00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1a)
00:07.4 SMBus: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]
(rev 40)
00:09.0 Multimedia audio controller: Ensoniq 5880 AudioPCI (rev 02)
00:0b.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878
Video Capture
(rev 02)
00:0b.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio
Capture (rev 02)
00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-
8029(AS)
00:0f.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB12LV23 IEEE-1394
Controller
00:11.0 Network controller: Standard Microsystems Corp [SMC] SMC2602W
EZConnect
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2
Ti] (rev a4)Here, the lines listing the multimedia video controller and multimedia
controller say that this TV board uses a Brooktree Bt878 Video Capture chip
and a Brooktree Bt878 Audio Capture chip. This card uses the Bt878
chipset. Your results will be different, depending on what card and chipset
your computer has. This card happened to be an ATI All-in-Wonder VE (also
known as ATI TV-Wonder). (The VE means Value Edition; hence, there is no
TV-out connector and no radio chip on the card; what a value!)
Then you figure out what module is needed, probably using Google to search
for “Bt878 linux” or “Bt878 ubuntu,” and start reading documentation. You
want to look for official pages first rather than blog posts. Finally, you need to
enter some information into /etc/modules.conf. This file does not exist
anymore in a default Ubuntu installation but may be created as needed and
will be read at boot time. Then, you calculate the module and kernel
dependencies with sudo depmod -a and sudo modprobe module
name to load the module. Again, this is not necessary in Ubuntu because the
people doing kernel configuration create a module for everything that exists,
so if it is available to them, they will make it available to you with no extra
work on your part, and the system scans to see what should be loaded at boot
and pulls in what is needed then.
Video Formats
Ubuntu recognizes a variety of video formats. The formats created by the
MPEG group, Apple, and Microsoft dominate, however. At the heart of video
formats are the codecs—the encoders and decoders of video and audio
information. Codecs are typically proprietary, but free codecs do exist. Here is