How to add support for (an 'unknown') TV tuner?

[Fritz Katz]

Hi,

  I have a "Encore ENL-TV-FM" video tuner card that I'd like to use on my FreeBSD system.
  
	# btsetup
	btsetup> show
	BKTR - BrookTree/Conexant BT8x8 based cards
        ===============================================
	BKTR MODULE LOADED........... No
	BKTR DEVICE PERMISSIONS...... Not OK
	
	SAA - Philips SAA713x based cards
        ===============================================
	SAA MODULE LOADED............ Yes
	SAA DEVICE PERMISSIONS....... OK
	SAA CAPTURE CHIP............. Philips SAA7133
	SAA TV CARD.................. Unknown card/vendor
	SAA TUNER TYPE............... Philips, NTSC M/N

  Looking at 'dmesg' I see both the Philips-SAA7133 and the 'Unknown' appear on the I2C bus:

	saa0: <Philips SAA7133 AV broadcast decoder> mem 0xf9fff800-0xf9ffffff irq 16 at device 9.0 on pci1
	iicbus0: <SAA713x I2C Controller> on saa0
	iicbus0: <unknown card> at addr 0
	iic0: <I2C generic I/O> on iicbus0
	saa0: [ITHREAD]

  It shows up as 'Unknown card/vendor' but the part number on the board is: TNF-5835-MFF
   (inside tuner can: 
       TNF-9835-A3, 
       Texas_Inst-SN761677-TV-VCR_Tuner 
       Philips-TDA9809-FM_Modulator
       Philips-TDA7040-stereo-decoder)
  It's manufactured by 'Shenzhen Tena' in Guangdong China

  A search of the bttv gallery shows it is very common: 
  ( http://www.bttv-gallery.de/ ):
        TVGo A11 WDM TVTuner
	PhTVTune
	Norwood Micro Tv 
	Sabrent SBT-TVFM
	Mercury Ez View TV Tuner
	Powercolor MTV878
	Pixelview PlayTV
        (... more ...)

  So, it would be worthwhile to start a project to add support for this and similar tuners.  I have hardware specs with I2C commands from 'Shenzhen Tena'.

  Also, I've heard that BrookTree/Conexant is no longer supplying parts for TV-card manufacturers -- I couldn't find any TV-Tuners which have the old cards in stock which the bktr driver supports at my local electronics superstore (Fry's in California).  Anyway, in the USA broadcasts are switching over to ATSC-HD-DTV and old NTSC broadcasts are being phased out (by Feb. 2009). New tuners are coming to market everyday.  We need to expand the tuner selection available for FreeBSD multimedia.

  Anyone want to work with me on a project to add drivers for those new, unsupported tuners to FreeBSD?

Regards,
-- Fritz Katz
   frtzkatz (at) yahoo.com