Can a PCI TV card be used in VMWare?

dj032 · 08 Oct 2011

Hi!
I've recently bought a new PC with Windows 7 on it. My old PCI TV card, webcam, scanner etc. won't work on new Windows (6-7 years old devices with no Win7 drivers that could be found anywhere on net).
Is there any way that I can use my old PCI TV card on new PC using VMWare?

P.S. I bought new PCI TV card, but I just can't get it to work fine [always have to switch between front mic/line in, every 2-3 days i have to scan for channels, can't set the volume level (+/- but it's always the same) etc.]. The new TV card is iNTEX Philips 7130!?
Can I make it run on VMWare Windows XP machine?

Thx for every answer/help.

huisinro · 10 Oct 2011

I am not sure if vmware supports PCI passthru, if so, your PCI card might work inside vmware vm. Usually PCI passthru is supported on Linux host, e.g., Xen/KVM/VirtualBox on linux. I am not sure about vmware on Windows host. you can check.

dj032 · 10 Oct 2011

Thx, huisinro, I've searched around a little bit and so far, the mainly answer is: No, it cannot ber done...

**cluberti** · 12 Oct 2011

VMWare workstation supports passing through *some* PCI hardware, although most of those devices are network cards. Do these devices have Windows Vista drivers? If so, those should work. Otherwise, you can try the XP drivers and see what happens - some work in Win7 (especially if they're WDM user-mode drivers), and some do not.

jimbo45 · 14 Oct 2011

Hi there
Your best bet for vm pass through devices is to try and install something like a Hypervisor which allows quite a lot of PCI card pass thru. Vmware's ESXi works but it's a bit fussy on what box it installs on -- it usually gives problems with "generic" LAN cards --if you get an INTEL PRO lan card it will work fine.

BTW VMWARE workstation 8 now works with DVD playback and since the whole USB handling has changed you might find a USB tv tuner works better than a PCI card and will probably work in vmware workstation release 8.

Cheers
jimbo