DekTec TV cards

DekTec is a manufacturer of PC add-on cards, USB devices, IP converters and software for the professional digital-television market. Products are used for test and measurement, to build broadcast infrastructure or as OEM component integrated in your PC-based product.

Installation

Install the dektec-drivers-dkms^AUR dkms drivers for full support of all DekTec PC add-on cards.

Make sure to reboot the PC to load the newly installed dkms drivers.

Check if drivers are installed and detected

To check if dkms drivers are installed, type:

$ dkms status

To check if DekTec PCI/PCIe add-on card is detected, type:

$ lspci -k | grep DekTec

To check if DekTec USB add-on card is detected (requires usbutils), type:

$ lsusb -t | grep DekTec

If tsduck^AUR is installed, it is possible to list all type of DekTec add-on cards with:

$ tsdektec -a

Demodulator boards DtapiService daemon

The DtapiService is a Linux daemon that manages DekTec's range of demodulator boards. The following demodulators are supported:

DTU-234: VSB/QAM-B receiver for USB
DTU-235: DVB-T measurement receiver for USB
DTU-236: QAM measurement receiver + ASI input for USB
DTA-2131: Multi-standard VHF/UHF demodulator for PCI Express
DTA-2135: Dual DVB-T receiver for PCI Express
DTA-2136: Dual QAM-A/B/C receiver for PCI Express
DTA-2137: Dual DVB-S/DVB-S2 receiver for PCI Express
DTA-2138: DVB C2/T2 receiver for PCI Express
DTA-2139: Twelve-channel QAM Receiver for PCI Express

Install the dektec-dtapiservice-bin^AUR and start/enable DtapiServiced.service.

Note:

This service must be running to be able to use the above boards.
For the DtapiService to properly work the Dta driver must be running.

Example usage

All mainstream DekTec Applications require a license and is exclusively developed for use on Microsoft Windows. A license can be purchased from DekTec or one of its distributors. There are also free utilities, such as DtInfoCL which can be installed with dektec-utilities^AUR.

Linux SDK solution

Linux SDK – SDK for DTA, DTU and DTE products provides developers with a driver and an API for using DekTec's DVB/MPEG-2 PCI/PCIe and USB-2 devices in applications running under Linux. All drivers are free to use except for DTAPITS and DtapiService.bin (self-extracting binary installer for DtapiService) which requires a license.

SDK Examples

Install the dektec-avfifo-examples^AUR package.

AvFifo code examples for Linux, demonstrating the usage of the AvFifo API for receiving and transmitting SMPTE 2110 streams.

External toolkits

Using TSDuck the MPEG Transport Stream Toolkit. TSDuck can be installed with tsduck^AUR. It is an extensible toolkit for MPEG transport streams and can be used in digital television systems for test, monitoring, integration, debug, lab, demo. With this tool, the development possibilities are essentially endless.

FFmpeg Integration

Install the ffmpeg-dektec^AUR package.

Unlock the power of FFmpeg for real-time streaming of SDI or SMPTE 2110 via DekTec devices. DekTec device support to the ffmpeg-dektec and ffplay-dektec command-line utilities, the FFmpeg libraries for custom application development and the new .sdi file format for storage of raw SDI streams has been introduced since September 2023.