[mythtv-users] USB DVB-T2 tuners

[Andre Newman]

On 25 Mar 2015, at 16:25, John Pilkington <J.Pilk at tesco.net> wrote:

> On 25/03/15 15:49, Ian Oliver wrote:
>> I've been using four Hauppauge Nove-T DVB-T sticks for many years, and
>> they have been rock solid.
>> 
>> I'm now building a new backend and want to go HD.
>> 
>> 1) The setup when mixing SD and HD tuners looked tricky (UK Freeview if
>> it matters) but maybe I should bite the bullet and just do it?

When I used to use my T290 for MythTV and had T1 tuners too I just had a separate source for it with only the HD channels present and another source for SD tuners.

The T2 mux arrangement is excellent for MythTV, all the major HD channels at once for the price of one receiver, wonderful. I understand in more civilised parts of the country there’s a second mux with the rest of the public HD channels, nowt like that where I live.

>> 2) I have one Hauppauge PCTV 290e, and went to buy more, but they have
>> been replaced with the 292e. Is the 290e available anywhere still?
>> 3) I've seen reports on this list regards issues with the 292e and
>> mythtv. Have these been fixed in the latest 14.04 LTS or should I just
>> avoid the 292e?
>> 4) Any other USB DVB-T2 tuners that I should look at?


>> 5) Or are any of the quad tuner PCI-e cards worth looking at? I was
>> one, and did some searching, but people seemed to be having issues.
>> (Oh, and I only have one PCI-e slot!).

These could be your friend, if you have the budget for it?

http://www.dvbshop.net/Cine-S2-Octo-Hexa-Quad-Tuner-Digital-Devices-DuoFlex-Bridge

Four T2 tuners and Four S2 if you want, all in one PCIe x1.

I have a variation on this card and the driver is excellent, after a painful development period, see MythTV mailing list archive for details. No idea if the T2 cards are any good but the driver is in kernel and maintained I believe, If I was starting again that is what I’d buy.

>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Ian
>> 
> 
> There are users of the 292e who seem satisfied;  the most recently reported difficulties seem to have been caused by the presence of a closed source driver for a card from another manufacturer.
> 
> Look at this thread, which ends well;  if Andre is satisfied with the pictures they're likely to be good.

Whatever do you mean ;-)

I’m not too satisfied with the picture quality but that’s entirely down to the broadcasters choices at the encoder end, the receiver receives everything that was transmitted which is as much as we can hope for and as much as we could expect. :-)

Actually ITV HD from Freeview HD is much better than ITV HD Meridian from Freesat HD in recent months, they totally mucked up Broadchurch with loads of encoder artefacts! I don’t watch much ITV so don’t know if it was a widespread problem but I do know that the Freeview HD transmission didn’t have the problem, when my receiver was working well enough to actually record it!

I had some trouble with stability, with the T290e as well as the T292e, I have one of each. Updating to Ubuntu 14.04.2 fixed that for me, the .2 is an important detail it’s the hwe kernel that brings T292 drivers and it seems better USB drivers.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

I am in a high signal area on a very well specified communal aerial system so I can’t comment on the T290 or T292 in fringe signal areas


>  Just one thing:  I'm not sure how many of the 292s he has, and ISTR that initially there were subtleties in setting up multiple 290s.
> 
> http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/584346#584346

Possibly, I’m not using the T292 with MythTV yet so others will have to comment on how that goes. there was some issue with the T to T2 switching but I think I remember reading that got fixed in a recent 0.27 patch.

Andre