[mythtv-users] Digital Devices Duoflex finally working

[Ian Oliver]

OK, that was a long haul, and I'm afraid that this hardware really 
doesn't feel like production quality.

Issues
1) Connectors on mini-PCIe card not boxed and keyed. This coupled with 
the manual not showing the C/T/T2 version of the card at the other end 
meant that I can to extract the cables a few times, which caused one 
cable to come apart. I recrimped it, but still clearly had bad 
connections as not all four transport streams were coming through. New 
cables ordered.
2) It didn't work even with the new cables! I examined the mini PCIe 
card closely under high magnification and saw that A) there were hand-
mod wires on one connector due to the pinout being wrong (and this is I 
guess why keyed connectors couldn't be used), B) the other connector 
was very badly soldered with lots of joints not looking to have any 
solder at all. Fortunately, I've got everything at home that I need for 
surface mount rework, so I could fix it.

It's now all working, but it was all very frustrating, and I had to 
spend an extra £20 on cables, which wouldn't have been needed if the 
hardware was correctly designed and assembled. This isn't cheap gear so 
I really can't say that I'm impressed.