Asus HDTV USB Tuner Installs on Eee PC's Linux

The insanely popular Asus Eee PC has the same number of USB ports as many regular laptops, yet the sub-notebook doesn't go well with USB peripherals particularly TV tuners until recently. Asus apparently has been updating Linux drivers for its My Cinema U3100 Mini DVB-T & DMB-TH tuners. The former is what European countries use for digital video broadcasting while the latter is the standard backed by the Chinese authority.

During preliminary testing carried out by a HK-based PC magazine, both driver and software worked smoothly except H.264 software decoding was missing; hence HDTV channels broadcasting in this format won't play on Eee. Other channels sent over in MPEG-2 were played back properly. One caveat is that software doesn't come with recording function, not that it really matters anyway as Eee PC isn't exactly a portable MCE.

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