It uses e4000.ko module...and it seems I have included it.
Software defined radio, SDR page:
http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
Info about RTL2832U and RF tuner combo by Antti Palosaari:
About Elonics RF tuner:RTL2832U SDR mode
One absolutely very interesting feature of that chip is so called SDR (Software-defined radio) mode. That undocumented mode is used to offer FM radio and DAB features, whilst DVB-T is demodulated traditionally by hardware. RTL2832U with a comibination of RF-tuner which supports very wide range frequencies (around 50-2000MHz) makes that device very interesting as a general poor man's SDR.
Elonics E4000 could be seen clearly center of that picture. 28.800MHz crystal is clock source for both E4000 and RTL2832U. There is four clearly visible wires, going through C11/C12/C13/C17, between tuner and demodulator. It is baseband (Zero-IF, 4 wires) I/Q signal interface which goes to the demodulator ADC.
E4000 is multi-mode direct conversion (aka Zero-IF) silicon RF-tuner. It supports wide range of different standards. Due to wide range of supported radio communication standards, it supports wide frequency range that makes it quite interesting RF tuner. Currently, I don't know any other DVB-T tuner which supports that large frequency range.
Linux driver:
name: e4000
author: Antti Palosaari <crope@iki.fi>