiled drivers; everytime a security update is installed (which in our case installs automatically) we need to compile the TBS drivers for the card to work again
- the TBS is slow compared to the Cine S2 cards. Scanning and EPG updates are faster and also zap-times are faster

Very happy with these cards!

One TBS6925 (Freesat) and one TB6284 (Boxer). Also using one PCTV290e and one AverTV 777. No problem with any HW. Run a Fedora 16 Server (Kernel 3.6.2) and Tvheadend 3.2.18. Will upgrade this winter to Fedora 18.
XBMCbuntu as frontend. Also tried Openelec v2 but my "old" Samsung TV don't accept the HDMI audio for some unknown reason...

Currently using Skystar USB HD on my Open Media Vault Server (debian)

FloppyDTV/FireDTV working fine too. Have to unload firedtv module within the Openelec - XBMC - TVheadend Add-On to get them working after suspend/resume of the system, otherwise TVheadend starts up and cards are not working and all muxes are checked and one-by-one disabled.

K-World KW-399U DVB-T (Based on AF9015 chipset, same as Martin's Evolve Venus. Experiences are almost identical

- Used to be very hard to find a firmware/kernel pairing that worked (Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, were hit and miss, but 12.04 pairing seems to work).
- Works fine to start with but randomlys stop working, sometimes spewing i2c errors, sometimes not.
- ...but cheap, £30 two years ago, think mine was reduced to £20 even.

All in all far too much hassle if you want your recordings to be reliable. Have since replaced.

PCTV 290e nanoStick T2:

- Good value for DVB-T2 (Freeview HD in UK) (£55 of Amazon), but only single tuner.
- No firmware or driver hassle - drivers are in mainline kernel, works out of box first time on Ubuntu 12.04. Big plus if you like the easy life.
- Nice build quality, much better than the K-World.
- Reliability so far so good, but bit early to day. No significant dropouts, some minor continuity errors as to be expected. (Strong signal area)

If the PCTV proves to be reliable, I think I will grab another for a dual setup.

I've got a Mystique SaTiX-S2 Sky Xpress on the way, (single tuner - only a single sat feed to my flat), so I'll report on that when its had some use. The reason for buying however was the reasonable price (£40 + £8 postage), and apparently has good non-binary driver support in linux.

Adding another one :
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0db0:5580 Micro Star International Mega Sky 580 DVB-T Tuner [M902x]
using the dvb_usb_m920x driver. Works great. No issues. The only downside is that AFAIK it can't be found for sale anywhere anymore.

Jim : With af9015, I managed to get it working 99% reliably (meaning a couple of days of running without manual intervention).
To get it that way, I'm using the latest 3.6 kernel (will try 3.7 next week). Scanning is done one tuner after the other, and then I disable initial scan, disable idle scanning, and enable "close device handle when idle". With this it works very well.

Serafean

I've updated my set-up I'm now using the following devices.

DVB-S/S2
Technisat SkyStar HD USB receiver (that replaced the TBS QBOX 5922 more on why below)
Tevii S471 PCIe

DVB-T/T2
PCTV 290e nanoStick T2
Hauppauge NOVA-TD Stick (Dual tuner)
Hauppauge NOVA-T Stick (Single tuner)

I'd originally used the TBS 5922 (which itself replaced the original TBS QBOX due to overheating). I'm not sure what TBS have done to the drivers for the 5922 but the device now takes 10s just to tune (It was ~2s using older drivers which I unfortunately never backed up and are no longer available), The latest drivers for the 5922 will also cause TVH to hang for a few seconds while it tunes which leads me to believe it is a driver issue. I'd like to hear from anyone with a 5922 to confirm whether it is the driver or my machine (HP Microserver).

So until TBS sort out their poor drivers I do not recommend the TBS 5922.
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Jim S wrote:

K-World KW-399U DVB-T (Based on AF9015 chipset, same as Martin's Evolve Venus. Experiences are almost identical

- Used to be very hard to find a firmware/kernel pairing that worked (Ubuntu 11.04, 11.10, were hit and miss, but 12.04 pairing seems to work).
- Works fine to start with but randomlys stop working, sometimes spewing i2c errors, sometimes not.
- ...but cheap, £30 two years ago, think mine was reduced to £20 even.

All in all far too much hassle if you want your recordings to be reliable. Have since replaced.

PCTV 290e nanoStick T2:

- Good value for DVB-T2 (Freeview HD in UK) (£55 of Amazon), but only single tuner.
- No firmware or driver hassle - drivers are in mainline kernel, works out of box first time on Ubuntu 12.04. Big plus if you like the easy life.
- Nice build quality, much better than the K-World.
- Reliability so far so good, but bit early to day. No significant dropouts, some minor continuity errors as to be expected. (Strong signal area)

If the PCTV proves to be reliable, I think I will grab another for a dual setup.

I've got a Mystique SaTiX-S2 Sky Xpress on the way, (single tuner - only a single sat feed to my flat), so I'll report on that when its had some use. The reason for buying however was the reasonable price (£40 + £8 postage), and apparently has good non-binary driver support in linux.

Hi Jim,

I have the PCTV 290e nanoStick T2 but I found it can be rather hit and miss when used with other tuners on the same usb subsystem as other devices, causing the other devices and itself to fail, dumping a load of I2C read/write errors (from the dib0700, em28xx drivers).

So as long as use you it without sharing a usb subsystem, it'll work fine.

Have used the following successfully

Tevii S480
Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-TD-500
ASUS My Cinema-U3000 Mini

All work fine with TVheadend, but all were purchase because of good Linux support.