virtualbox.org

Any change of being able to run a USB TV tuner in VirtualBox?

Maybe babe. Try it, no garantue. May work or not.

Hi Mike,
I'm also interested in USB TV tuner. If you made your experience, please post your configuration.

My configuration is using a dedicated Win HW with pci TV tuner and DVBViewer. Headby I'm
able to stream TV to a client (VirtualBox guest). The TV switching works over an http connection
and recorded channels are stored on an CIFS share. The DVBViewer client is able to send a WOL
signal to the Win HW to start it, if it is not running.

regards
Christian

I dont get it. Ive posted a question earlier why iPhone need USB support, and answer was: "no support is needed, USB is shared raw bit stream".

So if the TV tuner sends the USB raw data to the software, then no driver would be needed? Nothing would be needed?

I am wondering what you are referring to, when you say "no driver would be needed"? There is no need for a particular USB driver for VirtualBox, but of course will the software need a driver for the USB device you're ceoonecting it to.

I have tried to get my Cinergy S USB tuners to work with my TV app inside my VM, but other than the software detecting the device, I was never able to get any data from it.
In the end I chose to purchase two network capable tuners and now I have mv DVR running on a VirtualBox guest.

Hi again

Some additional words...

"no support is needed, USB is shared raw bit stream" -> that's true, but with my experience there are some special
devices, which has problems to be identified to the guest system. Sometimes it ends in try and error and it
also depend on the underlaying OS, for me Oracle Solaris 11 Express b 154 is working very well, but I do not have an
USB TV and even no network capable tuner.

@budy: Could you give some more information on the network capable tuner? Version?
Only for my interest which OS version are you running? Is your Cinergy S USB tuner seen to the underlaying OS?
Which guest are you running and what version of VirtualBox?

@all: is there anybody who has an USB TV working? Which?

regards
Christian

Hi,

sure. Actually I am running my PVR on OS X, so the guest OS is of course OS X running Elgato's EyeTV. The network capable tuners I am using are Elgato branded, but usually Elgator uses some kind of Terratec product. The Elgato EyeTV SAT for instance is the same as the Terratec H7. The closest match I could find for my two network-attached SAT tuners is the Terratec N3.
Mine are called Elgato Netstream SAT and Elgato Netstream SAT free (the 2nd SAT tuner, that get's hooked up to the "main" one via USB and upgrades the network tuner to a dual-tuner).

AfaIr, the Terratect Cinergy S USB had been seen by either Solaris and OS X inside the guest. EyeTV did even try to perform a channel scan, which then timed out.

I can just hook up the Cinergy S USB once more, if that'd be of interest.
VirtualBox is at 4.0.8 with extpack installed. Guest OS is 10.6.7 ( I guess, but I'd have to check that).

I have VirtualBox 4.1.8. Host OS Windows 7 64, guest OS Windows 7 64. I install addition VirtualBox Extension Pack and enable USB2.0 in settings VM. In guest OS my USB-tuner (avertv hibrid volar m) exist. I successfully install driver and soft for tuner. But tuner not work. Attempt start tuner soft freeze VM and incapacitate VirtualBox. After this host OS need reboot.

I can not understand why. But I noticed that USB2.0 is very slow. My USB-flash drive provides in VM speed only 5 MB/s, but on physical computer I have speed 30 MB/s. Maybe need customized USB2.0 for full force?

Run it on the host. USB 2 in a Guest is slowly and not comparable to native access. If the extension pack is installed on the host, there is nothing more you can do.

Thank you for your response. But the answer is useless to me. I need a tuner is in a virtual machine for testing.

Hardwaretest in a VM is not a good scenario. As i said: Its slowly, not comparable to native access.

There are 2 bottlenecks: The 3D Capabilities and the USB Speed in the VM.

So it may work in some scanrios, in other it does not work.


The answer is not useless, its the truth. And that i cant change.

USB isochornous devices are known to have poor, sometimes unusable performance in VirtualBox on Solaris hosts. This is a known, documented limitation. I won't go into the full details as to why it is so here, other than we're focusing on more important tasks at the moment.