Tvheadend

Anthony Thomas wrote:

After a little while of testing a 4x XBox One tuner DVB-C setup I have noticed that there are definitely some signal issues with this tuner.

They don't perform anywhere near as well as an Astrometa MN88473 based tuner. Regular pixelisation.

I've tried adding a powered amplifier but I know if you're boosting a poor signal it often makes it worse, but I also don't think it's a poor signal in the first place (or certainly not too bad).

I also saw yesterday when TVH tried to do an epggrab on 3 tuners, whilst I was watching TV through another, the signal went through the floor with many errors. But strangely only on one mux - muxes either side were as before, very odd.

Maybe I need a better quality signal splitter, or to change how I route the cable to the tuners - currently using some screw on gender changers which I know aren't too great.

TVHeadend has a "Low Noise Amplifier" tick box in the tuner settings. I'm not sure if these sticks have a LNA or if the option is implemented in the driver, but maybe that might help if you haven't tried it yet?

Looks like I got a crash (leak?) with tvheadend using these tuners - I've opened an issue here

@olli Is this a bug with tvheadend or the tuners? I'm swapping them out for just the astrometa and an August T210v2, so I should be able to answer that myself eventually.

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Anthony Thomas wrote:

After a little while of testing a 4x XBox One tuner DVB-C setup I have noticed that there are definitely some signal issues with this tuner.

They don't perform anywhere near as well as an Astrometa MN88473 based tuner. Regular pixelisation.

I've tried adding a powered amplifier but I know if you're boosting a poor signal it often makes it worse, but I also don't think it's a poor signal in the first place (or certainly not too bad).

I also saw yesterday when TVH tried to do an epggrab on 3 tuners, whilst I was watching TV through another, the signal went through the floor with many errors. But strangely only on one mux - muxes either side were as before, very odd.

Maybe I need a better quality signal splitter, or to change how I route the cable to the tuners - currently using some screw on gender changers which I know aren't too great.

I have the original Astrometa (MN88472) and experienced the same problem on DVB-T again with only one mux - the strongest one of all. Now here's the interesting thing, both xbox tuners are connected to the same powered splitter using quality cables (with another 4+ tuners, all fine). The one (xbox tuner, using a cable that was made) is fine, the other with a high quality (sealed) cable glitched like hell, I switched it out with a cheapo poundland cable, and guess what, it's fine!

Make of that what you will.. (yes, I checked the cables were all connected correctly many times).

Just added a different type of amplifier and changed the gender changers/couplers to cables and whilst the problem hasn't gone, it's definitely better. I guess I'm just on the edge of it being good enough.

Hello,

Could we create a wiki page in linuxtv to share this documentation?

It will be great for other people that not use tvheadend and want to use this device in Linux machines.

Kind regards.

is it possible to install the driver on Rasbian on a Banana Pi?

marco raap wrote:

is it possible to install the driver on Rasbian on a Banana Pi?

It should be yes, I was able to build an armbian image on mine which is essentially Debian Jessie, and Raspbian is pretty much the same.

Hello,

Thanks Olli for your work, it works well with DVB-C.

I installed in a Raspberry Pi with Raspbian Jessie Lite image and I am using with minisatip to feed tvheadend.

I can not find all channels, but I think that I must configure the muxes first.

Kind regards.

Anthony Thomas wrote:

.. snip ..

Looks like I'd spoken too soon, the cc errors later returned, so I started to investigate a bit more & remembered some tuners don't like power saving, which on my BPiM1/Armbian is (by default) set to ondemand, I changed this to performance and so far (last 30-45 mins) it hasn't shown any CC errors. So you may want to give that a try!

Is there module argument that can be used to disable power saving? Or have you just done it through TVH?
Since I'm not using TVH on that system I'd need to do it the kernel module way.

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Anthony Thomas wrote:

.. snip ..

Looks like I'd spoken too soon, the cc errors later returned, so I started to investigate a bit more & remembered some tuners don't like power saving, which on my BPiM1/Armbian is (by default) set to ondemand, I changed this to performance and so far (last 30-45 mins) it hasn't shown any CC errors. So you may want to give that a try!

Mark, can you give this a try and see if it works for you? Because it seems to be for me on initial testing.

/etc/modprobe.d/dvb_xbox.conf (or whatever file you want in modprobe.d)

options dvb_usb_dib0700 force_lna_activation=1

Ian P. wrote:

TVHeadend has a "Low Noise Amplifier" tick box in the tuner settings. I'm not sure if these sticks have a LNA or if the option is implemented in the driver, but maybe that might help if you haven't tried it yet?

I think you could have been spot on, added the LNA option to load with the module and it may be working.

A bit more testing and I don't think it has actually helped.

Another idea, do these tuners perform better after a reboot and gradually degrade over time?

I don't think the LNA option does anything with these drivers. On or off, the behaviour will be the same.

Olli Salonen wrote:

I don't think the LNA option does anything with these drivers. On or off, the behaviour will be the same.

That answers that then!

Anthony Thomas wrote:

Is there module argument that can be used to disable power saving? Or have you just done it through TVH?
Since I'm not using TVH on that system I'd need to do it the kernel module way.

Sorry for not responding sooner.

• The LNA option in both tvheadend and the module, as Olli has already said, do absolutely nothing.
• The power saving mode I was talking about was for the system itself, the CPU governor. I set mine to performance & after a few days I'm not seeing any major CC errors, I still get a few but now it's only on initial tune.

I'm seriously annoyed at how much faster these are compared to my August T210v2 tuners :/

Ah, I see. Are you using the tuners on a RPi (or ARM) system?

I'm on an x86/64 system, I'll see if I can force the CPU high in case that helps.

Anthony Thomas wrote:

Ah, I see. Are you using the tuners on a RPi (or ARM) system?

Banana Pi M1, so ARM.

I'm on an x86/64 system, I'll see if I can force the CPU high in case that helps.

It pretty much solved all my errors.

pi@bpi-iot-ros-ai:~/media_build $ make distclean
make -C /home/pi/media_build/v4l distclean
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l'
rm -f *~ *.o *.ko .*.o.cmd .*.ko.cmd *.mod.c av7110_firm.h fdump \
    config-compat.h Module.symvers Module.markers modules.order \
    *.unsigned .*.ko.unsigned.cmd
make -C firmware clean
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l/firmware'
rm -f ihex2fw
rm -f vicam/firmware.fw ttusb-budget/dspbootcode.bin cpia2/stv0672_vp4.bin av7110/bootcode.bin
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l/firmware'
rm -f .version .*.o.flags .*.o.d *.mod.gcno Makefile.media \
    Kconfig Kconfig.kern .config .config.cmd .myconfig \
    .kconfig.dep
rm -rf .tmp_versions .tmp*.ver .tmp*.o .*.gcno
rm -f scripts/lxdialog scripts/kconfig
make -C firmware distclean
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l/firmware'
rm -f ihex2fw
rm -f vicam/firmware.fw ttusb-budget/dspbootcode.bin cpia2/stv0672_vp4.bin av7110/bootcode.bin
for i in av7110/ cpia2/ ttusb-budget/ vicam/; do if [ -d $i ]; then rm -rf $i; fi; done
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l/firmware'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l'
pi@bpi-iot-ros-ai:~/media_build $ make
make -C /home/pi/media_build/v4l 
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l'
No version yet, using 3.4.112-sun7i
scripts/make_makefile.pl
Updating/Creating .config
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/linux'
Syncing with dir ../../media
Applying patches for kernel 3.4.112-sun7i
patch -s -f -N -p1 -i ../backports/api_version.patch
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED
Makefile:138: recipe for target 'apply_patches' failed
make[2]: *** [apply_patches] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/linux'
Preparing to compile for kernel version 3.4.112
File not found: /lib/modules/3.4.112-sun7i/build/.config at ./scripts/make_kconfig.pl line 33, <IN> line 4.
Updating/Creating .config
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/linux'
Syncing with dir ../../media
make[3]: Entering directory '/home/pi/media_build/linux'
Unapplying patches
make[3]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/linux'
Applying patches for kernel 3.4.112-sun7i
patch -s -f -N -p1 -i ../backports/api_version.patch
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED
Makefile:138: recipe for target 'apply_patches' failed
make[2]: *** [apply_patches] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/linux'
Preparing to compile for kernel version 3.4.112
File not found: /lib/modules/3.4.112-sun7i/build/.config at ./scripts/make_kconfig.pl line 33, <IN> line 4.
make[1]: *** No rule to make target '.config', needed by '.myconfig'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/media_build/v4l'
Makefile:26: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

i trie to install the Drivers on a Banana Pi running raspbian lite

marco raap wrote:

[...]

i trie to install the Drivers on a Banana Pi running raspbian lite

Are you running kernel 3.4? I don't think that will ever work.. You will need something quite recent for this driver.

Yes,
what kernel do I need for this?
What can I do?

marco raap wrote:

Yes,
what kernel do I need for this?
What can I do?

Option 1: Use a Raspberry Pi to recreate the situation others have had success with in this thread (because the Orange, Banana and other alternatives to the Raspberry usually don't run Kernel 4.x and most of the drivers you need aren't written for Kernel 3.x)
Option 2: Use a PC/Netbook/NUC to go the x86 way. Benefits of doing it this way include the ability to transcode multiple streams and higher available bandwidth over USB/Ethernet. The Pi can be fairly limiting in I/O bandwidth in certain cases.

In both cases, read posts by people claiming they have a working setup. And if you've read all the instructions and followed them to the letter and it still doesn't work I'm sure someone (maybe even me) will help you to troubleshoot.

I found Ambian will try this first.

i do have problems I think to install the kernel-headers propertly
Anyone an Idea?

marco raap wrote:

I found Ambian will try this first.

I wasn't able to build it on my Banana Pi either, I had to compile an image with the git patches.. I can upload my img if you like.

yes that would be awesome