Conexant CX2584x analog audio/video decoders
A family of Conexant analog video and audio decoder chips (CX25840, CX25841, CX25842, CX25843) that sat on the I2C bus of TV tuner and capture cards from the mid-2000s, converting NTSC/PAL/SECAM signals from coax, S-Video, or composite inputs into digital video for the host. They appeared most famously on Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR-150 and related analog capture boards.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy because the chips power a generation of analog TV capture cards (notably Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR-150/250/350/500 line) that are long discontinued and tied to Windows XP/Vista/7-era software, yet upstream still receives real bug fixes as recently as 2026 and the config option remains in current kernels. The installed base is likely hobbyists and old analog-capture rigs rather than new deployments, so an annotation flagging it as legacy is more appropriate than removal.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream saw a real functional fix in 2026 for this driver family, indicating maintained code and nonzero active users.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_VIDEO_CX25840 is still present through current kernel series, so the driver remains upstream-supported.
- hauppauge.com
Hauppauge lists WinTV-PVR-150/250/350/500 as legacy discontinued products, consistent with the cx25840 ecosystem being obsolete retail hardware.
- hauppauge.com
The WinTV-PVR-150 support page references only Windows XP/Vista/7-era software, reinforcing that these boards are legacy-era analog capture devices rather than current new-deployment hardware.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local tree inspection via shell showed this is an actual I2C V4L2 subdevice driver for cx25840/cx25841/cx25842/cx25843 and related variants, including legacy PVR-150 references. lore_file_timeline on cx25840-core.c showed recent activity, notably the 2026 linux-media patch fixing analog TV standards, plus 2024-2025 treewide/API maintenance; that argues against deprecation despite low recent substantive churn. Web search found LKDDb confirming the config is still carried in current kernels, and Hauppauge support pages showing representative attached products are discontinued and tied to XP/Vista/7-era software. Net: hardware is legacy and likely only in hobbyist/installed-base analog capture systems today, but upstream still receives real fixes, so keep the driver but annotate it as legacy rather than deprecate/remove.