Pandora Tv / Radio


bustaballs

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Dec 31, 2007
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You know you want to hook up that usb tv tuner to your Pandora! Do you think there will be enough demand for this to have drivers and software for it? Listening to some FM radio while doing something else on the system sounds like an idea. Who doesn't want TV on the go either?
 
Finding drivers for most of the USB TV/FM devices is quite difficult, I bought one a while back which was pretty amazing hardware wise, actually 2 different ones, neither work on Linux :(
 
Whilst I don't know a great deal about USB TV tuners at this time (I was planning on looking into them more after seeing if anyone had success with particular models on the Pandora :lol: I use Linux exclusively, and want to get something that's definitely compatible with all of my machines), but I do have this page about them in my bookmarks. Hopefully it should shed some light on what's known to work (and not work) with Linux.
 
Someone in another thread had linked to the tech PDF of one of the chips and I posed a question that no one answered. It appears the one chip has a possible FM reception/transmission capability. Well, maybe not, I don't know enough about it to tell.

It's here...
http://focus.ti.com/...nk/tps65950.pdf

section 6.2.4

Maybe it needs more parts to do this, maybe it's something we can tap into? I dunno, maybe someone knowledgeable enough can look at this and tell us. Probably have to mod it which is out of my ability, well I wouldn't risk it for FM radio. But if it's capable, that would be nice.

A TV tuner would be cool, maybe someday someone will find a way, that's the beauty of a fully open source system!
 
Kaffeine is a nice desktop tv player. As for USB tv receivers, Terratec's seem well supported by linux.
 
I've now ordered myself one of the tuners from the list I posted earlier (it was quite a good price, but difficult to find - I'm guessing that one's been discontinued). I'll be testing it as soon as my Pandora arrives (and I'll learn to use it by means of my Acer Aspire One in the meantime). :D
 
Of course, just because it works with Linux, doesn't necessarily mean that it'll work with Linux on ARM, does it?
 
I have a usb zappa stick and I use it with mythtv, I used these drivers http://linuxtv.org/hg/~jhoogenraad/rtl2831-r2 (I had to do make and make install) if they are cross-platform you can watch TV in Pandora. Can someone check they?
 
Poem58 said:
It appears the one chip has a possible FM reception/transmission capability. Well, maybe not, I don't know enough about it to tell.

iirc FM radio is between VHF channel 6 and channel 7's frequencies (at least in north america), so a TV tuner also work as an FM tuner unless that range is disabled in the software drivers or firmware.

bu of course, they will sell you the FM tuner separately.
 
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Stephane Hockenhull said:
Poem58 said:
It appears the one chip has a possible FM reception/transmission capability. Well, maybe not, I don't know enough about it to tell.

iirc FM radio is between VHF channel 6 and channel 7's frequencies (at least in north america), so a TV tuner also work as an FM tuner unless that range is disabled in the software drivers or firmware.

bu of course, they will sell you the FM tuner separately.

Uhm...let me guess, you are talking about a USB dongle? You must not have clicked the link I posted and moved down to 6.2.4. Which has nothing to do with TV tuners. I was talking about a chip IN the Pandora. But it doesn't matter, the more I read the link I put there, even though I don't know what it all means, it seems more and more like amplification for an FM circuit. Although to someone like myself it almost also looks like you could use it's FM channels as amplifiers. I didn't remember which TV channels exactly that FM was broadcast between but I knew channel 6 was involved cause our crap cable company traditionally had complaints of radio stations all over channel 6 before they moved out of analog signals. So 6 to 7 would be likely, but then again with my knowledge 5 to 6 could be too....lol
Anyway, I'd go with your memory. Also another oddity, I used to have a 13" B&W Tv as a kid with a broken aerial and a metal coat hanger in it. Someone in the neigborhood got cable and due to some wild signal bleed or something I got The Movie Channel on channel 7 of my little TV clear as a bell from that wire coat hanger. Then again I also years later picked up a station in Canada on Channel 10 with same wire hanger for a whole evening. Weird.
 
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in the UK you can get on demand bbc and many other channels from their websites, focusing on BBC im able on my nokia to view live tv and radio. the pandora could do alot better job i recon.

a digital tv dongle/usb stick would be cool. as it kills two birds with one stone... tho as people have said the drivers and software would be an issue.
 
Trevsweb said:
in the UK you can get on demand bbc and many other channels from their websites, focusing on BBC im able on my nokia to view live tv and radio. the pandora could do alot better job i recon.

Right, but that'd be costing you a fortune in bandwidth costs unless you had a contract 3G dongle, and then you're paying X amount for a set contract where as FM is free.
 
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Pleng said:
Of course, just because it works with Linux, doesn't necessarily mean that it'll work with Linux on ARM, does it?
Enverex said:
Yeah, those could be x86 binary drivers so it wont work on Linux...

For what it's worth, it seems that the drivers for at least some of them are in the kernel (at least, that's what I take from the line "when it comes to support, it is generally a good idea to try the current Hg sources because some device drivers can be very new and thus may have not made their way into the mainstream kernel"). This one for example, by all accounts, doesn't seem to even need any external firmware to be loaded as many of the others do. :p
 
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If they are in the kernel, does that mean when the OS is ported to a different architecture that the drivers will be as well?
 
Not necessarily. I've come across a few (by few, I mean exactly one, but where there's one there's bound to be more) modules in the 2.6.29 kernel that only compile for x86, and are not included in any other architecture.
 
That sounds to me like there's a good chance for a good few of them to work. After we figure out which ones will and won't, we can have a list so people interested in turning their pandora into a portable TV (or TV recorder) can know which ones will work.

Who did the Ubuntu port and the other OS ports? I wonder if they would know.
 
I think it's a great idea, I would love to catch tv on a Pandora. I'm trying to figure out now how to broadcast on an analog signal, sort of your own private channel, broadcasting whatever you like. That would be cool if you want spectators for a game or something on a Pandora... Speculation, I suppose, but it would be pretty cool.
 
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