several questions

[deepbluesky]

Good day,

I'm very interested in the upcoming TBS6925 card mostly because of 16/32APSK supporting mode and hardware blindscan capabilities. I have some questions by now and would be glad if you would be so kind to answer them.

1. Some other DVB-S(2) cards are able to show SNR, BER/MER readings. Will the TBS6925 be able to do it as well ? Or will it have non standardized % quality readings that don't help at all identifying how weak/strong a signal is ?
2. There are plenty of DXers and feedhunters that would be glad about a sensitive tuner. Some cards/receivers have bad sensitivity and a slightly bigger dish can compensate this but in limited reception conditions every dB counts. Was this an issue when the card was planned and can we expect a card for DXers or just for common users ?
3. Will it be possible to lock SR <1MS/s and >30 MS/s ? For example 23.5E carries SCPC in DVB-S with just 477 and 555 KS/s. Another example is 53E/11044V with a DVB-S Mux at 44950 KS/s. And of course at 12.5W/12718H with a DVB-S2 Mux at 36510 KS/s.
4. I expect that Diseqc 1.0/1.2 will be implemented. What about Diseqc 1.1 ?
5. Will both tuner work independently so that one can command a Diseqc 1.2 motor and the other a Diseqc 1.0 switch or a 1.1 cascade ?
6. Will the card use all 4 or 6 CPU cores for playing HD content or just 2 of them ?
7. What about the software bundled with the card ? Can we expect a spectrum analyzer as some receivers have ?
8. And last but not least when can we expect the card to be available and what will it cost ?

Thanks a lot for your time.
Best regards
C. Gardikiotis - Stuttgart

[cody]

hello C. Gardikiotis, the answers of some of your questions depend on the operating system in use, but let me try to give as comprehensive answers as possible:

1. yes, SNR and BER are reported, but in Linux, because in Windows Microsoft BDA API doesn't have concept for such thing. however, we could consider making small tool that will report SNR and BER in Windows. what "non standardized % quality" should mean? i'm asking, because SNR, which is "signal quality" in Windows, is measured in dB and not % and thus what is the "standard" way in your opinion to convert dB to %?

2. there is no way to answer that, because there isn't any information in your question that we can use for reference to compare the sensitivity. in any case 6925 uses professional Network-Interface-Module (NIM) and provides as good sensitivity as that NIM provides

3. in theory SR >30 MS/s like 44950 KS/s for DVB-S and 36510 KS/s for DVB-S2 shouldn't be a problem, but SR <1MS/s is not within specification of the demodulator chip. however, that doesn't answer what the performance in practice will be and we can test all transponders you mentioned to asses the real-life performance in practice

4. Diseqc support doesn't depends on the driver/hardware, but on the DVB application, some more details about it are available here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=39&start=10#p213

5. TBS 6925 is single tuner card. what makes you think it has two tuners?

6. that is again not responsibility of the card driver/hardware, but depends on the DVB application and what video codec is in use - if it's multi-threaded video codec then it will utilize as many CPU cores as available

7. no, we're not planning to develop any software spectrum analyzer.

8. current status is - it will be ready when it's ready - i mean that no release date is scheduled and we're focused on fixing the remaining issues rather than rush to release the card on the market. also, because hardware is not finalized yet, the final price is not clear, but current estimations are around USD 300.

best regards,
cody

[VictorLS]

cody, is it time to move viewtopic.php?f=23&t=28 here?

[freddy]

5. TBS 6925 is single tuner card. what makes you think it has two tuners?

I guess it's the picture: http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6925.html
I would have expected a dual tuner card too (to efficiently use the STM Dual-Demod).

[cody]

5. TBS 6925 is single tuner card. what makes you think it has two tuners?

I guess it's the picture: http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6925.html
I would have expected a dual tuner card too (to efficiently use the STM Dual-Demod).

when used for advanced features like ACM/VCM, etc "STM Dual-Demod" functions as "single" - so in other words 6925 takes advantage of "STM Dual-Demod", but it's in "single" mode, because it's the only mode in which advanced features like ACM/VCM are available.

[freddy]

5. TBS 6925 is single tuner card. what makes you think it has two tuners?

I guess it's the picture: http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6925.html
I would have expected a dual tuner card too (to efficiently use the STM Dual-Demod).

when used for advanced features like ACM/VCM, etc "STM Dual-Demod" functions as "single" - so in other words 6925 takes advantage of "STM Dual-Demod", but it's in "single" mode, because it's the only mode in which advanced features like ACM/VCM are available.

Switchable/Redundant/Failover inputs are important for some applications.

[cody]

Switchable/Redundant/Failover inputs are important for some applications.

in this particular case you will need at least two separate boards to achieve redundancy.

[satesco]

[quote=cody]5. TBS 6925 is single tuner card. what makes you think it has two tuners?[/quote]

I wonder what you say, because 6925 card is shown on your site with two tuners.You should know that.Look here:http://www.tbsdtv.com/english/product/6925.html
I also want to know if blindscan is hardware or software?thanks.

[VictorLS]

6925 card is shown on your site with two tuners

May be that is LOOP
I plan to use that with my SkyStar2.

[cody]

6925 card is shown on your site with two tuners

May be that is LOOP .

yes, that's "Loop Out" and 6925 is single tuner card. BS is done in the hardware, of course.