TBS 6984 PCI-E DVB-S2 Quad Tuner TV Card

[Oddity]

Performance is really good, just a few seconds.

Can record 4 HD channels (BBC One, BBCHD, Channel 4 and Channel 5) at once, using a 5th ( dvb-t) and my server causes the UI to slow down noticably, but video playback is good. I'm only running a Atom 1.6ghz itx board with RAID 1 over 4 disks

As before setup is TBS6984, Oscam, DVBE4Sage, Sagetv 7.19

[Oddity]

Setup is working well, looks like I have a TBS6981 going up for sale as I have no free PCIe slots

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by Oddity

Whitey, good to here from you

Yes DVBE4SAGE finds all four tuners an works perfectly as ever.

Can confirm that TBS6984, EPG Collector and DVBE4SAGE all working perfectly

Just wish I could get OSCAM to work after resuming from Sleep on the server.

Not been around much since the whole google thing

Can't really help with your OSCAM issue since my server runs 247. Do you have it running as a service?

Whitey

[Oddity]

Whitey, how did you get it running as a service.
Running v 0.99.4svn build #2859.

Created a service using the sc.exe command to run the oscam.exe file but it would never start successfully.

How did you manage it?

[Whitey]

Originally Posted by Oddity

Whitey, how did you get it running as a service.
Running v 0.99.4svn build #2859.

Created a service using the sc.exe command to run the oscam.exe file but it would never start successfully.

How did you manage it?

I tried a OSCAM wrapper too that didn't work either so I just set-up a scheduled task to run OSCAM at start up. It works great and it's never failed.

Whitey

[Oddity]

Got it running as a startup event which works well, it just does not refresh the card on resume from sleep.
Will try and create a resume event script to kill and start

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Oddity

Performance is really good, just a few seconds.

Can record 4 HD channels (BBC One, BBCHD, Channel 4 and Channel 5) at once, using a 5th ( dvb-t) and my server causes the UI to slow down noticably, but video playback is good. I'm only running a Atom 1.6ghz itx board with RAID 1 over 4 disks

As before setup is TBS6984, Oscam, DVBE4Sage, Sagetv 7.19

Thank you very much for your feedback. On the TBS forum few people reported issues with this card when is raining as we all know that rain effects satellite digital signal quite badly. TBS is going to release a new software soon to address this problem. Did you experienced any issue with rain so far? There is a free application TBS IP TOOL (V3.0.3.3) to download from TBS website that allows you to read the signal quality/strength. Last question, promise , are the drivers WHQL?

TA

[Oddity]

We've not had much in the way of rain lately, but I do have a 80cm dish instead of the standard 60cm and quality LNB.
I found that with all pc devices the dish must be well aligned otherwise even in good weather some channels cannot be received.

So far signal looks good and no different according to signal strength/quality on dvb dream when compared to 6981.

I would suggest checking your dish alignment if you are getting issues.

I'm not aware of the issues reported on the TBS forum, a quick look in the forum and I could only find one issue and no acnkowledgement of a new driver version to resolve.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Oddity

I'm not aware of the issues reported on the TBS forum, a quick look in the forum and I could only find one issue and no acnkowledgement of a new driver version to resolve.

I was referring to the issue posted at the link below related to when the rain starts and stop and on page two of the thread there is a mention to temporary new drivers to test in order to solve this issue.
http://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1200

I have four NOVA DVB-S/S2 tuner card connected to a Wave Frontier toroidal dish with three high quality MTI LNBs and hadn't any issue whatsoever in any weather condition. I'm just curious about how this new TBS card will work in weaker signal condition. Please let us know how the card perform when the weather will turn into "normal" eventually

[Oddity]

Heavy rain tonight.

Following the comments, started to watch some Sat tv using the 6984.

Now very heavy and so far reception is fine, even on stations such at Travel which I used to get break up on

[Oddity]

OScam, Managed to get it running as a windows service.

The problem is that it does not find the card after resume from sleep

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Oddity

Performance is really good, just a few seconds.

Can record 4 HD channels (BBC One, BBCHD, Channel 4 and Channel 5) at once, using a 5th ( dvb-t) and my server causes the UI to slow down noticably, but video playback is good. I'm only running a Atom 1.6ghz itx board with RAID 1 over 4 disks

As before setup is TBS6984, Oscam, DVBE4Sage, Sagetv 7.19

I'm sorry, but I just realised that you used DVBE4Sage for your testing...it would be nice whether you could possibly test the card native as DVBE4Sage will use only one tuner when the channels are at the same frequency.

Also, I'm really really really interested to your OSCAM + ACAMD configuration as I'm planning to do the same with the Italian Tivusat smartcard (Nagravision). I read bout OSCAM and I'm planning to buy the Inifinity USB smart card reader, but what about ACAMD, how cam you make working with SageTV

Any help is really appreciated

[Oddity]

Nothing scheduled to record, so set up tuners direct to sage ( no dvbe4sage ).

Recorded from all four channels ( free to air ) at the same time natively in sage.

Had to give up with oscam, works really well, except would not work after resuming from sleep. So reverted to Newcsgui and acamd (csc.dll) and placing the card back in the box every month.

Newcs really easy to set up, pm me if you want my config

Do not have the Infinity card but it is possibly the best one and does come recommended widely.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Oddity

Nothing scheduled to record, so set up tuners direct to sage ( no dvbe4sage ).

Recorded from all four channels ( free to air ) at the same time natively in sage.

Had to give up with oscam, works really well, except would not work after resuming from sleep. So reverted to Newcsgui and acamd (csc.dll) and placing the card back in the box every month.

Newcs really easy to set up, pm me if you want my config

Do not have the Infinity card but it is possibly the best one and does come recommended widely.

Thank you very much for the info, so to recap:
- Install and configure NewCS (v1.65) + NewCSGUI 1.2 (Will run on system tray, nice)
- ACAMD: found version 0.6.1.8. I don't need NDS support, but only Nagravision support for 4 tuner cards, will the NewCS server provide that?. I understand that you're are currently using the CSC.dll version instead on the ACAMD.dll, is it more stable?
- Finally, in order to work with SageTV I suspect you need to install the "MDAPIFilter.ax" which will be used by SageTV when building the filter graph to support the encrypted data stream, correct?

This is completely new territory for me, so if you can please point me in the right direction would be great.

[Oddity]

Routerunner, sorry for the delay, busy few days.
acamd.dll and csc.dll - both seem to work equally well. Just stayed with csc.dll
Sorry, can't help on the plugin direct to Sagetv, never looked into this route. Would appreciate someone letting me know, like yourself, how this is achieved.
Almost about given up on oscam, can't get it stable enough. Newcs is, to me at least, far more reliable.

[rickgillyon]

I tried using MDAPIFilter.ax a year or two ago, at the time it wasn't in active development and was utterly unreliable. Useless.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by rickgillyon

I tried using MDAPIFilter.ax a year or two ago, at the time it wasn't in active development and was utterly unreliable. Useless.

Hi, can you please elaborate how you were trying to use the filter? Directly within sagetv (registering the filter via regsvr32) or via third party player? If the latter I suspect you were using an HTPC solution and not an extender.

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Hi, can you please elaborate how you were trying to use the filter? Directly within sagetv (registering the filter via regsvr32) or via third party player? If the latter I suspect you were using an HTPC solution and not an extender.

Of course I was using an HTPC solution, SageTV. I have no idea how you think this relates to extenders.

Basically register the ax on the server, drop FFDecsa.dll into the Sage folder, add the following reg key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FreyTechnologies\Common\AdditionalCaptureSetups\PluginFilter]
"PrePlugin"="Agarwal's MDAPI filter"

And Sage loads the filter as part of its startup. Can't remember much else, configuration or whatever, I know it produced a system tray icon for each tuner, crashed frequently and never successfully descrambled anything. So I did the decent thing and gave up.

[routerunner]

[QUOTE=rickgillyon;520485]Of course I was using an HTPC solution, SageTV. I have no idea how you think this relates to extenders.

What I meant is by using an external DVB player that of course must run on a HTPC client, on the extender you can only use the built-in player in the SageTV server which feeds the stream to the extender.

SageTV server running on Windows creates a DirectShow filter graph, hence the need to register the ".ax" filter, but what about the "FFDecsa.dll"? I thought that the the "ACamd.dll/csc.dll" would provide the support?

[rickgillyon]

Originally Posted by routerunner

SageTV server running on Windows creates a DirectShow filter graph, hence the need to register the ".ax" filter, but what about the "FFDecsa.dll"? I thought that the the "ACamd.dll/csc.dll" would provide the support?

I wasn't running the same plugins or tv system as you are.