Recommend Hardware

Adam Sutton · 2012-08-21T15:10:14+00:00

I've created a wiki page [[DVBCards]] to make a note about known working cards, and peoples general thoughts etc... So far it only include [[TBS6981]] as th...

Anders Gustafsson

I have a simple one that I bought on eBay. I can post a picture later.

Martin Underwood

I use a Hauppauge WinVT Nova-T stick (DVB-T only) and a PCTV 292e (DVB-T and DVB-T2) on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. Everything works perfectly. As with an setup where one decoder can only record a subset of the channels (ie no DVB-T2 on the Hauppauge) I have set that card as the default card (higher priority) so if there are two overlapping recordings, the Hauppauge is always used as first priority, leaving the PCTV (T2 as well) free in case the second recording to start is from a T2 multiplex - it would be a shame to use the T2 decoder for the earlier recording when its extra capabilities weren't needed, and then find there was no compatible decoder for the second T2 recording - especially as TVH doesn't seem to be clever enough to "rehearse" the recordings at the time of setting, to determine that there would be a clash: waiting until the time of the actual recording is a bit late to flag a clash :-(

The PCTV needed a firmware file dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw to be placed in the /lib/firmware directory. I can't find the web page that said that this was necessary and where to obtain it from.

Jack Bamford

Take a look at this for your PCTV 292e links for the firmware downloads can be found at https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCTV_Systems_tripleStick_T2_(292e)

Martin Underwood

What are people's experiences with Hauppauge PCTV DVB-S2 Stick 461e (as offered for sale on Amazon UK)? I see comments on Amazon that people with Ras Pi have it working perfectly (drivers built into UNix kernel) but also some people saying that newer versions of the adaptor need different drivers which are not in the kernel. If this is the case, are the new drivers available for download somewhere as a firmware download?

I'm looking at satellite alternatives to my existing terrestrial adaptors, in case the terrestrial reception at the new house we're buying isn't good enough: reception-prediction sites predict no coverage from any transmitter, but all the houses round about have aerials pointing over a nearby hill at Belmont and our house has various TVs which are fed by terrestrial aerial cable. So it seems as if "the impossible" is possible - but I want a fall-back plan just in case...

Robert H

I have a PCTV DVB-S2 Stick 461e running on a RPI2 without issue for 4+ years. Set the RPI2 up running a older openelec install but have also tested the new librelec on a RPI3 and RPI2 all worked out the box. I have not tried a RPI1.

Campbell Long

Bought a Telestar Digibit R1 to replace my DVBSKy S960. So far its the best DVB-S2 tuner I've used. Nothing wrong with the S960 but the R1 was marginally more expensive and provide 4 tuners for the price. TVH is running in a VM, and the R1 eliminated the need to used USB passthrough.

Martin Underwood

Robert H wrote:

> I have a PCTV DVB-S2 Stick 461e running on a RPI2 without issue for 4+ years. Set the RPI2 up running a older openelec install but have also tested the new librelec on a RPI3 and RPI2 all worked out the box. I have not tried a RPI1.

Thanks for that. I've certainly seen good reports about the 461 and the Pi. But if you've had your 461 for 4+ years, I imagine it's the older firmware; it was the new firmware that I was concerned about because I've heard rumours that it doesn't yet have UNIX support. Is there a list of what devices have kernel drivers in Raspbian Stretch.

I'm hoping that I can continue using my terrestrial devices, but I wanted to cover myself in case when we get to the new house I find that reception isn't good.

How many 461s do you have? I'm used to terrestrial where one device can record any number of channels as long as they are on the same mux, but with satellite the "multiplexes" are a lot smaller and there are a lot more of them (in terms of permutations of frequency and polarisation) so the chances of two channels that I want being available on the same "mux" are a lot more slim.

Robert H

How many 461s do you have?

Have 2 461e's on 1 X86 PC running the new Libreelec and 1 461e on a RPI2 at my parents house running openelec. They also allow multiple recordings provided they are on the same 'MUX' but as you pointed out it all depends on the channels in the MUX about 4 channels on average more in a SD mux. Parents are fine recording with just 1 S2 receiver taking advantage of all the repeats satellite TV offers on the many channels, but i needed 2 to cover the channels i wanted. Worth pointing out you need a satellite dish that can support multiple tuners as unlike terrestrial you cant just split the signal.

Jack Bamford

Not true. I have 4 Tuners in my QuadHD Card all 4 tuners are getting signal from one aerial it also depends on the Signal in your location Ridge hill mask is 17 miles from me so Signal is great hence why it works so well with my QuadHD.

Martin Underwood

Robert H wrote:

> Worth pointing out you need a satellite dish that can support multiple tuners as unlike terrestrial you cant just split the signal.

Jack Bamford wrote:

> Not true. I have 4 Tuners in my QuadHD Card all 4 tuners are getting signal from one aerial it also depends on the Signal in your location Ridge hill mask is 17 miles from me so Signal is great hence why it works so well with my QuadHD.

Jack, if you're replying to Robert's posting, I think you're at cross purposes. Robert was saying that for satellite you need a dish with as many LNBs as you have tuners, because one can't just split the signal. But you are referring to Ridge Hill mast, which is a terrestrial mast. The restrictions for terrestrial are very different from those for satellite: youcan split the signal from a terrestrial aerial because one aerial receives all the signals, whereas with satellite the tuning and selection of polarisation is done at the dish before the down cable.

It's a shame that satellite isn't designed the same way that terrestrial is, so that all the signals, irrespective of frequency and polarisation, are fed from the dish down the same cable to be decoded by different tuners after the signal has been split.

Since the house I'll be buying has two satellite cables to two inputs on the vendor's Sky box, I presume there are two LNBs at the dish so I'll be able to feed two 461 decoders as Robert is doing.

Saen Acro

Martin Underwood wrote:

> It's a shame that satellite isn't designed the same way that terrestrial is, so that all the signals, irrespective of frequency and polarisation, are fed from the dish down the same cable to be decoded by different tuners after the signal has been split.

There some inventions last 5+ years called UNICABLE ;)

Jack Bamford

@Martin, i originally thought he was talking about Terrestrial not Satellite, my bad for more than one Signals such as playback and recording a Dual LNB/Low Noise Block will be required or either a Quad LND if you're going to be using more two or 4 Tuners. Terrestrial with more than one Tuner will only work if the location has good Signal if bad signal then a Booster and a Splitter will be required.

Gert Jansen

Martin Underwood wrote:

> [snip] Jack, if you're replying to Robert's posting, I think you're at cross purposes. Robert was saying that for satellite you need a dish with as many LNBs as you have tuners [snip]

That isn't exactly true either. An LNB can have more than one output, and thus connect ot more than one receiver/tuner - or diseqc switch.

In my case I have 3 quad LNBs (with the LNBs pointing to Astra 1, 2 and 3 respectively) and have set up the LNBs to connect to 4 disqc switches, which in turn provide access to all 3 satellites for my 4 receivers/tuners.

The number of tuners must (at least) be matched by the number of diseqc swichtes (if more than one LNB is in use) and number of outputs on the LNB(s)

Giles Puckett

Only have experience with DVB-T as that is all we have here. TVH (on a Raspberry Pi) works beautifully with a HDHomerun Quattro, 4 tuners can be used at once with no stuttering of video served or dropouts in recordings. Also worked well on a Sony PlayTV dual tuner. All tuners are recognised immediately without need to install extra drivers, etc. (I installed LibreELEC to get TVH primarily)

V V

Hi all!
I need a confirmation that TVheadend is capable of doing this with proper TBS DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 capture cards:
1. Have 1 FHD (1080p) MUX via DVB-T2 and inputting at least 6 channels from them
2. transcoding those FHD (1080p) 6 channels to 6 multiple profiles (example bitrates, at high quality):
* H.264 720p 3Mbps
* H.264 720p 2.5Mbps
* H.264 480p 1.5Mbps
* H.264 480p 1.0Mbps
* H.264 360 800Kbps
* H.264 360 400Kbps
3. Streaming all those 6 channels with 6 profiles via UDP, separate unicast streams to another server per every stream profile

4. Same 1-3 points for DVB-S2 channels, also 6 of them or more.

Is it possible to do all of this via TVHeadend running on Linux?

And yeah, some recommendation for a sever hardware or PC specification that could cope with this would be great :)

Also, recommendation for another alternative other then TBS cards are welcome too if such exists.

Thanks!

Saen Acro

V V wrote:
> Hi all!
> I need a confirmation that TVheadend is capable of doing this with proper TBS DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 capture cards:
> 1. Have 1 FHD (1080p) MUX via DVB-T2 and inputting at least 6 channels from them
> 2. transcoding those FHD (1080p) 6 channels to 6 multiple profiles (example bitrates, at high quality):
> H.264 720p 3Mbps > H.264 720p 2.5Mbps
> H.264 480p 1.5Mbps > H.264 480p 1.0Mbps
> H.264 360 800Kbps > H.264 360 400Kbps
>
> 3. Streaming all those 6 channels with 6 profiles via UDP, separate unicast streams to another server per every stream profile
> 4. Same 1-3 points for DVB-S2 channels, also 6 of them or more.
>
> Is it possible to do all of this via TVHeadend running on Linux?
>
> And yeah, some recommendation for a sever hardware or PC specification that could cope with this would be great :)
> Also, recommendation for another alternative other then TBS cards are welcome too if such exists.
>

> Thanks!

1. no diference
2. yes you can
3. under developing but TOMCAST can do that
4. same as 1

V V

saen acro wrote:
> V V wrote:
> > Hi all!
> > I need a confirmation that TVheadend is capable of doing this with proper TBS DVB-T2 and DVB-S2 capture cards:
> > 1. Have 1 FHD (1080p) MUX via DVB-T2 and inputting at least 6 channels from them
> > 2. transcoding those FHD (1080p) 6 channels to 6 multiple profiles (example bitrates, at high quality):
> > H.264 720p 3Mbps > > H.264 720p 2.5Mbps
> > H.264 480p 1.5Mbps > > H.264 480p 1.0Mbps
> > H.264 360 800Kbps > > H.264 360 400Kbps
> >
> > 3. Streaming all those 6 channels with 6 profiles via UDP, separate unicast streams to another server per every stream profile
> > 4. Same 1-3 points for DVB-S2 channels, also 6 of them or more.
> >
> > Is it possible to do all of this via TVHeadend running on Linux?
> >
> > And yeah, some recommendation for a sever hardware or PC specification that could cope with this would be great :)
> > Also, recommendation for another alternative other then TBS cards are welcome too if such exists.
> >
> > Thanks!
>
> 1. no diference
> 2. yes you can
> 3. under developing but TOMCAST can do that

> 4. same as 1

Thanks for your reply :)

Can you recommend a hardware configuration that would do that? Would "Ryzen 9 3900x" CPU be capable of doing such a job with let's say 12 channels?

Also, which TBS card is approved that it works with TVHeadend and is capable of receiving simultaneous DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 channels?

Thanks!

Martin Bednar

V V wrote:

> Can you recommend a hardware configuration that would do that? Would "Ryzen 9 3900x" CPU be capable of doing such a job with let's say 12 channels?
> Also, which TBS card is approved that it works with TVHeadend and is capable of receiving simultaneous DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 channels?

Linux support is what you need. Tvheadend sits on top of that.
From browsing the TBS web: https://shop.tbsdtv.com/multistandard-c-44.html

https://shop.tbsdtv.com/tbs6522-multi-standard-dual-tuner-pcie-card-dvbs2x-or-s2-or-s-or-t2-or-t-or-c2-or-c-or-isdbt-p-148.html

I also like products from digitaldevices. In your case something like :
https://digitaldevices.de/products/dvb_components/max_sx8/ https://digitaldevices.de/products/dvb_components/max_a8/

Beware that per their support the required signal strength for DVB-T is of at least '-44dBm for good reception'. (Cine-T2 card, but still)

Another thing to consider is whether you want to use unicable, or have one coaxial cable per sattelite LNB. DVB-S reception works completely differently from DVB-T. (4 disjoint possible tuner configurations -- V/H polarization + hi/lo freq).

As for transcoding hardware, I'd suggest you go with something that can do hw encoding. Check the number of encoding streams the hw supports. I'd also recommend a Ryzen, but an APU, precisely because some encoding/decoding could be offloaded the the integrated GPU. I myself have an Intel J5005 precisely for this reason (and low consumption).

Joe User

You should better describe your requirements. Are you looking for continuous, concurrent connections or on demand? What is the "another server"?

12X6 = 72 concurrent transcodings - that will take a lot of power.

You would probably be better off using MuMuDVB with an FFserver, it would use UDP and it can take advantage of FFMpeg's aboility to produce multiple outputs from a single input - this would certainly help lower CPU usage.

Some of these may be outdated, but it should get you started.
http://mumudvb.net/ http://mumudvb.net/documentation/asciidoc/mumudvb-2.0.0/TRANSCODE_EXTERNAL.html https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Creating%20multiple%20outputs

Saen Acro

Joe User wrote:
> You should better describe your requirements. Are you looking for continuous, concurrent connections or on demand? What is the "another server"?
> 12X6 = 72 concurrent transcodings - that will take a lot of power.
>
> You would probably be better off using MuMuDVB with an FFserver, it would use UDP and it can take advantage of FFMpeg's aboility to produce multiple outputs from a single input - this would certainly help lower CPU usage.
>
> Some of these may be outdated, but it should get you started.
> http://mumudvb.net/ > http://mumudvb.net/documentation/asciidoc/mumudvb-2.0.0/TRANSCODE_EXTERNAL.html

> https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Creating%20multiple%20outputs

TVH + Tomcast zero problems on multicast

https://tvheadend.org/issues/5723

GPU transcoding is recommended
ffmpeg can be managed by https://github.com/remux-io/remuxme

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