Earthsoft PT3 ISDB-S/ISDB-T PCIe TV tuner cards
A PCIe digital TV tuner board sold in Japan starting around 2012 for receiving Japanese ISDB-T terrestrial broadcasts and ISDB-S satellite (BS/CS) channels. Earthsoft's PT3 was popular with Japanese hobbyists building home recording PCs and remains in use on long-running setups, though the cards are no longer manufactured.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche, because the hardware is a region-specific Japanese ISDB tuner from 2012 that is no longer sold new and has only a small surviving user base. Upstream is still touching the code as recently as 2025 (a PCI API modernization patch) and earlier cleanups landed in 2021, so it is clearly not abandoned, but a note about its narrow scope would help future maintainers weigh its cost.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
PT3 still received upstream maintenance in 2025; the latest visible touch is a PCI API modernization patch, not a removal patch.
- lore.kernel.org
PT3 also received cleanup/fix work in 2021, indicating occasional but real maintenance over multiple years.
- cateee.net
`CONFIG_DVB_PT3` remains present in current kernel series and maps to Earthsoft PT3 cards / module `earth-pt3`.
- k1s.jp
PT3 is a 2012-era PCIe digital TV tuner board for Japanese ISDB terrestrial/BS/CS reception, indicating old and region-specific hardware.
- lwn.net
The driver targets Earthsoft PT3-class ISDB tuner hardware, a specialized DVB/media use case rather than mainstream contemporary PC hardware.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local `exec_command` on `drivers/media/pci/pt3/pt3.c` confirmed this is the Earthsoft PT3 PCI driver and showed the single PCI ID/subsystem match. `lore_file_timeline` on `drivers/media/pci/pt3/pt3.c` produced the 2021-2025 maintenance history and showed no obvious removal discussion in the visible recent events; cited lore URLs came from that MCP result. LKDDb URL came from web search and supports that the driver is still built upstream. The PT3 wiki URL came from web search and was used only for product vintage/use-case context (2012 launch, Japan-specific tuner card). LWN URL came from web search and corroborates the hardware family/use case. Recommendation is `keep-annotate`: hardware appears niche/legacy with low present-day deployment and likely no meaningful new 2025 sales, but upstream still applies occasional fixes, so outright deprecation/removal is not yet well-supported.