[mythtv-users] Mystique SaTiX-S2 Sky Xpress Dual - any experience ?

[Andre]

On 26 Jun 2012, at 08:26, Warpme wrote:

> On 6/25/12 12:07 PM, Andre wrote:
>> On 24 Jun 2012, at 13:40, Warpme wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi *
>> I recognise that login.
>> 
>>> Has anybody any experience with this card ?
>> A couple of us have this one, you need pretty new drivers to get reliable dual tuner operation, either a ~>v3 kernel or media_build this may or may not cause you some issues since the 2.3.38 mutex changes, it's certainly a problem for me, I'm staying with an older system and a self compiled MythTV. This thread may be helpful: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/462252
>> 
>> 
> Andre,
> 
> Thx for replay.
> One thing: Are You sure that You are referring to Mystique SaTiX-S2 Sky Xpress DUAL card ?
> It is not the same like Mystique SaTiX-S2 Dual, as former one is based on newest Montage M88DS3103 while second one is on STV0900 + STB6110.

Ok, I looked again and you are correct, sorry. 

I thought it was odd to see the Satix S2 appear again but I find this a very good card now the drivers are better, much less trouble than the Nova HD-S2 that everyone thinks is great!

It would be good to get another dual DVBS2 tuner for this board but it's really not clear if the expansion would work with this board, probably doesn't exist any more.


> 
> Regarding Unicable: Your remark this is very interesting. Looking on ticket 9726 it seems like only mythtv patching should be enough (author of Unicable patch not mentioning at all about any kernel patches).

I saw that, looks interesting. The patch I referred to made unicable switching invisible to the application, the application just tunes as normal and the driver signals for the unicable transponder and tunes in the right place, clever but it wasn't wanted upstream.


> On the other hand going across  mythtvtalk link (unfortunately in german) gives me totally unclear picture: is any kernel/drivers patching required for Unicable or not.
> Of course one from many solutions is to check it in practice - but this can be quite expensive learning route (costs of Unicable LNB+tuner, and what worse, costs of decreased WAF by potentially unstable system).

The installers at my apartment told me that the switches they used were unicable capable but some things they claimed didn't make sense so I wanted to be sure before the pain of trying unsupported driver patches! I tested with a Sky HD box which is supposed to support unicable and it didn't work so I didn't continue with it, I am building myth from source already so I will try again with this patch. I have lots of signal and some suitable splitters here somewhere, it would be a big advantage if it works here, the installer wants £150 to install an extra dual feed, I am tempted to borrow a big ladder and do it myself ;-)

It seems that unicable is common in Germany, I work in Germany once a month for a satellite uplinks company, they use MythTV & VDR onsite for some monitoring so I will ask their Linux satellite guy what he knows.

From the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_cable_distribution it sounds like unicable is mostly complicated for the LNB or switch and the tuner side is just a signal splitter, some diseqc commands and always tune the same frequency so I don't see why the application couldn't just do all this itself with any card that can send diseqc commands.

Andre