SMI PCIe bridge for DVBSky and TechnoTrend DVB-S/S2/T2 tuner cards
PCIe interface chip used on a small family of digital TV tuner cards from the mid-2010s, including the DVBSky S950 v3, S952 v3, and T9580 v3 satellite/terrestrial cards and the TechnoTrend S2-4200 Twin. The cards let a desktop PC receive DVB-S, DVB-S2, and DVB-T2 broadcasts for use with software like VDR, TVHeadend, or MythTV.
recommendation
A candidate for future removal because the supported cards are out of production, retailers list them as sold out, and upstream activity in 2024 was limited to a routine treewide cleanup rather than any real development. A handful of enthusiasts on European VDR forums were still nursing these cards into modern PCs as recently as 2025, so it is worth keeping for now and revisiting once that user base fades, rather than pulling it immediately.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Most recent upstream activity touching smipcie-main.c was a 2024 treewide maintenance conversion to BH workqueue, not evidence of new feature work for this hardware.
- cateee.net
LKDDb ties CONFIG_DVB_SMIPCIE to a narrow set of legacy PCIe TV cards: DVBSky S950 V3, S952 V3, T9580 V3, and TechnoTrend S2-4200 Twin.
- vdr-portal.de
A 2025 forum thread discusses the DVBSky S952 v3 as an older card, indicating some enthusiast/legacy usage persists.
- computerbase.de
A 2025 forum post describes a DVBSky S952 as an old PCIe card being reused in a modern PC, supporting low but nonzero current deployment.
- bpm-power.com
A retail page for the TechnoTrend S2-4200 Twin shows the product as sold out, supporting that this hardware is not meaningfully sold new in 2025.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection of Kconfig and PCI IDs showed a real media PCI driver for DVBSky/TechnoTrend cards only. lore_file_timeline on drivers/media/pci/smipcie/smipcie-main.c produced the 2024 lore URL and showed sparse recent activity dominated by a treewide conversion; directory-level lore query returned no hits, and alternate lore regex/path-mention probes timed out rather than showing removal discussion. Web search produced the LKDDb page plus 2025 forum/retail URLs indicating legacy-user presence but no strong evidence of ongoing new-sales volume or a successor upstream driver. Low deployment, no natural replacement, and minimal maintenance suggest deprecate rather than immediate removal.