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This thread on "Recommendation for SAT>IP hardware" discussed Digibit R1 which is a quad sat>ip box.
[[https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/27729?r=27869]]

Go for SAT->IP, and I say this as a non-satip user (I use pcie/usb tuners atm).

Where are the good DVB-T2/S2 combo satip tuners!!

I got a Digibit R1 last week, and I'm very impressed, cost less than a quad port PCI-E card, and seems to function very nicely, in additional I have a Unicable LNB, so only need a single feed to it...

thermionic valve wrote:

I got a Digibit R1 last week, and I'm very impressed, cost less than a quad port PCI-E card, and seems to function very nicely, in additional I have a Unicable LNB, so only need a single feed to it...

And how proceed with payed channels and multistream?

Thank you.

I was originally a bit apprehensive about network tuners as I was worried about overloading my network with HD streams but as I have a fully wired gigabit network, I assume that it is very unlikely for that to happen.

The issue over firmware/drivers (i.e. you don't have to worry about it) is also definitely a bonus for working with Linux.

I guess another reason that I was sort of set on PCIe tuner cards was that I have to run my Linux server 24/7. I figured that if it is always on, I might as well use that electricity to run internal tuner cards rather than add another external device that would also have to be run 24/7.

However, thinking about it now, I am not quite sure if that logic is even correct - a PCIe tuner in a server is still going to be using electricity, just as a separate network device would do. The difference in power cannot be that different.

I am very tempted by the Digibit R1, now. I take it that it does indeed have gigabit ethernet on it?

The unicable compatibility is also a major bonus for me in terms of keeping my setup as neat as possible. What LNB and satellite dish are you using?

I have read, before, that unicable LNB's don't work well with Sky Minidishes, so I would have to upgrade the satellite dish too.

Not a major problem, though, as long as everything works well.

I'd be interested in knowing how a unicable setup works given an existing dish since I couldn't find a simple explanation.

Is the unicable a completely different type of cable, or can you re-purpose one of the existing wires going to the dish?

Does the unicable LNB then mean a separate (existing) set-top-box no longer works? Or is it a single cable to the living room and then a (powered) switch and separate outputs to the different devices? Or does the switch have to be very close to the dish?

I'm sure Wikipedia's explanation that "inputs are fed into a large N-pole M-Throw switch that outputs to M mixers" is obvious to some people, but, anyone have a pretty picture showing a dish, a house, any necessary switches, and how cables feed to say a STB and a quad SAT>IP server box?

Thanks.

Unicable is essentially a way of sending more than one LNB feed down a single coax.

The coax cable is exactly the same - it is the LNB and the receiver that have to be able to support the Unicable standard (I think there is Unicable II as well, now).

By example - at the moment, I have a satellite dish with four LNBs outputs. If the Digibit R1 did not support Unicable, I would have to run four coaxes from the LNB, with each of the coaxes connecting to one of the inputs.

With Unicable, I can swap my existing LNB for a Unicable version and run a single coax to just one of the inputs on the Digibit (the device will then see all four feeds).

The only downside I have found is that all the Unicable LNB's that I have found are for the regular shape (i.e. non minidish) satelite dishes, so I might have to buy a non-minidish too.

I had an original sky dish (was attached to the house when I bought it ~18 years ago) and just replaced the dish, feed and LNB at the same time.

The LNB is http://www.inverto.tv/products/product.php?section=1&id=159&cat=6

The switch is reporting a link speed of gigabit for the Digibit, and I have no problem recording 4 channels at the same time from it, but I must confess I'm not sure if that test was 4 channels on a single mux. my tvhe box is on the same switch, I play mostly via kodi on Pi3 on a different switch and haven;t seen any network issues.

I'm only using the Digibit for FTA channels, so decryption isn't an issue for me.

The only "fun" I'm having is working out how to get the EPG working reliably for freesat channels, and how to keep encrypted channels out of the channel list.

Ah, I get it now. So the unicable LNB is a quad and all four "signals" come down the same cable (high/low/vertical/horizontal or whatever the naming is) and can only come to one box. A bit like a tv aerial. The box then has the magic to demultiplex it to four internal tuners. Actually, I see there are unicable splitters but that would mean if I split two "signals" to my set-top-box the Digibit can only use the other two and not use all four of its internal tuners or would risk contention with the STB.

Whereas a quatro LNB I would have four cables coming down to the living room and then a powered switch there to feed as many boxes as I want (such as 16 on the one switch I saw), with one cable for each tuner, so four cables to digibit and two to STB with no contention since the switch does the magic. And a quad LNB is four cables and can feed up to four boxes and no more, so two to STB and two to Digibit.

thermionic valve wrote:

I had an original sky dish (was attached to the house when I bought it ~18 years ago) and just replaced the dish, feed and LNB at the same time.

The LNB is http://www.inverto.tv/products/product.php?section=1&id=159&cat=6

The switch is reporting a link speed of gigabit for the Digibit, and I have no problem recording 4 channels at the same time from it, but I must confess I'm not sure if that test was 4 channels on a single mux. my tvhe box is on the same switch, I play mostly via kodi on Pi3 on a different switch and haven;t seen any network issues.

I'm only using the Digibit for FTA channels, so decryption isn't an issue for me.

The only "fun" I'm having is working out how to get the EPG working reliably for freesat channels, and how to keep encrypted channels out of the channel list.

Sounds like you have a really nice setup - I am definitely tempted to go down the satellite route now.

Having struggled with EPG problems in the past, I ended up paying for a Schedules Direct account - although there are free ways to obtain EPG data for all the Freesat channels, I found that SD was the only way to get consistent information. The problem I previously had was TVH recording duplicates because broadcasters provided information, for previously recorded shows, that differed just enough to have it record again.

The one thing I am dreading is dealing with satellite frequency changes.

At the moment, I have both Freeview and Freesat channels and Freeview is so much easier to maintain - satellite channels seem to appear/disappear/change frequency/change name all the time.

Apparently, the use of bouquets help with this and keep everything up-to-date (I am yet to try this, however).

One quick thing - the Digibit D1 has a couple of USB slots on the back. Do you know what they can be used for?

I don't think bouquets work nicely if you have a mixed system of dvb-t and dvb-s. Without bouquets you "map channels, merge same name, exclude encrypted" so tvh can schedule a programme on dvb-t or dvb-s and will failover between them if the tuning fails. With bouquets, you can't merge across boundaries so you end up with dvb-t channels completely separate to dvb-s channels (so duplicates for common channels) and a tuning failure doesn't failover since they are separate channels.

The problem with recording duplicates is because tvh doesn't check for duplicates based on crid (broadcaster's id for the programme which tends to be consistent across dvb-t and dvb-s) so, as you say, you end up with lots of duplicates.

Does SD correctly handle nightly shows? I remember xmltv used to annoy me since those nightly talent shows/singing shows would be described as "More auditions for the show" and so Tuesday to Friday would be marked as a duplicate of Monday since the description was identical and season/episode was blank. So then you have to record all and pick up afternoon repeats.

Satellite frequency changes aren't that frequent for the popular channels. I think you can select an option to auto-map new channels in a bouquet.

A L wrote:

One quick thing - the Digibit D1 has a couple of USB slots on the back. Do you know what they can be used for?

It can boot alternative firmware from one of them, not sure what the intended use for the other one is

Although I used to use xmltv from the BBC back when I used to have mediaportal before I discovered tvhe, I've found the OTA Freeview EPG to be perfectly usable, but the Freesat EPG does seem to need more work (on my part) before its usable.

Em Smith wrote:

Without bouquets you "map channels, merge same name, exclude encrypted" so tvh can schedule a programme on dvb-t or dvb-s and will failover between them if the tuning fails.

Is there a guide on how to do this ?

I don't know if there is a guide. I don't even know if it's the correct way to do these things.

But Configuration->Channel/EPG. Then click "map services" button and select "map all services". Then click "view level expert". Unselect "encrypted", select "merge same name", tick the others if you want they create automatic channel groups such as "HDTV" which can be useful. Then click "map services". This will merge your channels. Some channels have different names on dvb-t and dvb-s just to be awkward, but many will merge.

Now go to Configuration->Recording->Digital Video Recorder Profiles. You probably only have one called "default". Click "view level expert" and see which "stream profile" you have. Maybe it's "pass" or "matroska", I can't remember the defaults.

Now go to Configuration->Stream->Stream Profiles, find the profile name from earlier, click "view level expert". Click "restart on error" and "switch to another service".

This should make it failover between services.

Maybe it does it all automatically without the above (and I can't see why it's not the default), but that's what I have done and a couple of times I've seen the Status->Subscriptions showing it trying different systems I have to try to tune when my tuner is busy with another (executable) program locking the tuner.

That's looking quite a bit better thanks!

Now I guess I need to rename the case differences between Freesat and Freeview BBC ONE HD/BBC One HD

I think that should be raised as feature request, case insensitive matching for merging...

Glad it helps.

I took a look at the code a while back and have it in the back of my mind to raise that request and also to compare with spaces removed too for "X+1" vs "X<space>+1" so it should probably be called something like "tidy channel names for merging".

Em Smith wrote:

Ah, I get it now. So the unicable LNB is a quad and all four "signals" come down the same cable (high/low/vertical/horizontal or whatever the naming is) and can only come to one box. A bit like a tv aerial. The box then has the magic to demultiplex it to four internal tuners. Actually, I see there are unicable splitters but that would mean if I split two "signals" to my set-top-box the Digibit can only use the other two and not use all four of its internal tuners or would risk contention with the STB.

Actually - I can see why you'd think that, but that isn't how Unicable and Unicable II work.

Normal Universal LNBs send one of four very wide band range of signals down the LNB cable (High Frequency or Low Frequency, Horizontal or Vertical polarisation). Which of the 4 IF band options that is output by the LNB is remotely controlled by the tuner (using a combination of voltage switching for H/V polarisation and 22kHz tones for Hi/Lo). The tuner then tunes across this very wide IF band (~950-2200MHz) to select a single transponder which is usually something like 27-36MHz wide. This 4 way switching is why historically each tuner has needed its own LNB cable.

Unicable LNBs take a totally different approach. Rather than sending an entire ~1300MHz band down the LNB cable at once - to a tuner that only needs ~36MHz of it at anyone time, instead the LNB allocates fixed frequency 45MHz wide (I think) channels to each tuner connected to the LNB. To tuner a particular transponde the tuner then sends a precise request for the transponder frequency it wants to the LNB, which then transposes just the 45MHz wide band at the transponder frequency requested and shifts this to the fixed frequency band allocated to that tuner. So rather than just asking for one of the 4 Universal LNB bands, it asks very specifically - using data a bit like Diseqc and Hi/Lo switching - for a very specific transponder frequency and polarisation to be sent in the 45MHz RF block allocated to it.

This is far more efficient - but it does require that the LNB (or mulitswitch - you can implement it this way too) is more complex (crudely it needs a local oscillator for every tuner rather than just two). It also requires that the receiver/tuner is Unicable compatible - and knows to send data to the LNB to change transponder, not to tune across the LNB IF range itself.

Unicable I supports 8 tuner channels - so one cable can carry feeds for up to 8 tuners. Unicable II supports up to 32 tuner channels, so can support 32 separate tuners via a single cable.

However you need Unicable compatible hardware and software I believe for this to work or a Unicable compatible set top box.

• SKY+ HD UK boxes are NOT I believe Unicable compatible. Sky have a system called SCR to do something similar - but not the same. Sky Q boxes DO use Unicable optionally I believe - though their default install is again a different type. They use two LNB feeds with wider bands than a normal Universal LNB - so each cable carries either a full Horizontal or full Vertical band - with no need for Hi/Lo switching ***

Whereas a quatro LNB I would have four cables coming down to the living room and then a powered switch there to feed as many boxes as I want (such as 16 on the one switch I saw), with one cable for each tuner, so four cables to digibit and two to STB with no contention since the switch does the magic. And a quad LNB is four cables and can feed up to four boxes and no more, so two to STB and two to Digibit.

Yes - a Quattro (or a Quad with some multiswitches which permanently drive the Quad outputs into HiH, LoH, HiV, LoV - though there are pitfalls potentially with this approach) would let you feed multiple tuners too. Unicable is neater - but requires compatible tuners. Multiswitches look just like a Universal LNB to the device they are connected to, so need nothing clever in the tuner.

Thanks for the explanation. Took me a few reads but I think I now understand it.

Via a link on another forum question I came across this [[http://www.inverto.tv/guide/?p=12]] with some pictures of the dish/tuner/cabling setup.

Perhaps interesting to the original poster is the Inverto IDLI-8CHE20-OOPOE-OSP "iLNB", a LNB which implements an 8-channel sat>ip server directly. So you connect the Ethernet cable direct to the LNB and the other end to a POE (supplied power over Ethernet) adapter and then to your router and that's it. Seems to cost around 300/350 pounds from the first couple of links I clicked on. It works with tvheadend (if you follow thread to the end) [[https://www.tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/13486]]. I've not researched it but thought it might offer an alternative for you to look in to.

Em Smith wrote:

Thanks for the explanation. Took me a few reads but I think I now understand it.

Via a link on another forum question I came across this [[http://www.inverto.tv/guide/?p=12]] with some pictures of the dish/tuner/cabling setup.

Perhaps interesting to the original poster is the Inverto IDLI-8CHE20-OOPOE-OSP "iLNB", a LNB which implements an 8-channel sat>ip server directly. So you connect the Ethernet cable direct to the LNB and the other end to a POE (supplied power over Ethernet) adapter and then to your router and that's it. Seems to cost around 300/350 pounds from the first couple of links I clicked on. It works with tvheadend (if you follow thread to the end) [[https://www.tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/13486]]. I've not researched it but thought it might offer an alternative for you to look in to.

From memory - that LNB used to suffer from quite frequent crashes ISTR? I thought it was no longer a current product - but I may be wrong.

Thanks for all that.

I think I am going to go for a Digibit R1 and also a new satellite dish with Unicable LNB - seems to be a really nice setup.

Thank you also for the explanation, above, involving how to keep channels up-to-date. Once I have everything up and running, I shall experiment to see if I can get that all working.