[mythtv-users] DVB T2 Tuners For UK Freeview.

[John Pilkington]

On 18/12/13 18:24, Paul Harrison wrote:
> On 18/12/13 17:06, Stuart Morgan wrote:
>> On Wednesday 18 Dec 2013 16:32:24 Paul Gardiner wrote:
>>> On 18/12/2013 13:43, Ian Barton wrote:
>>>> A bit more research shows that the current Arch kernel has this
>>>> problem.
>>>> It's relatively simple to patch the Arch kernel. However, I assume this
>>>> is a single tuner and currently costs around £80 in the UK. For £90 I
>>>> can get the TBS6280 from British Telecom, which has two tuners and is
>>>> known to work.
>>> Cheaper still:
>>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keyw
>>>
>>> ords=tbs6220&sprefix=tbs622%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Atbs6220
>> That's the single tuner version.
>>
>
> I got mine from these guys  http://www.quietpc.com/tbs. I've had a lot
> of stuff from them over the years and always has very good service from
> them.
>
> I have both a 6981 and 6280.
>
> One word of warning about these cards they use closed source drivers
> which if you only have TBS cards wont be a problem but if you have other
> video cards you can run into problems if they require newer kernels. The
> reason is their drivers are based on an older version of the v4l source
> tree. When you install their drivers it also replaces many of the other
> drivers from the media and v4l trees with versions from their source.
> Any newer drivers not in their source then fail to load because of
> symbol version errors.
>
> This is what TBS say about fixing the missing/broken drivers in there
> v4l tree -  "currently the only way that to be achieved is patch our
> driver package to include support for them. in near future we can
> consider update our V4L tree to the latest, but that's very risky for
> us, because most of our Linux customers are doing embedded systems with
> our cards, usually they use older kernels and everything in the current
> TBS Linux driver package is very well tested".
>
> Paul H.

That's worth knowing. Thanks.

I'm still pleased with my USB 290e, which I can use with my laptop - no 
need for a free slot.  I'm still not really sold on DVB-T2 HD, though, 
as a default recording format.

The 290e's current driver problem doesn't affect me now, except for the 
reputed security issues of 'older' kernels, but if I were trying to 
build a new system on some distros it might be hard to locate a working 
package.  AIUI the problem arose in a patch, intended to merge the code 
for a large number of devices, which made inaccurate assumptions about 
the size of packets on the data bus.  I'm sure it will be fixed soon.

John P