The IVTV driver is a driver for the iTVC15 family of MPEG cards commonly found on Hauppauge's WinTV PVR-150,-250 and -350 cards. The project web page is www.ivtvdriver.org.
The driver is now part of Debian Sid (unstable) and Etch (testing). The packages are ivtv-source and ivtv-utils. Further information on the status of the package in Debian can be found on the ivtv source package QA page.
The packages which are uploaded to Debian are from the ivtv branch which matches the most recent kernel in Debian.
If you are using a different kernel to what is available in Debian (i.e. you build your own) then packages are available from this site for several different brances of IVTV as shown in the following table.
| Branch | Description |
|---|---|
| 0.2 | Very old 'stable' branch. |
| 0.4 | Branch for kernels ≤ 2.6.15. |
| 0.6 | Branch for kernel 2.6.16 only. |
| 0.7 | Branch for kernel 2.6.17 only. |
| 0.8 | Old branch for kernel 2.6.18 only. |
| 0.9 | Old branch for kernel 2.6.19 only. |
| 0.10 | Branch for kernels 2.6.18, 19, 20 and 21. |
| kernel.org | The ivtv driver was merged with the upstream kernel in 2.6.22. This driver requires the utilities from the 1.0.x series, which can be found in Debian unstable and testing. If there is enough demand I'll make ivtv1.0-{source,utils} available here too. |
Packages are included for sid/unstable and are built for the i386 and amd64 architectures. It is recommended that you use the 0.10 branch if you have a 2.6.18, 19, 20 or 21 kernel. The kernel driver was merged with the upstream kernel in 2.6.22, you should use the 0.10 branch of the utilities with this kernel.
Older branches remain available and are generally matched to a particular kernel release. For kernel 2.6.17 you must use ivtv0.7, for kernel 2.6.16 you must use ivtv0.6 and for kernels 2.6.15 and earlier 0.4 is recommended. The 0.8 and 0.9 branches are still available for use with 2.6.18 and 2.6.19 respectively although the 0.10 is recommended. These older branches are unlikely to see fixes from upstream any more. The 0.2 branch is ancient and has been unmaintained for some time.
Packages are named with an ivtv<BRANCH>-* prefix e.g. ivtv0.10-*. Each branch includes a utils package (ivtv<BRANCH>-utils) and a modules source package (ivtv<BRANCH>-source). The module source packages have been tested using kernel-package and module-assistant.
To get the packages add the following entries to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://www.hellion.org.uk/debian sid main deb-src http://www.hellion.org.uk/debian sid main
The public part of the key used to sign the repository is available here.
You can browse the packages here.
The kernel should be built with support for Video4Linux, videodev and i2c. This is achieved by enabling the following options, either as modules or built-in.
From kernel version 2.6.15 onwards some of the IVTV modules have been merged with the upstream kernel. You must therefore enable those modules in your kernel configuration in addition to installing the IVTV driver. The following outlines which options should be enabled, either as modules or built-in. The Official Debian kernels have everything which you need enabled.
The recommended firmware from the IVTV driver site has been packaged as ivtv-firmware and is waiting for acceptance into Debian's non-free repository.
In the meantime the package is available from the repository listed above.
The ivtv X driver for is now available in Debian as the package xserver-xorg-video-ivtv.
If you have any problems please drop me a line, my address is available on the contact page.