So tried booting OpenElec on the AppleTV to see whether it has similar issues, and it is picked up by dmesg without issue, so not a hardware compatibility issue, must be something in the ATV kernel config??
I pulled the full dmesg in case it was of use (but not sure how to attach it?)
Anyhow the specific lines are here
[ 4.977692] dvb-usb: found a ‘Mygica T230 DVB-T/T2/C’ in warm state.
[ 5.213548] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[ 5.214465] DVB: registering new adapter (Mygica T230 DVB-T/T2/C)
[ 5.504603] i2c i2c-1: Added multiplexed i2c bus 2
[ 5.504618] si2168 1-0064: Silicon Labs Si2168 successfully attached
[ 5.701238] si2157 2-0060: Silicon Labs Si2147/2148/2157/2158 successfully attached
[ 5.701260] usb 1-1: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Silicon Labs Si2168)…
[ 5.702393] input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-1/input/input3
[ 5.702458] dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 100 msecs.
[ 5.702734] dvb-usb: Mygica T230 DVB-T/T2/C successfully initialized and connected.
[ 5.702782] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_cxusb
[ 6.464049] nvidia: module license ‘NVIDIA’ taints kernel.
Any ideas?