TBS-6205 tuners running burning hot and losing lock

[nita]

Hi!

I bought a TBS-6205 card about six months ago. The card worked without problems for the first 4 months, all the tuners worked very well on all the channels.

Then one of the tuners (#2) started losing lock on all the channels. It sometimes works without problems, and sometimes is losing lock constantly. When the tuner is losing lock, the video and audio are breaking up. When the tuner is constantly losing lock, I cannot understand anything from the programs I've recorded with it.

After 5 and half months of use, a second tuner (#1) started losing lock in similar way as tuner #2.

The last two tuners (#0, #3) work without problems on all the channels. Just like the tuners #1 and #2 did for the first few months. And the tuners #1 and #2 are now losing lock on all the channels. I haven't updated the drivers or hardware on my PC lately, or changed the antenna setup or cabling. So it should not be a problem with driver or antenna signal. I believe my card is simply broken and I’ll send it back for RMA.


I suspect these problems are related to overheating ICs, so I would like to hear comments from TBS for two questions:

Q1: Is it normal that the tuner and the demodulator chips on my TBS-6205 reach temperatures over 84 degrees Celsius?

Q2: If the temperatures above 84 DC are considered normal, what is the expected lifetime of the TBS-6205?


When I got the TBS-6205, I noticed that the tuner chips (U1, U2, U3, U7) and the demodulator chips (U8, U12, U15, U18) were running so hot they were burning my hand when I touched them. So I took a Flir infrared camera, which measured surface temperatures over 84 degrees Celsius on these chips. And this was with the PC case open and the card installed vertically, so natural heat convection can occur. As temperatures this high usually mean short lifetime for ICs, I installed a dedicated 80 mm fan which blows air directly onto these chips.

I use the TBS-6205 on a HTPC, which has only low power components. The PC case that I have is fairly large horizontal ATX case with two fans blowing air out of the case. So my setup should not be a very demanding environment for the card. I removed the top lid of the PC case a couple of weeks ago. This seemed to decrease the locking problems slightly, but did not solve them.

I'm now running Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS with the latest driver from TBS: TBS6205 Linux Driver v160405. Linux Kernel is 3.13.0-87-generic. I tried with a couple of older Kernel and driver versions, but that did not change the problems with locking and high temperatures. I receive both DVB-T and DVB-T2 transmissions.

Is anyone else seeing this kind of behavior with their TBS-6205?

[vidtek]

I've had this card running in tandem with an Hauppauge 2210 for over a year with no problems other than seeming to take ages to get a lock. When it does, it's solid.
I'll check if the chips are getting hot, can't say I've noticed it but my HTPC is in the study behind my lounge wall and I leave the case open.
Will report back when I've done a physical check, don't have a fancy-smantchy thermal camera, a finger will have to do!

Now running Xenial 16+ KDE plasma desktop and Mythtv 0.28

[vidtek]

Just checked the temperature with my finger after running tuners for an hour, the IC's are quite cool, I would say about the temperature you can drink a cuppa without burning your mouth, no more than about 35deg.

I would definitely RMA your board, the temps. you are getting are not right.

Cheers, Tony.

[nita]

Thank you Tony for sharing this information. It's good news that the chips don't run burning hot at least on your card, and with Linux.

So I guess my card was DOA, I thought hot chips were just a "feature"...