Earthsoft PT1 and PT2 ISDB-S/ISDB-T PCI tuner cards
PCI tuner cards from Japanese vendor Earthsoft that receive ISDB-S satellite and ISDB-T terrestrial digital television broadcasts in Japan. The PT1 launched in the late 2000s and the PT2 followed in 2009; both were popular with Japanese hobbyists for DVR-style recording setups before being discontinued around 2011.
recommendation
Worth keeping but worth a footnote because the hardware has not been sold new since roughly 2011 and the newer PCIe-based PT3 (with its own in-tree driver) is the natural successor. The code is still receiving small cleanups as recently as October 2025 and is listed in MAINTAINERS as Odd Fixes, and a Japanese community wiki shows hobbyists still running these cards, so removal would strand a small but real legacy user base.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still received upstream attention in October 2025 via a pt1-specific cleanup patch.
- docs.kernel.org
The MAINTAINERS entry for EARTH_PT1 marks the driver as 'Odd Fixes', indicating limited but still recognized maintenance rather than abandonment/removal.
- docs.kernel.org
Kernel media documentation still lists 'earth-pt1' as the driver for PT1 cards, confirming the directory is an active supported media driver in-tree.
- gigazine.net
Contemporary reporting states Earthsoft PT2 production/orders were ending, showing the hardware family left normal retail long ago.
- gigazine.net
PT2 was introduced in 2009 as the successor to PT1, establishing the family's sales era as late-2000s/early-2010s hardware.
- wikiwiki.jp
A 2023 community wiki still discusses PT1/PT2-compatible motherboards and PCI risers, suggesting lingering hobbyist/legacy deployments rather than zero use.
- cateee.net
LKDDb documents the separate upstream Earthsoft PT3 driver, which is the natural successor for the same Japanese digital-TV tuner use case.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local shell inspection of pt1.c/Kconfig identified this as the Earthsoft PT1/PT2 PCI ISDB tuner driver. lore_file_timeline on drivers/media/pci/pt1/pt1.c showed fresh 2025 cleanup traffic and no visible removal pattern, so removal is not justified. web search returned kernel docs pages showing the driver remains listed and MAINTAINERS marks it 'Odd Fixes'. web search also returned historical PT2 production-end reports and a 2023 community wiki, supporting 'not sold new' but still low legacy deployment. PT3 is the obvious upstream successor, but PCI PT1/PT2 users may still exist, so annotate rather than deprecate/remove.