TBS 6984 & SageTV, but issues...

[routerunner]

Hi,

I bought two TBS 6984 to replace 4 Hauppauge NOVA-HD-DVB-S2 and to double my channel capacity as well. I'm trying to use the cards with a SageTV system and unfortunately I did run into several stability issues.

- The cards where recognized by SageTV in native mode, however the drivers (1.0.2.3) are exposing the CAM/CI interface the card doesn't have:

Code: Select All Code

Sat 10/13 14:32:54.977 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:Got capture drv info for CAM vendorID:'1131' mfg:'TBSDTV TECHNOLOGY' TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.977 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:Initialize (tag:TECHNTD ) CAM/CI ctrl block (ver 1.3) TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5 0x4c5f0048 0x0 env:0x4a03b914
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.978 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:TechnoTrend CI is initialized
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.978 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:Open CAM/CI device TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.978 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:TechnoTrend deviceid 117506561 TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.978 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM: open TechnoTrend CI on device id:117506561, tuner:'TBS 6984 Quad DVBS/S2 Tuner B', TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.978 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:TechnoTrend card type: unkown name TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5
Sat 10/13 14:32:54.978 [MainMsg@b1b290] CAM:Failed open TechnoTrend device, due to unkown device type TBS 6984 Quad BDA Digital Capture DVBS-5


- Tuning a channel that has no data to broadcast at that time (because too early in the day for instance), frequently causes the driver to crash, the card is disappearing from the available Windows device list. You need to physically remove power to the motherboard to get the device back, restarting the PC is not sufficient (Windows XP pro 32bits).

- SageTV complaints that cannot determine the network type of the card (so it tries ATSC, DVB-T, DVB-C with different technique) and eventually gets there, but is looks like that the drivers should expose the network type somehow in the registry. Never had this problem with Hauppauge.

Overall the card works with SageTV and if you're willing to put up with the instabilities and the lack of WHQL certification it does the job somehow, but if you want peace of mind to never miss a recording with SageTV I'm not sure this is the card for you.

During the frustration of the moment I was tempted to go back to Hauppauge, but I do like this card and I really hope that future driver releases will address some of the instabilities, so finger crossed

Regards
Eddy

[steven]

Hi routerunner

It is like that SageTV have some compatible with TBS6984,So would you mind using another soft like MediaPortal ,DVBViewer which is
full support TBS6984.

Kind Regards

steven

[routerunner]

Hi steven,

the switch is not that easy...I've invested a lot of money in the SageTV infrastructure in the last four years and with all due respect there is nothing out there that come even closer to what SageTV offers in particular the support of extenders. Saying that, I'm going to ask TBS support whether it will be possible to expose the "Network Type" as part of the BDA capabilities bitmap (something that should be there anyway), that will fix 99% of the issue and make me an happy man

Eddy

[steven]

Hi routerunner

Our driver if fully compatible with BDA soft,and our driver is BDA architecture too,So it should be ok,
I do not know where the problem is .Maybe we need to contact SageTV,but i see it have been purchased
by google, , if you can contact they,maybe we can find what the problem is.

Kind Regards

steven

[routerunner]

Hi steven,

thanks for your reply...

I managed to successfully generate the "Network Type" via a setting in the SageTV domain. The only remaining issue to address is the crash of the BDA drivers which is nothing to do with SageTV as it happens with the TBS IP software as well. Hers is my configuration:

Two TBS 6984 connected to two PCIe x16 fixed which Windows XP 32bits assign the same interrupt #16 to both cards. To the same interrupt XP assign other 8 devices (RAID controller, Ethernet Controller...)

By using the TBS IP software and attempting to lock to a channel that doesn't exists any more (because moved by the TV provider for instance), most of the time the BDA driver crashes, the tuner cards disappear from the device list and power cycling the PC doesn't help, I have to physically unplug power to the power supply for few seconds in order to have the tuner card back on the Windows device list.

Please note that I had the very same issue (although very rare) with a valid channel lineup.

My motherboard is a http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=591

Regards
Eddy

[routerunner]

A friend of mine gave me the v1.0.1.8 of the TBS 6984 drivers to try and I can confirm that fixes nearly 100% of the issues I have with SageTV and the v1.0.2.3 drivers.

This proves that SageTV has nothing to do with the failure but the issue is within the drivers, maybe in the interrupt mechanism which appears to be different in the two releases or maybe because I do have two TBS 6984 tuner cards that share the same IRQ.

Do I need to file another official support request? I'm willing to help TBS engineers in debugging this issue and finding a definitive solution, please let me know

Kind Regards
Eddy

[routerunner]

Regarding the previous post I forgot to mention that the friend that gave me the old v1.0.1.8 drivers to try is using the card with SageTV as well and it works perfectly, 100% NO failure, however he's got one card only whilst I have two in the same machine.

Regards
Eddy

[steven]

Hi

Thank you very much for the information.
Would you mind having a test with this beta driver:
https://hotfile.com/dl/177175896/a5c96e ... 3.zip.html
And send your test report here.

Kind Regards

steven

[routerunner]

Hi Steven,

I tried the beta drivers and they behaving more or less the same as the v1.0.1.8, so to summarise:

- v1.0.1.8 - fine recording two streams simultaneously straight-away, adding a third stream it will cause the other two to stop.
- v1.0.2.3 - fine recording one stream, but adding a second it will cause the other to stop.
- v1.0.2.4b - same behaviour as v1.0.1.8.

My gut feeling is that the receive buffers are too small and the card is going into underrun error.

Also, I read in this forum that there are some incompatibilities between this card and some PCIe version, my motherboard is relatively new (2008) and I'm pretty sure it does support PCIe 1.0a, however I recall there are some settings like the ACPM which I need to check and whether I can force the PCIe to go into mode 1?

Regards
Eddy

[routerunner]

Hi Steven,

I disabled the ACPM which can cause some latency on the PCIe, but no joy.

Your new drivers appears better, but still occasionally the stream are stopping as soon as I add a new recording. The major difference between the old and new drivers appears the fact that the two tuner cards are not interfering with each other as before but the interference is kept within the tuners of the same card, so this is an improvement.

It looks like the second card in the second PCIe bus appears to be worse then the other card on the first PCIe, the system enumerates the PCIe cards depending on the PCI slot position and I've got the impression of an underrun error where the second card appears to go into timeout often.

I've got a question if you don't mind...after a tuner is locked to a particular channel, what is the expected (if any) timeout before starting to receive data?

I'm more and more convinced that the problem is related to underrun timeouts which are at the moment too short. In fact if I start 8 simultenous recording, let them fail as usual, cancel all the recordings, restart the same 8 recordings everything works as expected and this is due to the fact that SageTV has allocated all the tuners, so it doesn't need to perform any filter match search any more (which I believe introduces delays) and therefore SageTV can respect the underrun timeout and flush the tuner's receive buffers just in time.

Kind Regards
Eddy