Thanks for the comprehensive reply! My optimism has gone up!
I did have a couple running yesterday after I posted and they both stayed up, it may be the last time I saw the driver panic that it was related to something else, I did remove one set, I realised this after.
It can't be a hub issue (well technically it could be, but we have computers that work, so....) my particular motherboard I think has 4 host controllers and each of those exposes a hub, I'm passing through one of the host controllers to the VM so that it has unfettered access to the USB devices.
Passing through controllers allows me not to have to worry about passing devices through from the host, in this particular situation where all the devices have the VID and PID it becomes an utter nightmare passing through the individual devices, it's almost to the point where you're told not to do it, and the instructions I've seen to do it with QEMU are not nice and leave a number of further issues that will cause other problems.
The tuners have only just gone into the enclosures, they have been floating free for the past 18 months, at one point I was having to build kernels with an increased number of DVB devices allowed because at the time there were more muxes enabled here in the UK than the default max number of devices. My initial tests were on a Pi 4, but I switched when I started getting problems to a x86 mini pc, the problems followed and it's lead me to this point where I've gone down the VM route.
I'm now questioning whether I just did something silly the other day when I killed it, but I am now just about to create the necessary coax pigtails to hook up to the distribution amp, so once I've got those cables crimped and everything set up, I'll be able to see whether I'm still seeing any issues.
I did even consider getting a PCIe card with 8 host controllers on it, but then I'm going to have to throw all of my efforts away with the enclosures I've put together.
I think once I get to that point I'll either be back here celebrating or crying!
I really appreciate you taking the time to comment, especially with something positive which does give me hope going forward!
They're also used to everything being in emby, but it wouldn't be possible with the youngest anyway as the TV she has in her room is actually a TV, but it doesn't have a tuner and it only has one HDMI slot, it's intended use is for displaying infomercials and such like, they did sell an add on box which added a tuner + other HDMI inputs (and the TV knew how to control all this stuff so it was seamless), but when I bought that particular TV the tuner add-on was around 600 GBP, just for the box, not including the screen. I purposefully bought the TV on the basis that it only had a single input and no other tuners as I used it with a set top box, so it was always on the right input (given it only has a single one!).
When a new TV appears in our house, the one it's replaced gets handed down and so on, hence why she has that particular tv.
They're also used to recording stuff and being able to play it anywhere inside the house, or outside for that matter on their phones and so on, so that's another reason why I have this slightly OTT setup.
