Tvheadend with Twinhan VP-1025 on Truenas Scale

MMavrick23

Dear all,
I'm new here so excuse (and correct) me if I did anything wrong.

I'm trying to build a LAN streaming server to use it then on my Jellyfin server that is as hosted as the Tvheadend on the same machine with a PCI Twinhan VP-1025 DVB-S tuner card. The machine is running a Linux based Truenas Scale distro and both Jellyfin and Tvheadend are installed apps using Truecharts.

I managed to make the tuner card get detected under Tvheadend adapters listing, but when I scan the muxes for channels it returns nothing and all the muxes are marked as failed. I googled as much as I could with no luck.

When I run lspci -k in the Truenas Scale shell, I get:

I can also verify that /dev/dvb/adapter0 exists as well.

And when I run dmesg | grep -i dvb here is what I get:

I tried using the card with another Windows system with the same setup just to check if there is a problem with the card or anything else, it worked fine and could tune to almost all the transponders.

What am I missing? What could be done here as I have no experience with any of these stuff?
Thanks in advance.

DeltaMikeCharlie

MMavrick23 Did you install the firmware file for your tuner card?

MMavrick23

DeltaMikeCharlie

I didn't, assuming it is already supported by kernel as per this article: https://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Twinhan_VP-1025.

Also the fact that lspci -k pulled up the card confirmed for me that it was good to go by default.

If I'm not correct, can you hint me about where to start?

DeltaMikeCharlie

The firmware file should be in /usr/lib/firmware if one is needed.
I also read on the link that you provided that a cold reset is sometimes required.

MMavrick23

DeltaMikeCharlie

I tried the cold reset and also reseating the card. I will check the firmware thing and let you know.

Jonas Lang

What is the spec of the machine you have the Twinham pci tuner installed on. Have you got the correct LNB settings configured in TVH. If you go to the Status tab in TVH while running a mux scan are you showing any Signal Strength or Signal Quality.

MMavrick23

Jonas Lang

Machine specs are:
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
8GB DDR3 RAM
128Gb SSD Boot Drive
1Tb Storage Pool Drive
1Gbps LAN Adapter
Twinhan VP-2025 DVB-S tuner

Everything was working well with these specs on windows, so I don't think it might be the problem.

I select the LNB as universal LNB, however not sure if it is correct, can you hint about where to look at?

While I do mux scan it gives Unknown as signal strength in the status tab.

MMavrick23

Jonas Lang

Update to my last comment:
Actually your note shed the light on the fact that it does not show any kind of feedback. I tinkered a bit and changed enabled Force old status, which resulted in getting the signal strength, even if it is still not pulling any services and signal is very weak.

I will keep tinkering until your reply or @DeltaMikeCharlie 's.

Thanks a lot guys.

Jonas Lang

Obviously Signal Quality is key here. Concentrate on your LNB settings.

As a test if you can install Kaffeine on your Linux distro and do a scan using that. It’s a simple to configure DVBS application and a real Swiss Army knife tool to check the integrity of your DVBS pci card under Linux.

MMavrick23

Jonas Lang

Well, since it is Truenas Scale installation, this is not really straightforward. I can virtualize another Debian distro for example and on it I can install Kaffeine. I can also just install fresh Debian/Ubuntu on a different SSD. But it is not going to be directly on Truenas Scale as it is not supported by default and even if I just installed it separately, I will not have a way to see anything since it has no web UI.

Is there an alternate solution or maybe some settings to play with in TVHE?

Pst:
In my normal receiver settings, I can see stuff like "22K" LNB frequency and so on, yet I cannot see this in TVHE. Maybe such setting would matter?

MMavrick23

Jonas Lang

Update:
I managed to run Xubuntu on the same hardware from a different disk, I installed Kaffeine and it detected the card immediately, yet, when i do a channel search, I still get the same 25-28% signal strength and 9-11% SNR and no channels. Again worth mentioning that when I try windows, everything just works fine and I get almost all the channel, so what I'm thinking of is maybe it is indeed a firmware issue as @DeltaMikeCharlie said? or maybe smth else I'm missing...

Jonas Lang

MMavrick23 looking at that particular card under Linux I do see a number of patches applied over the years to resolve the low Signal Quality issue. It’s quite an old pci tuner card so I reckon not much work has been done on it in recent years. Keep searching for any possible patches that have been applied recently.

MMavrick23

Jonas Lang
That is correct, but supposedly these patchs comes pre-shipped with Linux.

DeltaMikeCharlie

You say that the card works on Windows. Are to 100% certain that in TVH you have your muxes configured correctly? Are you in exactly the same location using the same signal cable for both systems?

If the problem is missing firmware, perhaps you could look in dmesg to see if there is any mention of missing firmware when the kernel detects the device at bootup. Perhaps you could compare this to your Xubuntu/Kaffeine dmesg to look for any clues.

If there is a message, it could mention the device by name, or, if the card is assembled from a generic chip set, perhaps that chip set would be mentioned instead.

If you don't mind installing other operating systems on a spare hard drive, you could try installing LibreELEC and see if that works. It is a bundle of Linux + TVH + Kodi that can be used as a multimedia appliance. The important thing is that LibreELEC has a lot of firmware files pre-installed. You may get lucky.

MMavrick23

DeltaMikeCharlie
Yes I'm 100% sure, as I simply booted tge same machine with the same connection but from a different drive (one with windows).

I checked dmesg and even attached a screenshot of it, it bever mentioned anything regarding missing firmware, also compared that against the Xubuntu. They both match.

I'm afraid I didn't understand the chip section in your comment. But it is based on BT8xx chip and abother one.

I will give that OS a shit and let you know.

Jonas Lang

MMavrick23 other than proving your tuner is functional Windows operability is irrelevant here. I’ve nine different tuners both pci and usb that work in Windows but never worked in Linux. Unless you stumble upon something specific relating to your tuner that’s recent I doubt you’ll get your tuner working efficiently. My gut instinct is the problem lies at LNB/antenna level so it may be worth experimenting with DVBS tools and the different options available when performing a scan. I thought Kaffeine would help resolving your issue but obviously not. At a basic level I thought this may explain the reason behind your issue https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Twinhan_VP-1025

Not having the card I can’t even carry out any tests for you but this post is typical of what users were experiencing at the time. https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1382204.html

I’d strongly suggest sourcing a known working Linux pci card if that’s the route you want to go. Alternatively you could use a USB tuner or my personal preference a Sat/IP tuner which dispenses with all those driver/firmware worries.

DeltaMikeCharlie

Jonas Lang I’d strongly suggest sourcing a known working Linux pci card if that’s the route you want to go.

I also agree that this would be a very pragmatic approach provided that you have the available budget to do so..

MMavrick23

Jonas Lang
@DeltaMikeCharlie Thanks a lot guys for all the help and information, I already learnt a lot. I already wanted to get a TBS tuner that is known functional with Linux but I wanted a proof of concept that the whole project is worth investing in better hardware, not only rhe tuner but the whole machine, and that's how I got this cheap card (That I checked linuxtv.org to make sure it is supported) but looks like my lack of experience in this field affected my judgment.

Could you recommend a Sat/IP tuner? In my current location, it's almost impossible to find one.

I will check the LNB level and try to tinker a bit in my freetime and will post in here if any updates popped or if I needed to ask about anything else.

Again thanks a lot guys, I'm glad I met you ❤️

Jonas Lang

DeltaMikeCharlie they are as cheap as chips on eBay. Plenty of known working in Linux Hauppauge pci cards for as little as €20.

Alternatively he can continue to search for possible solutions but that could be a fruitless exercise bearing in mind what I pointed out above.

This is not an actual TVH issue so I give advice based on previous experiences of playing around with different DVBS tuners.

What he could try is dvbsnoop which can be installed from here.

https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Dvbsnoop

Again this is just one of many DVBS tools that can be used to troubleshoot troublesome hardware. Once installed run the following command and post the output.

dvbsnoop -s feinfo

Jonas Lang

MMavrick23 this is a perfect Sat/IP tuner. https://telestar.de/en/produkt/digibit-twin/

I’ve got four of them here. You can purchase it for €80 delivered. Obviously the twin tuner opens up more possibilities on a TVH setup and of course it’s goodbye to driver/firmware hell. Literally plug and play with Linux and Windows of course. Just shop around for the best prices.