Mailing List Archive

LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ
Sky disabled my old Pace DSR2000 decoder last night with a nice blue dialog box stating my decoder is old and needs replacing. Today the friendly sky man came round with a mySKY HDi to replace it. It’s a Pace TDS850NNZ and I can’t get it working with LIRC.
I’m using a Microsoft MCE USB receiver and it’s IR blaster. It worked great with the older box for the last 6+ years.

Has anyone else got a mySKY box working with their setup?

I’ve scoured the web looking for a lirc config files, and tried all 24 of the Pace files from http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/pace/

I’ve also tried using irrecord. It failed with the "something went worng” message and to try using -f

So I’ve tried

sudo irrecord -f --disable-namespace -d /dev/lirc0 test.conf

and created configs with raw codes. I’ve managed to create a config where the “2” button worked, but all the others were ignored (IR received LED just didn’t flash like it does with the real remote).

I’ve even tried setting up a harmony remote with the MySKY and using irrecord with that. The Harmony remote will control the MySKY box, but the resulting config file won’t. 8(

What else can I try? Has anyone got a mySKY box working with LIRC, maybe with a different receiver/blaster setup?


- Wade


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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 20:21:30 +1300, you wrote:

>Sky disabled my old Pace DSR2000 decoder last night with a nice blue dialog box stating my decoder is old and needs replacing. Today the friendly sky man came round with a mySKY HDi to replace it. It?s a Pace TDS850NNZ and I can?t get it working with LIRC.
>I?m using a Microsoft MCE USB receiver and it?s IR blaster. It worked great with the older box for the last 6+ years.
>
>Has anyone else got a mySKY box working with their setup?
>
>I?ve scoured the web looking for a lirc config files, and tried all 24 of the Pace files from http://lirc.sourceforge.net/remotes/pace/
>
>I?ve also tried using irrecord. It failed with the "something went worng? message and to try using -f
>
>So I?ve tried
>
>sudo irrecord -f --disable-namespace -d /dev/lirc0 test.conf
>
>and created configs with raw codes. I?ve managed to create a config where the ?2? button worked, but all the others were ignored (IR received LED just didn?t flash like it does with the real remote).
>
>I?ve even tried setting up a harmony remote with the MySKY and using irrecord with that. The Harmony remote will control the MySKY box, but the resulting config file won?t. 8(
>
>What else can I try? Has anyone got a mySKY box working with LIRC, maybe with a different receiver/blaster setup?
>
>
> - Wade

The new decoders are Kaon boxes and the standard MySky boxes seem to
now just be the same hardware but with your card programmed to tell
the box to be able to record. The new decoders seem to be programmed
to use the same remotes as old MySky boxes. I am not sure what a
MySky HDi uses though. I seem to remember someone was reporting
success with a new decoder using some MySky tables they found
somewhere. So if you can find that post, those tables might work for
you too.

But I really think you should be changing completely how you record
from Sky. The new boxes seem to only have a composite video output
that you can record from, which gives terrible quality. And using an
IR blaster to change channels is always problematic - it does just
fail sometimes for no particular reason. If, however, you get a card
reader and put your Sky card in that, then use Oscam to talk to the
card, you can set up MythTV to record digitally as many channels as
you like via DVB-S2 tuners. I am currently set up to record as many
as 5 channels at once, and 10 channels when the recordings overlap on
the same channel (I have a TBS6909 8 tuner DVB-S2 card). I have
minisatip running my DVB-S2 tuners and talking to Oscam to do the
decoding, then I have my Sky channels defined in MythTV as IPTV
channels using SAT>IP (RTSP) protocol, recording from minisatip. It
is much more reliable than I ever achieved using my old decoder and IR
blaster - just as good as my DVB-T recordings. And the picture
quality is so much better than I got with S-Video and my PVR-500 card.

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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 21:13:14 +1300, you wrote:

>I seem to remember someone was reporting
>success with a new decoder using some MySky tables they found
>somewhere. So if you can find that post, those tables might work for
>you too.

Sorry, I should have said that the post was on Geekzone.

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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
> On 28/09/2017, at 21:13, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
> The new decoders are Kaon boxes and the standard MySky boxes seem to
> now just be the same hardware but with your card programmed to tell
> the box to be able to record. The new decoders seem to be programmed
> to use the same remotes as old MySky boxes. I am not sure what a
> MySky HDi uses though.

It doesn't work with the spare old Sky remote I have, so I know it’s not the RC-30.


> I seem to remember someone was reporting
> success with a new decoder using some MySky tables they found
> somewhere. So if you can find that post, those tables might work for
> you too.
>

I’ve found mention of a data sheet for an IR repeater here:

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=106&topicid=199099

but the PDF isn’t available anymore, and it’s not in the Wayback Machine.



> But I really think you should be changing completely how you record
> from Sky. The new boxes seem to only have a composite video output
> that you can record from, which gives terrible quality.

This Pace TDS850N has HDMI, Component, and SCART. I’ve currently got a SCART to Component running to a Hauppage HD PVR. The DSR2000 has SCART so I’ve just plugged in this new decoder in it’s place, we haven’t got the HD Ticket from Sky, so it’s adequate for the moment.


> And using an
> IR blaster to change channels is always problematic - it does just
> fail sometimes for no particular reason. If, however, you get a card
> reader and put your Sky card in that, then use Oscam to talk to the
> card, you can set up MythTV to record digitally as many channels as
> you like via DVB-S2 tuners. I am currently set up to record as many
> as 5 channels at once, and 10 channels when the recordings overlap on
> the same channel (I have a TBS6909 8 tuner DVB-S2 card). I have
> minisatip running my DVB-S2 tuners and talking to Oscam to do the
> decoding, then I have my Sky channels defined in MythTV as IPTV
> channels using SAT>IP (RTSP) protocol, recording from minisatip. It
> is much more reliable than I ever achieved using my old decoder and IR
> blaster - just as good as my DVB-T recordings. And the picture
> quality is so much better than I got with S-Video and my PVR-500 card.

That should be the way to go. I do actually have a Phoenix/Smartmouse Card Reader but I’ve never tried it. Is it likely to be an appropriate reader?
The new decoder has the 2 tone blue card from https://skytv.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/831/~/how-do-i-find-my-smart-card-number%3F

What distro are you using currently? Was there anything extra you had to do to get the TBS6909 supported? (like you did with the TBS 9522)


- Wade




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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:04:58 +1300, you wrote:

>> On 28/09/2017, at 21:13, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>>
>> The new decoders are Kaon boxes and the standard MySky boxes seem to
>> now just be the same hardware but with your card programmed to tell
>> the box to be able to record. The new decoders seem to be programmed
>> to use the same remotes as old MySky boxes. I am not sure what a
>> MySky HDi uses though.
>
>It doesn't work with the spare old Sky remote I have, so I know it?s not the RC-30.
>
>
>> I seem to remember someone was reporting
>> success with a new decoder using some MySky tables they found
>> somewhere. So if you can find that post, those tables might work for
>> you too.
>>
>
>I?ve found mention of a data sheet for an IR repeater here:
>
>https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=106&topicid=199099
>
>but the PDF isn?t available anymore, and it?s not in the Wayback Machine.
>
>
>
>> But I really think you should be changing completely how you record
>> from Sky. The new boxes seem to only have a composite video output
>> that you can record from, which gives terrible quality.
>
>This Pace TDS850N has HDMI, Component, and SCART. I?ve currently got a SCART to Component running to a Hauppage HD PVR. The DSR2000 has SCART so I?ve just plugged in this new decoder in it?s place, we haven?t got the HD Ticket from Sky, so it?s adequate for the moment.

SCART should have S-Video out, so converting that to component is not
so bad - composite is just terrible.

>> And using an
>> IR blaster to change channels is always problematic - it does just
>> fail sometimes for no particular reason. If, however, you get a card
>> reader and put your Sky card in that, then use Oscam to talk to the
>> card, you can set up MythTV to record digitally as many channels as
>> you like via DVB-S2 tuners. I am currently set up to record as many
>> as 5 channels at once, and 10 channels when the recordings overlap on
>> the same channel (I have a TBS6909 8 tuner DVB-S2 card). I have
>> minisatip running my DVB-S2 tuners and talking to Oscam to do the
>> decoding, then I have my Sky channels defined in MythTV as IPTV
>> channels using SAT>IP (RTSP) protocol, recording from minisatip. It
>> is much more reliable than I ever achieved using my old decoder and IR
>> blaster - just as good as my DVB-T recordings. And the picture
>> quality is so much better than I got with S-Video and my PVR-500 card.
>
>That should be the way to go. I do actually have a Phoenix/Smartmouse Card Reader but I?ve never tried it. Is it likely to be an appropriate reader?

Yes, Phoenix protocol card readers should just work. I have an
Omnikey 3121 reader, which uses the PCSD drivers, but just works once
you follow the install instructions. I think Phoenix readers either
use RS-232 (for the old ones), or a USB RS-232 interface (newer ones).
So if yours is an old one, you will need an RS-232 port on your PC to
connect it, or need to buy a USB RS-232 converter. The new ones
should create a new RS-232 interface to talk to when they are plugged
into a USB port. There is plenty of documentation on the net about
how to set them up. Then install a recent Oscam and see if it can see
your card. You will need to know the boxid of your MySky box to
configure Oscam - in my new decoder it is available buried down in the
System menu somewhere. Without the boxid value, Oscam crashes when
trying to read the newer Sky cards. Since Oscam clearly can not read
the boxid from the card, it may be that any boxid value will work,
rather than just the correct one, but I have never tried that.

>The new decoder has the 2 tone blue card from https://skytv.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/831/~/how-do-i-find-my-smart-card-number%3F

I am not sure if that card is supported, but since you already have
the card reader, you should just try it and find out.

>What distro are you using currently? Was there anything extra you had to do to get the TBS6909 supported? (like you did with the TBS 9522)

I am using Mythbuntu 16.04.3 with MythTV 0.28 at present. I also have
a test PC running Mythbuntu 16.04.3 and MythTV v29. Both work with
Oscam and the TBS cards. You do still have to compile the drivers to
support the TBS6909 (and my new TBS6209 8 tuner DVB-T2 card). But the
drivers for them are open source ones based on the backport kernel
multimedia drivers, so there is hope that at some point they will get
merged into the kernel. These new drivers also support my TBS9522,
but do not do the automatic DVB-S to DVB-S2 switching that the old TBS
drivers did. That switching was never in the Linux DVB standard and
is now deprecated. However, I did find that the backport drivers
caused my old Hauppauge PVR-500 card's drivers to crash on boot, where
the standard kernel drivers worked fine with the PVR-500. That driver
crash caused systemd to get confused and fail to shut down the PC
correctly - I had to use Alt-PrintScrn-RESUB to shut down. Since I
was no longer using the PVR-500, I just removed it. But it is
possible that if you have other old tuner cards, they might have
driver problems with the new drivers.

As a bounus, the way Sky does its HD tickets is not via the
encryption. So recording directly via DVB-S2 allows you access to the
HD versions of all the channels you have a subscription for, without
having to pay for an HD ticket.

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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
> On 28/09/2017, at 23:01, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
> I am using Mythbuntu 16.04.3 with MythTV 0.28 at present.

Cool, that’s what I have.

> I also have
> a test PC running Mythbuntu 16.04.3 and MythTV v29. Both work with
> Oscam and the TBS cards. You do still have to compile the drivers to
> support the TBS6909 (and my new TBS6209 8 tuner DVB-T2 card). But the
> drivers for them are open source ones based on the backport kernel
> multimedia drivers, so there is hope that at some point they will get
> merged into the kernel. These new drivers also support my TBS9522,
> but do not do the automatic DVB-S to DVB-S2 switching that the old TBS
> drivers did. That switching was never in the Linux DVB standard and
> is now deprecated. However, I did find that the backport drivers
> caused my old Hauppauge PVR-500 card's drivers to crash on boot, where
> the standard kernel drivers worked fine with the PVR-500. That driver
> crash caused systemd to get confused and fail to shut down the PC
> correctly - I had to use Alt-PrintScrn-RESUB to shut down. Since I
> was no longer using the PVR-500, I just removed it. But it is
> possible that if you have other old tuner cards, they might have
> driver problems with the new drivers.

I’ve already ordered a TBS6909 earlier tonight, via standard shipping to try and keep it under the GST limit/radar. My backend has 2 Skystar2 DVB-S PCI cards, I ditched the PVR-150 and 350 when I put this box together, replacing them with the HD-PVR. I’ve also got a HD Homerun handling DVB-T. In theory I’ll be pulling out the 2 SkyStar2 cards for the TBS6909 so hopefully there won’t be any driver issues there.

Thanks for pointers and kick in the ass to get this moving. 8)

- Wade


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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:52:52 +1300, you wrote:

>I?ve already ordered a TBS6909 earlier tonight, via standard shipping to try and keep it under the GST limit/radar.

Exactly what I did, ordered with free shipping - it came in just under
the limit, and arrived about 2 days after the earliest predicted
arrival date. We seem to be getting excellent service now from most
Chinese/Hong Kong/Singapore ebay sellers. And their postal services
are much better than ours now.

>My backend has 2 Skystar2 DVB-S PCI cards, I ditched the PVR-150 and 350 when I put this box together, replacing them with the HD-PVR. I?ve also got a HD Homerun handling DVB-T. In theory I?ll be pulling out the 2 SkyStar2 cards for the TBS6909 so hopefully there won?t be any driver issues there.

Sounds good. And the TBS6909 only needs a single aerial feed for all
8 tuners, so it should be getting even better signal than the old
SkyStar2 cards, which presumably needed a splitter.

>Thanks for pointers and kick in the ass to get this moving. 8)

Let me know if you need any help with setup.

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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
> You will need to know the boxid of your MySky box to configure Oscam

Thanks for sharing that tip Stephen. I pfaffed around with Oscam a couple
of years ago, and just gave up because it would not play nice with the Sky
card. I cancelled my Sky Sports sub and switched to FanPass (which has
truly horrific quality for a "HD" streaming service).

Knowing that someone else is able to able to do this, I'm now strongly
considering resubscribing to Sky Sport. It's going to work out to be
roughly the same price as FanPass from the beginning of 2018.

--
Jonathan

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 at 00:14 Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz>
wrote:

> On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 23:52:52 +1300, you wrote:
>
> >I’ve already ordered a TBS6909 earlier tonight, via standard shipping to
> try and keep it under the GST limit/radar.
>
> Exactly what I did, ordered with free shipping - it came in just under
> the limit, and arrived about 2 days after the earliest predicted
> arrival date. We seem to be getting excellent service now from most
> Chinese/Hong Kong/Singapore ebay sellers. And their postal services
> are much better than ours now.
>
> >My backend has 2 Skystar2 DVB-S PCI cards, I ditched the PVR-150 and 350
> when I put this box together, replacing them with the HD-PVR. I’ve also got
> a HD Homerun handling DVB-T. In theory I’ll be pulling out the 2 SkyStar2
> cards for the TBS6909 so hopefully there won’t be any driver issues there.
>
> Sounds good. And the TBS6909 only needs a single aerial feed for all
> 8 tuners, so it should be getting even better signal than the old
> SkyStar2 cards, which presumably needed a splitter.
>
> >Thanks for pointers and kick in the ass to get this moving. 8)
>
> Let me know if you need any help with setup.
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
--
--
Jonathan Hoskin
Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
> On 29/09/2017, at 00:13, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>
> Sounds good. And the TBS6909 only needs a single aerial feed for all
> 8 tuners, so it should be getting even better signal than the old
> SkyStar2 cards, which presumably needed a splitter.
>
>> Thanks for pointers and kick in the ass to get this moving. 8)
>
> Let me know if you need any help with setup.

Right, quick update.

Card arrived today. Just wasted the afternoon to try and get it going. In the process I lost access to most of my existing inputs (SkyStar 2, HD PVR). Card physically installed fine, installed the TBS software following instructions from https://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=9960 (Open Source, git and make, and install firmware) and could see the card with lspci -vvv but it didn’t appear in dmesg. Same applied to the SkyStar 2 (x2), plus there were no entries for /dev/dvb/* or /dev/video0. After much gnashing of teeth, reboots and googling to many dead ends, I ended up trying modprobe to load the SkyStar cards. That was failing with messages like:

# sudo modprobe b2c2_flexcop_pci
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'b2c2_flexcop_pci': Required key not available

which eventually lead me to info about disabling Secure Boot in BIOS/EFI settings (never heard of it til now). This is a fairly recent Asus Z170 motherboard so the setting was Boot > Secure Boot > OS Type and set it to Other OS. Now dmesg is showing entries for TurboSight TBS 6909 DVB-S/S2 & Sky2PC/SkyStar 2 DVB-S, and there are adaptors listed in /dev/dvb/. 8)

To test the card was working, I added a single new card input to MythTV Setup using the same settings as the other DVB cards (and left the others as they were). Watch Live TV starts with one of the SkyStar cards fine (showing signal strength info when first starting) but when I try to access the new card via Menu > Source > Switch Input it just freezes for a bit and dumps me out to the menu. Switching to any of the other inputs works as expected. I’ve tried switching the aerial input to each of the 4 input connectors on the card, and also tried using the cable connected to the SkyStar card (just to eliminate bad cable or wrong port).

Myth is currently back online and can record from the SkyStars, and HDPVR so I’ve deleted this new card input, and will look at it again tomorrow.


- Wade


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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
On Fri, 13 Oct 2017 20:17:31 +1300, you wrote:

>> On 29/09/2017, at 00:13, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent@jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>>
>> Sounds good. And the TBS6909 only needs a single aerial feed for all
>> 8 tuners, so it should be getting even better signal than the old
>> SkyStar2 cards, which presumably needed a splitter.
>>
>>> Thanks for pointers and kick in the ass to get this moving. 8)
>>
>> Let me know if you need any help with setup.
>
>Right, quick update.
>
>Card arrived today. Just wasted the afternoon to try and get it going. In the process I lost access to most of my existing inputs (SkyStar 2, HD PVR). Card physically installed fine, installed the TBS software following instructions from https://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=9960 (Open Source, git and make, and install firmware) and could see the card with lspci -vvv but it didn?t appear in dmesg. Same applied to the SkyStar 2 (x2), plus there were no entries for /dev/dvb/* or /dev/video0. After much gnashing of teeth, reboots and googling to many dead ends, I ended up trying modprobe to load the SkyStar cards. That was failing with messages like:
>
># sudo modprobe b2c2_flexcop_pci
>modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'b2c2_flexcop_pci': Required key not available
>
>which eventually lead me to info about disabling Secure Boot in BIOS/EFI settings (never heard of it til now). This is a fairly recent Asus Z170 motherboard so the setting was Boot > Secure Boot > OS Type and set it to Other OS. Now dmesg is showing entries for TurboSight TBS 6909 DVB-S/S2 & Sky2PC/SkyStar 2 DVB-S, and there are adaptors listed in /dev/dvb/. 8)
>
>To test the card was working, I added a single new card input to MythTV Setup using the same settings as the other DVB cards (and left the others as they were). Watch Live TV starts with one of the SkyStar cards fine (showing signal strength info when first starting) but when I try to access the new card via Menu > Source > Switch Input it just freezes for a bit and dumps me out to the menu. Switching to any of the other inputs works as expected. I?ve tried switching the aerial input to each of the 4 input connectors on the card, and also tried using the cable connected to the SkyStar card (just to eliminate bad cable or wrong port).
>
>Myth is currently back online and can record from the SkyStars, and HDPVR so I?ve deleted this new card input, and will look at it again tomorrow.
>
>
> - Wade

I did a patch to the TBS6009 drivers so that I could specify which
aerial input was used with each tuner pair. That simplified getting
it working quite a bit. But it should work with the default mode=0
option if you plug the dish into the correct input and make sure that
your setup in MythTV does not send the 22 kHz tone ever. I have not
tried that since I started using my patch though - I just use the
patch and specify the input I am using with mode=1.

And there has been a recent change (end of September IIRC), so the
driver name for loading the TBS6909 RF side driver has changed from
mxl5xx to mxl58x. That means that all the documentation that tells
you the driver name is mxl5xx is now wrong and you need to use mxl58x
instead.

The support page for the TBS6909 is here:

https://www.tbsiptv.com/index.php?route=product/download/drivers&path=13&id=16

and this is the site for the TBS open source drivers:

https://github.com/tbsdtv/linux_media/wiki

Note the instruction in FAQ 4 at the bottom of that page about getting
the firmware for the TBS6909.

I have put all the files I use for compiling and running the TBS open
source drivers on my web server:

http://www.jsw.gen.nz/mythtv/tbs6909/

The files are:

options-dvb.conf

This goes in /etc/modprobe.d to configure the drivers. Adjust the
settings for where you want the tuners assigned. The numbers I am
using are compatible with what MythTV had my old DVB-S2 and DVB-T
tuners assigned on, and I decided that it was easier to set the
numbers in the driver than to change the MythTV end of things.

All the remaining files are used to build the TBS drivers. I have
them in /root/projects/tbs6909-drivers. If you want to put them
anywhere else, you will need to edit that path in the script files.

mxl58x.patch

The patch file, if you want to use that. This creates the inputs=
option for the mxl58x driver. Use "modinfo mxl58x" to see how to use
it.

download_and_build.sh

This downloads and builds the standard (unpatched) TBS drivers, and
then installs them.

download_and_build_with_addons.sh

This downloads the TBS drivers, patches the mxl58x.c file, builds and
installs them.

upgrade-and-reinstall.sh

This should get the changes to the TBS drivers from git and build and
install them. However, it does not work if you are using the patch so
I have not used it for a while and it is possible it is not now
working.

Note: There seems to be a race condition in building the TBS drivers,
so if you use the make -j option to do parallel making using all cores
of your CPU, it can stop in the middle with various errors, usually
about a missing file. It does not always happen, and running the
script again may make it work the next time - or not. So to get
reliable building, I have disabled that option in my scripts. That
means it takes a *lot* longer to build, but I can just set it going
and go away and forget about it and it will build properly. It does
mean that I need a much longer gap between recordings to do a kernel
upgrade though.

I have only just had my first kernel upgrade arrive since the mxl5xx
to mxl58x change happened, so I have not actually used the updated
build with that change yet. I have got it to compile and install on
my test PC, but that does not have my TBS6909 card in it any more -
that is in the production box. Which I hope will be getting the
upgrade in the next gap between recordings that is long enough, at
00:53 tonight. I will let you know how it works out.

On my test PC, I now have my old TBS5922 DVB-S2 USB tuner installed,
and recent versions of the TBS open source drivers have broken this
tuner. It looks like the problem is the i2c communications with its
frontend, as the result is that the /dev/dvb<x>/frontend0 device never
appears and there is an error message logged about it. I have posted
an issue about this.

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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
>I have only just had my first kernel upgrade arrive since the mxl5xx
>to mxl58x change happened, so I have not actually used the updated
>build with that change yet. I have got it to compile and install on
>my test PC, but that does not have my TBS6909 card in it any more -
>that is in the production box. Which I hope will be getting the
>upgrade in the next gap between recordings that is long enough, at
>00:53 tonight. I will let you know how it works out.

The kernel upgrade went smoothly - the TBS drivers with patched mxl58x
are working fine.

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Re: LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ [ In reply to ]
> On 13/10/2017, at 20:17, Wade Maxfield <mythtvnz@hotblack.co.nz> wrote:
>
> To test the card was working, I added a single new card input to MythTV Setup using the same settings as the other DVB cards (and left the others as they were). Watch Live TV starts with one of the SkyStar cards fine (showing signal strength info when first starting) but when I try to access the new card via Menu > Source > Switch Input it just freezes for a bit and dumps me out to the menu. Switching to any of the other inputs works as expected. I’ve tried switching the aerial input to each of the 4 input connectors on the card, and also tried using the cable connected to the SkyStar card (just to eliminate bad cable or wrong port).
>
> Myth is currently back online and can record from the SkyStars, and HDPVR so I’ve deleted this new card input, and will look at it again tomorrow.
>

OK. I’ve sussed out where the issues were. Using mod probe I’ve got the TBS6909 is appearing as adapters 2-9 (/dev/dvb/adapter2, etc). I’ve got an old Sharp LNB with lof 11300.

Trying out all the different LNB settings (fixed, voltage, voltage and tone) I’ve figured out that when the sat feed is connected to input 1, Myth fails to get a signal from the card. But this works:

scan -a 2 -l 11300,11300,0 /usr/share/dvb/dvb-legacy/dvb-s/OptusD1-160.0E

and this fails:

scan -a 2 -l 11300,11300,1 /usr/share/dvb/dvb-legacy/dvb-s/OptusD1-160.0E


Connecting the sat feed to input 3, Myth can tune successfully, and this fails:
scan -a 2 -l 11300,11300,0 /usr/share/dvb/dvb-legacy/dvb-s/OptusD1-160.0E
dvbtune -f 1183000 -s 22500 -p h -m -c 2 -tone 0

while this works
scan -a 2 -l 11300,11300,1 /usr/share/dvb/dvb-legacy/dvb-s/OptusD1-160.0E
dvbtune -f 1183000 -s 22500 -p h -m -c 2 -tone 1


The user guide PDF has the inputs labelled as 0 = V/L (Vertical / Low), 1 = V/H, 2 = H/L, 3 = H/H (Horizontal/High) but I could only get a signal on Inputs 1 & 3 so I think the manual has the labels wrong and 1 is actually Horizontal/Low. So that would suggest that Myth is always sending the 22KHz tone signal and causing the card to use the High band input. I can work with that, the only place that would cause an issue is with dvbstream that has no way of setting the tone and would require input 1 to be connected so I can pull guide data. But I’m keeping the SkyStar installed so I’ll run my EPG feed off that.

So, card installed and can be setup in Myth. The signal strength is lower on the TBS6909 than the SkyStar using the same cables, 55% vs 76-81% in Myth, or from dvbtune:

Signal strength: 36736
SNR: 39032
vs
Signal strength: 47770
SNR: 51897

but the quick tests using Watch Live Tv seem fine. On to the next steps…


- Wade


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