Tvheadend

I’ve also spent an inordinate amount of time designing this set of enclosures!

https://share.icloud.com/photos/0elA40LkfMQ8NPzv-KS8WruRw

Those photos show the general enclosures, but are a few iterations old, the enclosure that houses the “electronics” now contains a small dc/dc converter and now has a Jack socket which connects to the outside world. The dc.dc provides 2 usb sockets which I then use short stubs to power the two 4 port hubs.

You can see the housing for the USB-C to USB3 coupler which uses an interference clamp to hold it, so I use a usb3 to usb-c cable from my server to hook all the tuners up, and the power Jack provides the power to the hubs. The final enclosure I need to create will contain the distribution amplifier and cables to the tuners. This part requires a little more thought as I want the cables to look good, so spacing and the length of each cable will be different depending on the location of both ends.

This project was started a couple of years back, but I never found a nice enclosure for it, I bought the 3D printer a year ago but only put it together a couple of months back, so I’m now finally reaching an endgame….apart from these tuner problems!

Hi Adrian,

I've been running two Xbox One tuners for a few years without issue.
Initially on an old laptop (Linux Mint iirc), then a Raspberry Pi 3 w/Raspbian, currently a Wyse 5020 w/Debian Stretch - kernel 4.19 - running tvh and a few other bits and bobs.

They've always been directly plugged in, not via hubs... unless you count the one built in to the Pi3 (they have a single USB hanging off the system on a chip, then an IC which splits that to four ports and ethernet).
I mention this as the first thing I'd try is bypassing the hubs and connecting the tuners directly and see how that goes. Not as tidy, but eh. The hubs or their power supplies could be a bit iffy.
My little Wyse 5020 has six USB sockets, 4x USB 2 and 2x USB 3, I imagine you have at least six ports on your VM host, plus more as motherboard headers?

Otherwise - maybe they're getting too warm in an enclosure together? Mine are out in the open and I guess are only active when receiving.
(I've no idea if they warm up or not, tbh).

Here's the checksums for the copy of dvb-demod-mn88472-02.fw which I have in /lib/firmware - could be worth verifying
sha1 9d934c753596336b2d893d479ea70c6285045155
sha256sum 7c5f7cd2675d0c69cae61bc4f0a442d9a0f7907fdc16fbd4c2ca34ab6c8cb94e

And dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw
sha1 415bd83150ebca3ed3ba8c1f74bf0b6a8a225c01
sha256 74f5ffeb43767e1af6d379d6cc2e0efeaa54455d030bcd71d95f0f2a908c672a

dmesg | grep dvb of them both coming up together ok at boot.

[    5.378433] dvb-usb: found a 'Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
[    5.426265] usb 1-1: firmware: direct-loading firmware dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw
[    6.240853] dvb-usb: found a 'Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner' in warm state.
[    6.241026] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[    6.241198] dvbdev: DVB: registering new adapter (Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner)
[    6.507875] dvb-usb: Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner successfully initialized and connected.
[    6.508954] dvb-usb: found a 'Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
[    6.509031] usb 3-2: firmware: direct-loading firmware dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw
[    7.264813] dvb-usb: found a 'Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner' in warm state.
[    7.264930] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
[    7.265048] dvbdev: DVB: registering new adapter (Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner)
[    7.477089] dvb-usb: Microsoft Xbox One Digital TV Tuner successfully initialized and connected.
[    7.477349] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_dib0700
[    9.002293] mn88472 10-0018: firmware: direct-loading firmware dvb-demod-mn88472-02.fw
[    9.002303] mn88472 10-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88472-02.fw'
[    9.278973] mn88472 0-0018: firmware: direct-loading firmware dvb-demod-mn88472-02.fw
[    9.278982] mn88472 0-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88472-02.fw'

And the lsusb -v output for one of my tuners in case it happens to be some different model to yours.
Mine both show up as Panasonic MN88472 in the tvh web UI.

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 045e:02d5 Microsoft Corp. Xbox One Digital TV Tuner
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  idVendor           0x045e Microsoft Corp.
  idProduct          0x02d5 Xbox One Digital TV Tuner
  bcdDevice            1.10
  iManufacturer           1 Microsoft Corp.
  iProduct                2 Xbox USB Tuner
  iSerial                 3 [removed]
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           46
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0xa0
      (Bus Powered)
      Remote Wakeup
    MaxPower              500mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           4
      bInterfaceClass       255 Vendor Specific Class
      bInterfaceSubClass      0
      bInterfaceProtocol      0
      iInterface              0
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x01  EP 1 OUT
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0200  1x 512 bytes
        bInterval               1
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0200  1x 512 bytes
        bInterval               1
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x82  EP 2 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0200  1x 512 bytes
        bInterval               1
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x83  EP 3 IN
        bmAttributes            2
          Transfer Type            Bulk
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0200  1x 512 bytes
        bInterval               1
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
  bLength                10
  bDescriptorType         6
  bcdUSB               2.00
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0        64
  bNumConfigurations      1
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)

Adrian Carpenter wrote:

I just want an easy life!

Aerial drop and DVR in each of the kids rooms

Thanks for the comprehensive reply! My optimism has gone up!

I did have a couple running yesterday after I posted and they both stayed up, it may be the last time I saw the driver panic that it was related to something else, I did remove one set, I realised this after.

It can't be a hub issue (well technically it could be, but we have computers that work, so....) my particular motherboard I think has 4 host controllers and each of those exposes a hub, I'm passing through one of the host controllers to the VM so that it has unfettered access to the USB devices.

Passing through controllers allows me not to have to worry about passing devices through from the host, in this particular situation where all the devices have the VID and PID it becomes an utter nightmare passing through the individual devices, it's almost to the point where you're told not to do it, and the instructions I've seen to do it with QEMU are not nice and leave a number of further issues that will cause other problems.

The tuners have only just gone into the enclosures, they have been floating free for the past 18 months, at one point I was having to build kernels with an increased number of DVB devices allowed because at the time there were more muxes enabled here in the UK than the default max number of devices. My initial tests were on a Pi 4, but I switched when I started getting problems to a x86 mini pc, the problems followed and it's lead me to this point where I've gone down the VM route.

I'm now questioning whether I just did something silly the other day when I killed it, but I am now just about to create the necessary coax pigtails to hook up to the distribution amp, so once I've got those cables crimped and everything set up, I'll be able to see whether I'm still seeing any issues.

I did even consider getting a PCIe card with 8 host controllers on it, but then I'm going to have to throw all of my efforts away with the enclosures I've put together.

I think once I get to that point I'll either be back here celebrating or crying!

I really appreciate you taking the time to comment, especially with something positive which does give me hope going forward!

They're also used to everything being in emby, but it wouldn't be possible with the youngest anyway as the TV she has in her room is actually a TV, but it doesn't have a tuner and it only has one HDMI slot, it's intended use is for displaying infomercials and such like, they did sell an add on box which added a tuner + other HDMI inputs (and the TV knew how to control all this stuff so it was seamless), but when I bought that particular TV the tuner add-on was around 600 GBP, just for the box, not including the screen. I purposefully bought the TV on the basis that it only had a single input and no other tuners as I used it with a set top box, so it was always on the right input (given it only has a single one!).

When a new TV appears in our house, the one it's replaced gets handed down and so on, hence why she has that particular tv.

They're also used to recording stuff and being able to play it anywhere inside the house, or outside for that matter on their phones and so on, so that's another reason why I have this slightly OTT setup.

Ah, fair enough on being able to watch on various devices, I do this myself.

I wasn't aware there was a limit on the number of dvb devices.
I would have suggested sticking below that, but you've already said you were ok with one, then had problems with two.

Adrian Carpenter wrote:

No, I have children that schedule a lot of recordings (everything from soap operas to crap like <locations> top model” and I can’t deal with “why didn’t this record” or “why can I record this, but not this at the same time”, I already spend enough time answering “this <device> isn’t working” with “have you tried switching it off and back on again”!

Sorry, made the assumption you were probably accessing DVB-C....

Assume you're now doing DVB-T and T2?

If so, is it worth looking at getting some cheap very well supported RTL-SDR type adapters for the DVB-T and just using the Xbox adapters for T2?

No worries, easy assumption to make! I couldn’t imagine running a service that that for others, not my idea of fun, but I have a decent set up here with regards to distributing my media.

I spend a reasonable amount of time with unexpected hospital admissions, so having access to my media outside of the house is an important thing for me as well, which is why having Emby and integrating “normal tv” into it, makes everything easy for everybody else in the house.

Yep, it’s dvb-t(2). There’s only a single t2 mux though, the rest are t muxes.

I’m just about to go make up some cables and then I’ll plug everything back in, restart the VM and see where I’m at, the other poster has given me confidence this should work ok, but as you suggested, if I still have an issues then I’m probably going to have to investigate some other tuners.

I took a load of photos yesterday of the tuner setup and enclosures I designed, and spent an inordinate amount of time on retouching them, once I’m set back up I’ll post the pics, they might be of interest to somebody else, I’ll stick the designs up on GitHub as well.

Anthony Thomas wrote:

Adrian Carpenter wrote:

No, I have children that schedule a lot of recordings (everything from soap operas to crap like <locations> top model” and I can’t deal with “why didn’t this record” or “why can I record this, but not this at the same time”, I already spend enough time answering “this <device> isn’t working” with “have you tried switching it off and back on again”!

Sorry, made the assumption you were probably accessing DVB-C....

Assume you're now doing DVB-T and T2?

If so, is it worth looking at getting some cheap very well supported RTL-SDR type adapters for the DVB-T and just using the Xbox adapters for T2?

No worries, easy assumption to make! I couldn’t imagine running a service that that for others, not my idea of fun, but I have a decent set up here with regards to distributing my media.

I spend a reasonable amount of time with unexpected hospital admissions, so having access to my media outside of the house is an important thing for me as well, which is why having Emby and integrating “normal tv” into it, makes everything easy for everybody else in the house.

Yep, it’s dvb-t(2). There’s only a single t2 mux though, the rest are t muxes.

I’m just about to go make up some cables and then I’ll plug everything back in, restart the VM and see where I’m at, the other poster has given me confidence this should work ok, but as you suggested, if I still have an issues then I’m probably going to have to investigate some other tuners.

I took a load of photos yesterday of the tuner setup and enclosures I designed, and spent an inordinate amount of time on retouching them, once I’m set back up I’ll post the pics, they might be of interest to somebody else, I’ll stick the designs up on GitHub as well.

I've never had much luck getting the Xbox One tuner to work reliably on the DVB-T2 mux PSB3/BBCB at 545.8MHz from Crystal Palace. I ended up using a WinTV Dual HD for PSB3/BBCB and COM7 (for BBC News HD and BBC Four HD). I used PS2 Play TV Dual DVB-T tuners for PSB1/BBCA and PSB2/D3+4 and the COM4-6 muxes.

I stopped using this set-up a while ago though - as I went for SAT>IP instead.

Stephen Neal wrote:

I've never had much luck getting the Xbox One tuner to work reliably on the DVB-T2 mux PSB3/BBCB at 545.8MHz from Crystal Palace. I ended up using a WinTV Dual HD for PSB3/BBCB and COM7 (for BBC News HD and BBC Four HD). I used PS2 Play TV Dual DVB-T tuners for PSB1/BBCA and PSB2/D3+4 and the COM4-6 muxes.

I stopped using this set-up a while ago though - as I went for SAT>IP instead.

We are both on the same transmitter, I can see the aerials at Crystal Palace from the end of the road.

I’ve finished making my cables, time to go hook it all up to test the stability.

Weird one.

After spending ages trying to get my 2 xbox USB tuners working with Enigma2, I gave up and moved it over to TVH. After much struggling, I managed to get both of them to work. However, I notice after a period of inactivity, either one or both tuners don't tune to any channels. They're there in TVH and will try and tune to the requested channel, but then fail

Here's a bit of the log I managed to capture:

022-02-15 16:35:32.746 linuxdvb: Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0 - poll TIMEOUT
2022-02-15 16:35:36.512 mpegts: 666MHz in DVB-T Network - scan no data, failed
2022-02-15 16:35:37.512 subscription: 01FC: service instance is bad, reason: No input detected
2022-02-15 16:35:39.513 subscription: 01FC: No input source available for subscription "HTTP" to channel "RTÉ2"
2022-02-15 16:35:39.513 webui: Couldn't start streaming /stream/channel/[removed], No input detected
2022-02-15 16:35:39.513 subscription: 01FC: "HTTP" unsubscribing from "RTÉ2", hostname="192.168.[removed].[removed]", username="[removed]", client="TvhClient/908 LibVLC/3.0.11"
2022-02-15 16:35:46.512 mpegts: 666MHz in DVB-T Network - tuning on Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0
2022-02-15 16:35:46.514 subscription: 01FD: "scan" subscribing to mux "666MHz", weight: 2, adapter: "Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0", network: "DVB-T Network", service: "Raw PID Subscription"
2022-02-15 16:35:47.761 linuxdvb: Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0 - poll TIMEOUT
2022-02-15 16:35:51.512 mpegts: 666MHz in DVB-T Network - scan no data, failed

Any ideas? The other tuner is currently working fine as there are 2 clients streaming another MUX. If I reboot the pi, both tuners will come back up normally.

F

F F wrote:

Weird one.

After spending ages trying to get my 2 xbox USB tuners working with Enigma2, I gave up and moved it over to TVH. After much struggling, I managed to get both of them to work. However, I notice after a period of inactivity, either one or both tuners don't tune to any channels. They're there in TVH and will try and tune to the requested channel, but then fail

Here's a bit of the log I managed to capture:

022-02-15 16:35:32.746 linuxdvb: Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0 - poll TIMEOUT
2022-02-15 16:35:36.512 mpegts: 666MHz in DVB-T Network - scan no data, failed
2022-02-15 16:35:37.512 subscription: 01FC: service instance is bad, reason: No input detected
2022-02-15 16:35:39.513 subscription: 01FC: No input source available for subscription "HTTP" to channel "RTÉ2"
2022-02-15 16:35:39.513 webui: Couldn't start streaming /stream/channel/[removed], No input detected
2022-02-15 16:35:39.513 subscription: 01FC: "HTTP" unsubscribing from "RTÉ2", hostname="192.168.[removed].[removed]", username="[removed]", client="TvhClient/908 LibVLC/3.0.11"
2022-02-15 16:35:46.512 mpegts: 666MHz in DVB-T Network - tuning on Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0
2022-02-15 16:35:46.514 subscription: 01FD: "scan" subscribing to mux "666MHz", weight: 2, adapter: "Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0", network: "DVB-T Network", service: "Raw PID Subscription"
2022-02-15 16:35:47.761 linuxdvb: Panasonic MN88472 #0 : DVB-T #0 - poll TIMEOUT
2022-02-15 16:35:51.512 mpegts: 666MHz in DVB-T Network - scan no data, failed

Any ideas? The other tuner is currently working fine as there are 2 clients streaming another MUX. If I reboot the pi, both tuners will come back up normally.

F

Which version of the Pi? Remember the 3 and older share a single USB bus with the Ethernet, you'll be lucky to get 100Mb/s out of that bus, check dmesg for device disconnects or usb errors.

It's Raspberry Pi 3 Model B Plus Rev 1.3

It works flawlessly after a reboot, it's only after it's been idle for a while it doesn't work. A reseat of the USB does the trick. It's not the best device, I wish I knew more about them when i bought it. Ah well...

F

I've just been trying this tuner myself with TVHeadend under Ubuntu 20.04 (Kernel 5.13).

Was interested to see how it worked with the DVB-T2 signals available here in the UK, after others have said that there are problems unless the signal is very strong.

My experience seems to be that it works OK on the two DVB-T2 muxes available here, but it takes 10 seconds or so to lock properly. For those first 10 seconds, there are lots transport and continuity errors, and a mux scan gives incomplete data because of this. However, if you then stream one of the channels, after those few seconds of glitching, the signal suddenly stabilises with perfect picture/sound and no more transport or continuity errors being reported. It's kind of as if it has eventually "warmed up" and locked fully to the signal.

I get the same behaviour with both my main antenna (which feeds several TVs in the house and gets a strong signal), plus with a small indoor antenna. When eventually locked, even with the small indoor antenna the DVB-T2 signal quality seems very similar to my older PCTV 290e device.

The reported SNR in dB also seems to be pretty much identical between the XBox one tuner, the PCTV 290e and a Raspberry Pi TV Hat.

Adam W wrote:
...

The reported SNR in dB also seems to be pretty much identical between the XBox one tuner, the PCTV 290e and a Raspberry Pi TV Hat.

That is some really insightfull comparison, especially concerning the real Raspberry Pi TV Hat however could you also post your frequency?

Currently running om 618MHz on fta in the Netherlands, it can run for hours with no errors especially at night but around daylight times there might glitch in some errors every couple of hours. Although being around 1,5 kilometer/1mile away from the broadcast tower and using a passive small antenne (which actually wants 5v power) in combination with a sattelite diseqc switch/splitter on the same cable I must admit its not perfect but works supprissingly well.

There is only 1 FTA TS/Mux mapped since thats the only one available, currently I see 1 continuity error while tuning a channel however it stabilies so fast that the subscriped stream recording/viewing is error free. Is your raspberry powersupply upto feeding the tuner(s)?

I don’t really know, I can see the Crystal Palace transmitter from the end of my road, so I’m pretty close to the transmitters.

I have a channel per mux and they are scheduled to a mux at startup, so they’re constantly tuned.

If I start a stream direct via VLC for a channel it’s almost instant, I use Emby though and that have a large buffer, so it’s considerably longer when flipping channels because of this buffer, I’ve talked to the devs about it and there are changes coming.

Is the problem with the lack of support for auto mode for bandwidth due to the hardware or maybe the drivers?
BANDWIDTH_AUTO not supported, trying 6/7/8 MHz.

My Raspberry PI 3b with the Xbox usb dvb-t2 tuner, libreelec and TVHE works fine with the Colombian DVB-T2 channels (UHF, 6MHz bandwidth) but doesn't find the 'mobile' channels which I suspect are using T2 Lite (I know which mux they are on and it finds the other channels on that frequency).

any update to low signal on xbox tuner(MN88472) ? dvbc and dvbt.

to any one with the same problem, this settings helped me a lot

I’ve just tried this out in Germany (Cologne) to investigate the reported problems with German DVB-T2.

The two WDR/ARD muxes work fine, instant tuning and no errors, but ZDF (and the encrypted Freenet multiplexes) do not work. This seems to be a problem even reported elsewhere by Xbox users with the stick - that the ZDF multiplex does not tune in.

I’m using an indoor antenna, but I can see the transmission antenna on the Colonius tower less than 2km away. The ARD channels are very strong with flawless reception.

The DVB-T2 parameters are the same for the ZDF mux as for the WDR1-Süd mux which does work (64QAM, GI 19/128, FEC 3/5), so there must be something else different with the signal that causes this tuner to fail.

Curiously, my old PCTV 290e also fails to lock the ZDF signal, but succeeds with the two ARD muxes like the Xbox tuner. This was the same with the transmissions from another part of Germany last year, I had assumed that the ZDF signal was just too weak, but I think that the tuner just can’t tune it for a technical reason.