Pulse-Eight USB HDMI-CEC Adapter
A small USB dongle from Pulse-Eight that bridges a PC to the HDMI-CEC bus, letting Linux home-theater software like Kodi/LibreELEC send remote-control and power commands to TVs and AV receivers over HDMI. It has been on sale since the early 2010s and is still sold new today, primarily to enthusiasts building media centers.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche role. The Pulse-Eight USB-CEC dongle is a low-volume home-theater accessory, but the vendor still sells and supports it in 2025, and upstream is actively fixing real bugs (a 2026 partial-deinit fix was even backported to stable kernels). It belongs in the tree; just flag it as niche hardware rather than mainstream gear.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream linux-media saw a real 2026 bug-fix patch for this driver ('media: pulse8-cec: Handle partial deinit'), indicating ongoing maintenance rather than removal.
- lore.kernel.org
The same fix was selected for stable/AUTOSEL in April 2026, showing the driver still matters to supported kernels.
- pulse-eight.com
Vendor product page lists the USB-CEC Adapter as in stock and Linux-compatible, so the hardware was still sold new in 2025/2026.
- support.pulse-eight.com
Vendor support/manual page was updated in 2024, consistent with an actively supported retail product rather than abandoned legacy hardware.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
`pulse8-cec.c` is a real USB CEC driver (checked locally via shell in Kconfig/source tree). lore evidence came from `lore_file_timeline` on the exact file path; it showed recent 2026 bug-fix traffic and no removal signal. A follow-up `lore_regex` removal-search timed out, so there is no positive removal evidence. Vendor sales/support URLs were obtained via web search and show the adapter still sold and documented. Hardware appears niche home-theater/Kodi gear, so deployments are low, but active fixes argue against deprecation; annotate as niche/low-volume rather than remove.