I recently purchased a ATI TV-Wonder video capture card, which works well under both RedHat 8.0 and Mandrake 9.0rc2, but had some trouble making it tune. The trick was a line in /etc/modules.conf to manually specify the tuner type. options tuner type=2 (Philips NTSC, North America)

If you want to play with different tunner type settings without rebooting, you can unload the old with rmmod bttv tuner Enter it multiple times until it complains the modules are not loaded. Don't forget to stop the TV viewing application first. Reinsert the tuner with /sbin/insmod tuner type=2 and then /sbin/modprobe bttv

The type numbers come from /usr/src/linux*/drivers/media/video/tuner.h (matching tuner.c) Here is the table from mine....

#define TUNER_TEMIC_PAL     0        /* 4002 FH5 (3X 7756, 9483) */
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_PAL_I 1
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_NTSC  2
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_SECAM 3           /* you must actively select B/G, L, L` */
#define TUNER_ABSENT        4
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_PAL   5
#define TUNER_TEMIC_NTSC    6        /* 4032 FY5 (3X 7004, 9498, 9789)  */
#define TUNER_TEMIC_PAL_I   7        /* 4062 FY5 (3X 8501, 9957)        */
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4036FY5_NTSC 8   /* 4036 FY5 (3X 1223, 1981, 7686)  */
#define TUNER_ALPS_TSBH1_NTSC    9
#define TUNER_ALPS_TSBE1_PAL    10
#define TUNER_ALPS_TSBB5_PAL_I  11
#define TUNER_ALPS_TSBE5_PAL    12
#define TUNER_ALPS_TSBC5_PAL    13
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4006FH5_PAL 14   /* 4006 FH5 (3X 9500, 9501, 7291)     */
#define TUNER_ALPS_TSHC6_NTSC   15
#define TUNER_TEMIC_PAL_DK      16   /* 4016 FY5 (3X 1392, 1393)     */
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_NTSC_M    17
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4066FY5_PAL_I       18  /* 4066 FY5 (3X 7032, 7035) */
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4006FN5_MULTI_PAL   19  /* B/G, I and D/K autodetected (3X 7595, 7606, 7657)*/
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4009FR5_PAL         20  /* incl. FM radio (3X 7607, 7488, 7711)*/
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4039FR5_NTSC        21  /* incl. FM radio (3X 7246, 7578, 7732)*/
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4046FM5             22  /* you must actively select B/G, D/K, I, L, L` !  (3X 7804, 7806, 8103, 8104)*/
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_PAL_DK            23
#define TUNER_PHILIPS_FQ1216ME          24  /* you must actively select B/G/D/K, I, L, L` */
#define TUNER_LG_PAL_I_FM       25
#define TUNER_LG_PAL_I          26
#define TUNER_LG_NTSC_FM        27
#define TUNER_LG_PAL_FM         28
#define TUNER_LG_PAL            29
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4009FN5_MULTI_PAL_FM        30  /* B/G, I and D/K autodetected (3X 8155, 8160, 8163)*/
#define TUNER_SHARP_2U5JF5540_NTSC  31
#define TUNER_Samsung_PAL_TCPM9091PD27 32
#define TUNER_MT2032 33
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4106FH5     34      /* 4106 FH5 (3X 7808, 7865)*/
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4012FY5     35      /* 4012 FY5 (3X 0971, 1099)*/
#define TUNER_TEMIC_4136FY5     36      /* 4136 FY5 (3X 7708, 7746)*/
#define TUNER_LG_PAL_NEW_TAPC   37

Additional help identifying your tuner can be gleaned from ... /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/video4linux/bttv/Tuners

You can see what is going on by the /var/log/messages file or running the dmesg command. A sample output looks like...

bttv: driver version 0.7.91 loaded
bttv: using 2 buffers with 2080k (4160k total) for capture
bttv: Host bridge is Intel Corp. 82850 850 (Tehama) Chipset Host Bridge (MCH)
bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 02:08.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.3
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.5
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 02:08.1
bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 02:08.0, irq: 10, latency: 64, memory: 0xf8001000
bttv0: detected: ATI TV Wonder [card=63], PCI subsystem ID is 1002:0001
bttv0: using: BT878(ATI TV-Wonder) [card=63,autodetected]
msp34xx: init: chip=MSP3445G-B8, has NICAM support
msp3410: daemon started
bttv0: i2c attach [client=MSP3445G-B8,ok]
i2c-core.o: client [MSP3445G-B8] registered to adapter [bt848 #0](pos. 0).
i2c-core.o: adapter bt848 #0 registered as adapter 0.
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
i2c-core.o: driver i2c TV tuner driver registered.
tuner: probing bt848 #0 i2c adapter [id=0x10005]
tuner: chip found @ 0xc0
bttv0: i2c attach [client=Philips NTSC,ok]
i2c-core.o: client [Philips NTSC] registered to adapter [bt848 #0](pos. 1).
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0
bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 ... ok
bttv0: PLL: switching off
tuner: TV freq (0.-6) out of range (44-958)

With multiple cards use options tuner type=2,2 probably.

The card contains a Brooktree BT878 for video capture and a Micronas MSP3405 for stereo audio decoding.

So far for watching TV I used xawtv. I was able to cature to MPEG2 format with ffmpeg.
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