NetUP Universal Dual DVB-CI PCIe capture cards
A PCI Express digital TV capture card family from NetUP (board revisions 1.3 and 1.4, PCI IDs 1b55:18f6 and 1b55:18f7) that provides dual DVB tuners with Common Interface slots for conditional-access modules, built around Sony demodulators and tuners. These boards are aimed at professional broadcast and IPTV headend use rather than home viewers, and date from the early-to-mid 2010s.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as niche hardware. The NetUP Universal DVB cards are specialty professional gear with limited deployment today, but the driver still receives passive upstream maintenance (treewide cleanups in 2023 and a stable-tree API conversion as recently as October 2025) and there is no alternative driver covering the same boards. Confidence is moderate because broader mailing-list searches were inconclusive, so the niche status is inferred rather than proven.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
Kconfig identifies this as support for the NetUP PCI Express Universal DVB card, i.e. a board-specific PCIe DVB driver rather than a generic transport layer.
- cateee.net
LKDDb maps CONFIG_DVB_NETUP_UNIDVB to NetUP Universal DVB card support and the board-specific PCI IDs 1b55:18f6 and 1b55:18f7.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver was still touched by media treewide maintenance in late 2023, indicating it remains build-tested and not abandoned in-tree.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver file was still included in a 5.15-stable treewide API conversion in October 2025, showing ongoing passive maintenance rather than active removal.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local exec_command inspection of the directory shows a board-specific PCIe DVB-CI driver for NetUP hardware revisions 1.3/1.4 using Sony demod/tuner frontends. lore_file_timeline on netup_unidvb_core.c returned only scattered treewide/stable touches through 2025 and no removal-thread evidence in the sampled history; a broader lore_regex query timed out, and lei was unavailable due local socket permission failure. Kernel Kconfig and LKDDb URLs are canonical recall used to anchor device identity/PCI IDs. Recommendation is keep-annotate: hardware looks legacy and niche with likely low present-day deployment, but there is still occasional upstream maintenance and no clear replacement driver for the same board.