TBS vs Digital Devices

[Micromecca]

Hey, thanks for the info, my German is pretty much non-existant so I may have to get a friend or colleague to take a look for me

rgds
Marty

[Tourniquet]

I don't know what i was doing wrong, but i've got a lot of problems with the Digital Devices Tuner. I've only got the DVB-C ones, but i'm not so sure if they are worth their money. Yes they do have a couple of advantages, but im still not quite pleased with my results yet.

For DVB-S i bought the DVBSky S952 and this is the first card which is really reliable what's pretty important to me. When i've got problems with the DD ones, i can still watch over the DVBSky card.
I don't have any problems with long tuning times or anything.

[yamcenutzer]

I don't know what i was doing wrong, but i've got a lot of problems with the Digital Devices Tuner. I've only got the DVB-C ones, but i'm not so sure if they are worth their money. Yes they do have a couple of advantages, but im still not quite pleased with my results yet.

For DVB-S i bought the DVBSky S952 and this is the first card which is really reliable what's pretty important to me. When i've got problems with the DD ones, i can still watch over the DVBSky card.
I don't have any problems with long tuning times or anything.

Given that you have 3 dds in your system, that is something that wil definitely need care during installation, and DVB-C btw, is problematic in itself. OTOH, TBS and others need to have special drivers if you have multiple cards at all, as if it were something highly unusual...

That other tuner of yours looks like a mix of TBS and Tevii to me (Montage tuner and conexant bridge). TBS wanted to do something like that but seem to have given it away.
Does it run natively in WMC incl. Diseqc?

[lukemccreanor]

Well going from the mostly positive posts on here i've ordered a Digital Devices Cine S2 V6 with Duo Flex (4 x DVB-S2 Tuners) I'll be swapping my current TBS 6981 for this over the next couple of days and i'll report my findings. Does anyone have any advice on the easiest way to swap the cards over. Uninstall the TBS drivers and card restart and install the DD card and drivers and re map the dvblogic virtual tuners to the new digital devices or will it need to be a full re install?

Luke

PS i ordered the card at 3pm UK time on friday 4th of April and it arrived today Tuesday 8th of April at 08.30 not bad from Germany over a bank holiday weekend!

[Oberon]

Does anyone have any advice on the easiest way to swap the cards over. Uninstall the TBS drivers and card restart and install the DD card and drivers and re map the dvblogic virtual tuners to the new digital devices or will it need to be a full re install?

Here is the quickest procedure, but follow it with care. Make a backup of configuration before starting it so that you can always restore to the point zero.
- Shutdown computer, remove TBS card and put DD card inside
- Boot up the PC and start dvblink configuration web page
- Go to the Sources tab and then go to the configuration screen of one of the TVSource sources
- Write down the devices indices of all DD tuners
- Exit configuration without saving settings
- Stop DVBLink server Windows service
- Open explorer as admin (especially important if you have software installed into ProgramFiles)
- Navigate to <DVBLink>\Sources
- Go one by one through all your existing TVSource source (that used to be TBS), doing the follolwing:
- open tvsourcesettings.xml into text editor
- Remove the contents of <DevicePath> tag
- Put one of the DD tuner indices into <DeviceIndex> tag (make sure that each index is used only once)
- Save and close tvsourcesettings.xml
- Once finished with all TVSource sources start dvblink server Windows service. It should all start working at this point.

[yamcenutzer]

out of curiosity, at which point in your list would you suggest installing the DD drivers and configuring the dd card?

Thx

[Oberon]

out of curiosity, at which point in your list would you suggest installing the DD drivers and configuring the dd card?

Thx

Between this Boot up the PC and this start dvblink configuration web page

[lukemccreanor]

Thanks Oberon. I followed your instructions and the DD card was up and running within 15mins and most of that was spent physically swapping the cards. My Wife thinks the picture quality is slightly better than with TBS card but I’m not sure as they both seem very good. Changing channels is now much much faster, unencrypted channels are instant and encrypted 1s at most which is very good. I think it’s quicker than the sky box was

Only fault I found was that when I set up the 3rd and 4th tuners on the DD card as my TBS was only a Dual it found 20 channels less than the TBS card doing a full transponder scan. I only use a couple of these channels and doing a single scan on these it picked them up straight away. Signal strength and quality was 100%. Oh and the driver installation is in German, not too big an issue there was one part where I think it said you have to have .NET 3.5 installed prior to the drivers or it may have said it was going to install it as part of the drivers either way I hit next next next install and it worked.

I do have one question, media centre thinks it only has 2 tuners still, but I can see from NEWCS that its actually using the 2 new ones 3 and 4 now (it was using 1 and 2 after I initially swapped the cards before setting up the 3rd and 4th tuners) so I know there working. I assume that I just need to remove the tuners and setup media centre again for it to realise that it has 4 now? I couldn’t try this last night as I had a few programs scheduled to record when I got to this point.


Luke

[Oberon]

We have seen the issue where regular DVBLink channel sync via addin does not pick up the new channels. In this case you have to go to settings -> tv settings -> scan for new channels. This can should pick up all new/changed channels for MCE.

[lukemccreanor]

We have seen the issue where regular DVBLink channel sync via addin does not pick up the new channels. In this case you have to go to settings -> tv settings -> scan for new channels. This can should pick up all new/changed channels for MCE.

Thanks, I setup the tuners again. I wanted to install the latest .db patch anyway as it was close to 2Gb. After that i could watch\record 4 channels at the same time all though it after setting the 3rd encrypted channel to record it took a while to flick to the 4th encrypted channel but i think thats having a Core i3 decrypt 4 HD channels at the same time

[kevork]

You don't have any problems with hd channels on symbolrate >30 000 with dd cards? Myself got one Mystique SaTix-s2 Dual that suppose to be almost the same card as DD but with different drivers.

/Stefan

[findftp]

I can confirm that switching from TBS6981 to Digital Devices Cine V6 made my zapping times *much* faster.
Now it feels much comfortable.

I switched to the DD V6 after I read this forum, thank you all.

[ashley]

Hi, I have a BGT3600 and BGT3594 tuners. I'm accessing a mix of DVBS and DVBS2 channels - all are encrypted and I use acamd.
Are the same issues with the TBS 6980 and TBS 6981 in the BGT tuners and possibly other tuners using similar chipsets?
Encrypted channel switch times seem to be better in v4.5 for me but I'm always interested to know if they can be improved.

The issue with long zaping times (6-10 seconds) exists for TBS 6980 and 6981 tuners. The drivers for those tuners have an issue with ignoring one of the tuning parameters. As a result they fall back to auto search and it takes a very long time when switching from dvb-s to dvb-s2 channel (especially those using nbc-qpsk modulation). We have contacted tbs about the issue and they have suggested a work around - the same as used by mdiaportal. We will try it in the nearest future to see if it makes a difference

[c0ntr0lfreak]

Using TBS6984 cards with dvb-s2 encrypted signals and switching time is between 3-5 seconds.

[Micromecca]

The issue with long zaping times (6-10 seconds) exists for TBS 6980 and 6981 tuners. The drivers for those tuners have an issue with ignoring one of the tuning parameters. As a result they fall back to auto search and it takes a very long time when switching from dvb-s to dvb-s2 channel (especially those using nbc-qpsk modulation). We have contacted tbs about the issue and they have suggested a work around - the same as used by mdiaportal. We will try it in the nearest future to see if it makes a difference.

Oberon have you had time to test this 'workaround' yet? I am receiving reports from customers that zapping times in 4.5 is slower than it was with 4.1 with TBS6981.

cheers
Marty