Pinnacle Nano Stick Ultra (73e) under Ubuntu 8.10

Played around with a Pinnacle Nano Stick Ultra (model 73e) where the Mac software (EyeTV Lite) was really nice, and the Windows XP software from Pinnacle was rather so so. As I had Ubuntu 8.10 installed in a virtual machine anyway, and I would like to have a Linux router do the recording I need, it was a good time to play with that.

It turned out to be really simple. Install Kaffeine, plug in the USB-adapter, start Kaffeine (I had to do it from a root shell) and tell it to AUTOSCAN. Go to DVB and Scan channels.

The channels are listed in the right panel, select all, and move them to the left. That's it. Now the channels can be chosen and the TV shown.

"Instant recording" records the transport stream to a m2t-file named after the show and channel in the current directory. This can be viewed directly with mplayer.

The Linux software is more powerful but a very unfinished product in my opinion.