[mythtv-users] Mystique SaTiX-S2 Dual PCIe (stv0900 + stv6110)

Andre mythtv-list at dinkum.org.uk
Mon Apr 12 16:40:19 UTC 2010


On 12 Apr 2010, at 16:13, Devin Heitmueller wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 11:03 AM, Andre <mythtv-list at dinkum.org.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> On 12 Apr 2010, at 15:39, Devin Heitmueller wrote:
>>> 
>>> Be forewarned:  there are significant problems with this card when
>>> doing capture on both inputs simultaneously.  Be prepared for timeouts
>>> when starting streams and sometimes waiting tens of seconds for
>>> streaming to start (it's an issue with the ngene bridge chipset).
>>> 
>>> You can read more about it on the linux-media mailing list.
>> 
>> I've been following linux-media (since you directed me to it) and I've been expecting problems but they haven't materialised (for me), I do start recordings several minutes early and can't remember the last time I watched live TV so maybe I've just not noticed. What I have noticed that in the 10+ days I've had the card I have a lot fewer glitchy recordings (none from the new card, except when I've purposely pushed it) and the odd completely failed recording has always been with the HVR-4000, I'd suspect a faulty card (which would be the second) but my HD-S2 behaves exactly the same.
>> 
>> I get the impression that a lot of the linux drivers are flaky in differing ways, then again looking at the Windows forums for various cards they don't seem to be getting along especially any better! I'm happy to work around the "issues" in Linux, wouldn't have a hope of doing half of what I now take for granted on any other operating system :-))
>> 
>> Thanks for the warning, I see from your posts on linux-media and your blog that your opinion is to be valued.
> 
> Hi Andre,
> 
> YMMV, of course.  I've spent about three weeks working on the ngene
> driver and have about 90 patches pending for it.  Given the crap I've
> seen so far in the current driver, I wouldn't recommend the card for
> production use, although I am hopeful that we can get it into a
> reasonable state.

Surprising it works at all by the sound of things! Well it works for me and seems like it's only going to improve in time, thanks for all the effort you are putting into the drivers, much appreciated.



> 
> I agree with your basic statement though that the Linux drivers do
> vary quite a bit in quality.  Getting the card basically working is
> only about 30% of the time required.  The other 70% is finding all the
> weird edge cases and intermittent problems, and many developers simply
> don't have the time to invest to deal with those cases.

That's why I bought the HD-S2 and HVR-4000, they seemed to be popular and therefore liable to get the most TLC but I'm really not impressed with them, especially when combined with a lot of sata controllers and disks, you know, like you get in a MythTV system :-P I have a much more complicated system than I'd like so I can schedule as much as possible on my old Nova S+ cards because they work reliably. A German friend is having a hard time with a couple of TT-3200 cards so I thought I'd give the Satix a go.

> 
> Spending two weeks tracking down a one line register change that
> addresses a 3% tuning failure rate just isn't worth their time.

A friend develops Linux nic drivers for Beowulf clusters and I've heard some real horror stories over a few beers about some of those drivers, never mind the stupid tricks that hardware designers get up to! I suspect that a DVB/ATSC card has some of the same optimisation and throughput issues as a nic, they are both high throughput complex  "serial ports" of a sort!! I've built some big Windows based data systems in the past and only bought nics and motherboards that Don recommended on the basis that if the Linux guys thought the hardware was clean and the manufacturers initial Linux drivers were good there's a better chance their Windows drivers were good too.

Cheers

Andre


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