Ubuntu+TBS 6981 - "Faint signal" reported but a Sky+ box on the same cable works fine?

Aaron Brailsford

I'm trying to figure out if this is perhaps a card specific thing or something more general, but;

My config is a TBS 6981 card in a PC running Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS with TVHeadend. I've added the MUX's using the pre-defined list for Astra 28.2E and run a scan (twice now) to see what channels it finds and, annoyingly, most of the Freesat HD channels are missing as they all seem to be on the same MUX - 10.847GHz - which is reported as "Faint signal"..

The odd thing is that if I cart the Sky+ box upstairs and plug it into the same two F-connectors it picks up all the HD channels just fine, in fact it reports significantly better signal strength (nearly maximum) and signal quality than it does downstairs (where the Sky box reports nearly minimum for both but still works fine).

Has anyone else running this card found any problems receiving that specific frequency? Perhaps I've just been unlucky and my card is faulty?

Any ideas gratefully received!

Thanks,
Aaron

Adam Sutton

Aaron,

I can certainly say there are quite a few TVH users (myself included) using that card for 28.2. Have you tried any other software for receiving the stream (other than TVH) just in case you've found a bug, though I'd be surprised during initial setup (just because so many people will have done the exact same thing).

Adam

Aaron Brailsford

I haven't tried any other software yet - I could give VDR a try (I think?) otherwise I'll have to find a Windows CD and install it somewhere; everything here is either Linux or Mac, and only the Linux boxes have PCIe slots :)

I figured it was a pretty common combination, given there's a wiki page here on configuring the card :) Very odd that it can't see BBC-HD but the Sky box can - it's like the card has selective hearing.. perhaps it's just a faulty card, here's how it reports the MUX in question (in the attached image)

Adam Sutton

Where did you get that config from? It's completely wrong.

10847 is a DVB-S2 mux, using 23kbaud and PSK_8.

Try removing that mux and re-entering it manually.

Adam

Aaron Brailsford

Ah! I hadn't noticed that..

All I did after installing TVHeadend was use the "Add DVB Network by location..." button and use the Astra_28_2E list from there to pre-populate the list of MUXs.. I probably should have spotted that as I tripped over the same thing trying to get my DVB-T2 card working in that the "by location" for Crystal Palace didn't have the T2 MUX in the list either. Oops..

I presume I should probably be defining the MUXs manually rather than relying on the 'by location' lists?

Thanks!
Aaron
(Who is going to go and sit in the corner with the pointy Dunce cap on now ;))

Aaron Brailsford

I knocked up a quick script in Perl to take the list of frequencies available on KingofSat (as an .ini file) and spit out something that could be loaded into TVHeadend, in case anyone else wants it (good chance I've reinvented the wheel but it was a quick exercise in Perl :))..

I'll attach the script here - this list of 107 MUXs ends up as 96 valid MUXs in TVHeadEnd (some frequencies don't seem to want to load in and I'm not sure why - perhaps they're invalid to begin with) and there are now lots and lots of HD channels available; albeit mostly encrypted.

The script requires Config::Tiny, but that's available as a package on Ubuntu if not installed already.

Adam Sutton

Very odd, I've always used the 28.2 install by network and never encountered this :(

TBH, the best solution for SKY/28.2 is to install 11778V and let the rest be auto-detected from there. This is the mux that carries the SKY EPG, and also what I believe sky boxes use to autodetect all teh muxes in the first place (if you dig enough in the sky box settings, you'll see this mux listed under service discovery...).

Adam