Fixing the TechnoTrend T1900 external DVB-T device under Ubuntu

I had trouble getting the TechnoTrend T1900 external DVB-T device working under Ubuntu.

The device gets properly detected by Ubuntu:

$ lsusb
...
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0b48:1005 TechnoTrend AG Technotrend/Hauppauge USB-Nova
...

$ lsmod | grep dvb
dvb_ttusb_budget 24576 10
dvb_core 126976 1 dvb_ttusb_budget

While scanning for channels, I discovered in dmesg that the firmware was outdated and couldn't be overridden. (see also http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1316032 -- "be" is "Belgium")

$ sudo apt install w-scan
$ w_scan -c be -X >> channels.conf
...

In a different terminal:

$ dmesg
...
[ 430.620228] tda1004x: setting up plls for 53MHz sampling clock
[ 432.761251] tda1004x: timeout waiting for DSP ready
[ 432.767276] tda1004x: found firmware revision 0 -- invalid
[ 432.767294] tda1004x: trying to boot from eeprom
[ 435.082609] tda1004x: timeout waiting for DSP ready
[ 435.089600] tda1004x: found firmware revision 0 -- invalid
[ 435.089615] tda1004x: waiting for firmware upload...
[ 435.089712] usb 1-2.3: Direct firmware load for dvb-fe-tda10046.fw failed with error -2

Luckily, the solution is easy: just load the non-free firmware package (apt and apt-get are the same):

sudo apt install linux-firmware-nonfree

Now, the DVB-T device will work just fine.

reference: http://lists.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2012-June/335840.html

update 2016: with Ubuntu 16.04, the linux-firmware-nonfree package was removed from the official repos (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-firmware-nonfree/+bug/1513589).

As a workaround you have to manually download and install the firmware drivers:

wget https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/raw/master/firmware/dvb-fe-tda10045.fw
wget https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/raw/master/firmware/dvb-fe-tda10046.fw
sudo cp ./dvb-fe-tda1004*.fw /lib/firmware/

YP-S5 and scratches

The Samsung YP-S5 is particularly prone to scratches. I bought it a month ago, and I have only used it for about 3-4 hours, but there are already a few scratches on the shiny plastic. I think I put the YP-S5 in my pocket next to my keys...

I found there is a commercial shield to protect the YP-S5: http://mp3playersandheadphones.co.uk/the-invisible-shield-samsung-yp-k5yp-s5-full-body-shield/ and http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/product_info.php?products_id=2339&aff=window. It's not clear to me if these products really help, without altering the the look & feel of the player. Time will tell...

Concerning the V1.50 firmware, I don't see much improvement compared to the previous V1.07 firmware. It still takes about 10 seconds to startup the device.

I like to listen to podcasts, but simply playing a few podcasts that are in different folders without manual intervention is almost impossible. I have also a simple Creative Muvo; the Muvo, with its smaller screen, is much better than the YP-S5 for playing podcasts. I like to play the podcasts in a sequential order, respecting the order of the podcasts that are under a directory-structure. On the YP-S5, I first tried to select all songs of style "podcast". But since not all podcasts set their style to 'podcast', it's not possible to use this attribute. I also tried the file-browser, but when the last song in a folder is reached it stops playing. It would have been better that the YP-S5 jumps to the next folder, and plays the first song in that folder. The only workable solution I found is to go to 'Albums', 'all' and than search for the podcasts. Unfortunatly, music and podcast are not separated.