Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T: too much problems...

Stefano Dalbosco

I have Raspberry pi2 with Openelec 6.0: very quick and powerfull, plugged with a couple of Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T (quite expensive stick but very sensible in my opinion). In the tv adapter setup I have to flag "force old status" (but is it so old this device?) otherwise it doesn't work. I have a lot of problems with EPG-OTA: not all muxes are scanned, with no clear reasons (signal is ok - very strong) so the guide is partially populated. Quality of video is top, but is very strange that this reliable stick with dibicom 7000 chipset seems no longer usable...very ugly. :(
PS: with a cheaper Realtek RTL2832 dongle (same configuration) i have no EPG-OTA problem...but is less sensitive...

mpmc

stefano dalbosco wrote:
> I have Raspberry pi2 with Openelec 6.0: very quick and powerfull, plugged with a couple of Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T (quite expensive stick but very sensible in my opinion). In the tv adapter setup I have to flag "force old status" (but is it so old this device?) otherwise it doesn't work. I have a lot of problems with EPG-OTA: not all muxes are scanned, with no clear reasons (signal is ok - very strong) so the guide is partially populated. Quality of video is top, but is very strange that this reliable stick with dibicom 7000 chipset seems no longer usable...very ugly. :(

> PS: with a cheaper Realtek RTL2832 dongle (same configuration) i have no EPG-OTA problem...but is less sensitive...

I have a WinTV NOVA-T and a NOVA-TD (dual) - They are extremely old. I have tried them both on an RPi2/RPi1. I found that there is a problem with the dibcom driver when used on the Pi. The sticks randomly fail to tune and/or give quite a few CC errors.

Also remember that you only have one usb bus so attempting to receive two complete DVB-T muxes at 25-28 Mbit/s each while streaming via Ethernet which also shares this bus you're going to run into issues every now and again.

This is one of the reasons why I switched to using a Banana Pi with native 1G Ethernet.

Stefano Dalbosco

Ok...my devices are enought stable for now...(rarely I have to reboot). I see that also the other dvb-t keys like RTL2832 or Zarlink ZL10353 lose soon some frequency in the ota epg scan (but works perfectly with streaming - no tuning problem). At the first intallation all it's ok, after some hours remain only 50% of muxes scanned by the ota-epg engine....very strange!! All is flagged in the same way and signal is ok. Some muxes could be unwelcomed???

Thanks in advance

mpmc

Stefano Dalbosco wrote:
> Ok...my devices are enought stable for now...(rarely I have to reboot). I see that also the other dvb-t keys like RTL2832 or Zarlink ZL10353 lose soon some frequency in the ota epg scan (but works perfectly with streaming - no tuning problem). At the first intallation all it's ok, after some hours remain only 50% of muxes scanned by the ota-epg engine....very strange!! All is flagged in the same way and signal is ok. Some muxes could be unwelcomed???
>

> Thanks in advance

Tvheadend will only grab ota epg from muxes that have it and not all muxes do as long as the mux status isn't 'FAIL' they should scan eventually.

Make sure that you don't have the Pi set to powersave mode as that may also cause some issues. You could also try setting, force_pid_filter_usage see https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_WinTV-NOVA-T-Stick#All_relevant_kernel_modules_options for more info.

Be warned though setting force_pid_filter_usage=1 will mean you'll only be able to view one service per tuner as the tuner will +NOT+ send the full mux in this mode only the requested service pids.

Stefano Dalbosco

Hi! Powersave is "off", mux status is "ok" over 23 frequencies but only 7 are regularly scanned by "cron" or by clicking the "trigger ota epg grabber" in the web inteface. Note that the epg is quickly populated if I tune over the "empty" channels so...as I red here https://tvheadend.org/d/3211-ota-epg-goes-to-sleep-in-4-x-works-in-3-4 probably the epg engine forgets some (or all) muxes for unclear reasons...maybe incompatibility with Openelec? :(

PS: is not clear for me the the setting "force_pid_filter_usage=1" . Have I to create a file named "option" in /etc/modprobe.d and paste inside "options dvb_usb_dib0700 force_pid_filter_usage=1" ? In my Raspi2 "/etc/modprobe.d" is a LINK that points to the folder "/storage/config/modprobe.d" (that currently contains a file named "disable-spdif-for-hd-audio.conf"). This is a little bit complicated..

mpmc

Stefano Dalbosco wrote:

> Hi! Powersave is "off", mux status is "ok" over 23 frequencies but only 7 are regularly scanned by "cron" or by clicking the "trigger ota epg grabber" in the web inteface. Note that the epg is quickly populated if I tune over the "empty" channels so...as I red here https://tvheadend.org/d/3211-ota-epg-goes-to-sleep-in-4-x-works-in-3-4 probably the epg engine forgets some (or all) muxes for unclear reasons...maybe incompatibility with Openelec? :(

It shouldn't forget anything, I know there +was+ a bug with 4.1.x devel but that was fixed.

IIRC there weren't any changes to OTA code in 4.0.x so it should still be working fine here.

Sadly with Openelec it's very difficult to get any meaningful debug info for Tvheadend and the openelec devs will more than likely recommend you use VDR as Tvheadend on Openelec is in the unofficial repository which means no official support.

If you can try redoing your config to rule out any configuration issues, if your EPG is still missing use "mux schedulers" to trigger an epg scan when you're not using the tuners.

> PS: is not clear for me the the setting "force_pid_filter_usage=1" . Have I to create a file named "option" in /etc/modprobe.d and paste inside "options dvb_usb_dib0700 force_pid_filter_usage=1" ? In my Raspi2 "/etc/modprobe.d" is a LINK that points to the folder "/storage/config/modprobe.d" (that currently contains a file named "disable-spdif-for-hd-audio.conf"). This is a little bit complicated..

Yes that should work I believe however I don't know whether it'll stay there on a reboot, I don't use Openelec myself (not any more at least).