[noggin]

August T210 should be supported in kernel 3.14. I've ordered one from China, but it takes weeks to arrive... I don't know any other USB T2 tuners that do work with Linux.

I've got 2 290e tuners, and might be interested in selling one if the August one works ok...

I took a punt on an August T210, and already have a PCTV 290e. I installed a 3.14 kernel on a fresh Ubuntu install, and built TV Headend. The T210 is seen by the kernel and registered as a DVB T and DVB C frontend. However I can only get it to tune DVB-T Freeview muxes. When I try DVB-T2 Freeview HD muxes it fails to find any services.

Hmm...

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Check:
Input: Full Range 0 .. 255
Scale to Limited: sl(255) = ? sl(235) = ?
scale back to full: sf(sl(255)) = ? sf(sl(235) = ?

Assumption linear weighting. Please solve the equations.

You're missing my point. Your example is the opposite of the situation that I was discussing.

I'm assuming the input is Limited range - as almost all source video is (DVD, Blu-ray, DVB, ATSC etc.).
I'm assuming the output is Limited range, as many of us want our HDMI outputs to be (to match other consumer gear)
However there may be a Full range process (XBMC?) in the way.

There was a statement made that this double scaling introduced banding on the output as well as clipping <16 and >235 content. Whilst I agree about the <16 and >235 content - isn't the Limited-Full-Limited processing potentially transparent?

Input : Limited Range 16-235
Scale to Full
Scale back to Limited for output

I totally agree that in your case you will inevitably lose information as the scaling is from a wider range to a narrower range. However in the case I was talking about the scaling is from narrower range to wider range, which won't lose content, and back again, which won't lose content as there isn't any content at the levels that will be lost by the reverse scaling. In other words in the case of XBMC playing 16-235 video and outputting 16-235 video, my point was that the two scaling processes (Limited->Full followed by Full->Limited) don't inevitably create banding and can be lossless.

I think we are talking at crossed purposes.