K Shea wrote:
> Mark Clarkstone wrote:
>
> >
Bold 1: You're buying cards that are a pain in the arse on Linux. TBS drivers are horrible so bad in fact that "ljalves has created his own open source drivers for many
cards" but unfortunately yours isn't supported.
>
>
Oh, come on, they aren't "horrible" - the biggest reason people hate them is because of the need to rebuild them after EVERY kernel update, and Ubuntu likes to push a LOT of kernel updates. That said, I know there are a few open source variations floating around out there (I think "Crazycat" also made some), I just have never seen anyone that can say there's a definitive advantage to using one of the open source variations. And as you note, the open source authors haven't made any for the TBS6905. If TBS or anyone would send one of them a TBS6905 card they might actually write open source drivers for it, but they are not going to pay out of pocket to buy a card they don't need so they can write drivers for it, especially since the official TBS drivers for that model appear to work fine, for the most part.
>
> Unfortunately, if you live in the USA or Canada, and/or want quad tuners on a single card, TBS may be your only choice. While you could order from an overseas seller, that tends to get complicated (and sometimes expensive, depending on the country of origin). I think the biggest reason Americans don't like to order from overseas, besides the fact that there's often a long wait for the item to arrive, is because if we get a defective unit, the U.S. Postal Service REALLY gouges us on return shipping, so much so that sometimes it's just cheap to scrap the device and buy another (but then you still don't know you won't get another defective one). So we find it is better to stick with companies that at least have a U.S. address that can accept returns of defective products.
Bold: They are horrible (and I'm not just talking about the drivers here) warning long story ahead..
I purchased a TBS DVB-S USB tuner the QBox S2 the precursor to the TBS 5922 (which I still have, TBS replaced the QBox with this) and it caused me no end of trouble.
Firstly they (TBS) packaged their device (the qbox) with a known faulty power supply that caused EMI to all my other devices and knocked out Ethernet on a few of my machines, it also affected my broadband (which resulted in having 3 BT Engineers rubbing their balds spots). TBS eventually replaced the power supply with a good one and the problem disappeared but that isn't the end of my woes..
I still could not use the tuner as it got too hot (too hot to touch, it made good fried eggs though, I'm not joking here Profyaffle still has his..) and it took 5-10 seconds on each tune hanging Tvheadend each time.
The replacement still suffers with slow tuning caused by the IR sensor just like the qbox before it (even with ljalves drivers but thankfully it doesn't overheat) at least now with decent drivers tuning takes 1-2 seconds with the IR disabled, with TBS' drivers it takes 5-7 seconds still (no it's not the machine, I've tried it on many).
After reading this I hope you understand why I do not recommend people bother with TBS anything, yes it may have been bad luck but I'm not going to let other people enjoy the experience I had..