Ron L wrote:
> Getting DVB driver support into mainline kernel is a lot of politics, so not necessary easy to do. I use STV chip based tuners but the mainline kernel driver doesn't work on any MUX with a bitrate over 65mbps. In North America that is most of them. A simple patch fixes it but in years of trying it has never been accepted into mainline. So we now run a forked v4l. It has a bunch of improvements and adds in support to use the tuner as a software spectrum analyser. Makes pointing your dish so easy.
>
> You get what you pay for. Sure Chinese boxes are cheap, but first thing you know the caps blow and it's dead.
THIS is why more people don't do this. Most users are not Linux gurus (just because you managed to set up a Linux server doesn't automatically make you a Linux expert) and they guys who know how to do this sort of thing seem to have their own exclusive little club, where they have all this stuff figured out but won't share what they know in such a way that a typical user can understand what the heck they are talking about. I'm not talking about you specifically, so don't take it personally, I'm just ranting a bit because even the terminology is a barrier to some of us.
As an example, I have no idea what an "STV chip based tuner" is, and I certainly would not have any idea how to install or run a "forked v4l", whatever that is. Even when I mentioned that site that has open source drivers for older TBS cards, I did that mainly for people like you would would have the foggiest clue how to install them, because they certainly don't seem to feel the need to give instructions on that page (in fact I was looking for a list of supported cards and could not even find that).
The ones that really get me, though, are the guys who run hacked kernels (which may or may not be what you are talking about, I really don't know) and promote that as the solution to everything. They just don't seem to get it that many of us are doing well if we can install Ubuntu Server and get it working. Where are the YouTube videos or the comprehensive instructions for doing all this? They don't exist because I guess these guys assume that if you don't already know how to do it, you don't need to know, and it's beneath them to explain as if they are talking to someone who never even touched Linux until they installed Ubuntu Server and TVHeadEnd (using directions that someone else was kind enough to post).
I'm guessing I probably couldn't use most of this anyway because I have the TBS6905 which is too new to be supported by the open source guys, but it's still frustrating that so many of these solutions seem inaccessible. Anyway THIS is why people buy the cheap Chinese boxes with the bad caps, because setting up a real satellite backend system can get complicated quickly if you happen to choose the wrong hardware.
