TBS 6284 PCI-E DVB-T2 Quad TV Tuner Card

[mevans]

Thats probably because not all programmes are HD even though they are broadcast on an HD channel

Oh!

[matterofrecord]

Just adding my voice to say the TBS6284 ( PCI-E DVB-T2 Quad TV Tuner ) works fine in sagetv natively.

1 - Make sure you have HD capable codecs

If this is your first Hi-def tuner then you will need to sort out the codecs esp audio ( FYI I'm using video : cyberlink h.264/avc decoder (pdvd9) and cyberlink audio decoder (pdvd9) from OEM disc- but the audio isn't 5.1 so it doesn't work ith every program - coreavc seems well recommended but haven't tried it yet)

2 - The HD part of the EPG guide is messed up. This happens with ANY brand of freeview HD tuner you will need to import a decent one

The native freeview HD part of the guide is messed up ( and may start leaking into other guide line ups ) This is NOT the tuners fault - it happens with all UK dvb-t2 channel guides. The guide has been huffman compressed for some reason. You will have to import a guide using stephanes xmltv import utility. To get guide information I prefer to use dvbguide. DVBguide will import the guide over the air. It will de-encrypt/decompress the freeview HD guide to make it human readable and then write it in an xml file.
You can then import the xml files into sage using stephanes importer. Obvioulsy the people who wrote dvbguide have cracked the huffman compression. If only they could write a plugin for sage that would be great. Another free option is mc2xml. It downloads the epg from windows media center source.



The TBS6284 also works fine with stephanes "LM dvbsmart recorder for sagetv"

You will need to provide extra power using a six pin pci-express power cable (they include one in the box that is 3 molex power to 1 pci-e 6pin power cable)

TL;DR ---- TBS6284 works fine with sagtetv

[mevans]

Just taken the plunge on this, hope to get it up and running for the small sporting event that we are hosting in a few weeks. It looks like there might be a new freeview channel too...

[mevans]

Hi all,

Installation of my new TBS 6284 quad T2 tuner went ok. I couldn't decide if i should install the driver first or the card. In the end i put the card in first, and then installed the drivers from the .exe i downloaded from the website.

I used "ScanChannelsBDA-UK 2.6.2 Sage SRC" which found all four tuners. I did a scan of 'UK channels' hoping it would produce the channel list with the HD channels in it - but it didn't. In the relevent section of the log i got this (i am using the Crystal Palace transmitter):

# 546000kHz
# Channel 30
# signal locked = Y present = N strength = 90 quality = 90


============================================================================

Frequency (Scanned) = 546000kHz
Frequency (Actual)  = 0kHz

Transmitter Name    = London
tid: 9018
id: 12339

Channel Name           LCN   SID    Vid   Aud   PMT
-------------------------------------------------------------------



tsid   sid    Provider name         Channel name          pmt   pcr   video audio teltx subt  AC3   typ sx lv  LCN
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16516, 17472, (null)              , BBC HD              ,  100,  101,    0,    0,    0,  105,    A0, 25, 0, 4,  54, 
16516, 17540, (null)              , BBC One HD          , 6600, 6601,    0,    0,    0, 6605,    A0, 25, 0, 4,  50, 
16516, 17604, (null)              , ITV1 HD             ,  200,  201,    0,    0,    0,  205,    A0, 25, 0, 4,  51, 
16516, 17664, (null)              , Channel 4 HD        ,  300,  301,    0,    0,    0,  305,    A0, 25, 0, 4,  52, 
16516, 19648, (null)              , 301 HD              , 6700, 6701,    0,    0,    0,    0,    A0, 25, 0, 4, 304, 
16516, 20288, (null)              , The Space           , 6900, 8191,    0,    0,    0,    0,    A0, 12, 0, 4, 117, 

# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%
# Locked = Y    Present = N    Strength = 90    Quality = 90%

# Average quality on 546000kHz = 90%

============================================================================

I would have expected to see something in the:

Channel Name           LCN   SID    Vid   Aud   PMT
-------------------------------------------------------------------

section. I guess this is why the channels didn't show up in the listing at the end of the log. is this normal for HD channels?

Maybe i should just get sage to do the scan - i've never done that!!(maybe it didn't work very well in v6 ?).

Anyway, i made up the HD lines as follows:

CH:50 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17540 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:BBC One HD
CH:51 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17604 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:ITV1 HD
CH:52 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17664 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:Channel 4 HD
CH:54 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17472 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:BBC HD
CH:304 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:19648 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:301 HD

But they don't work! (i am currently testing on a PC with Placeshifter - i fear there might be a Codec issue here? this is something for the clients/placeshifters, yes? my HD200's should work fine?)

The digiguide part of things seams ok. I get the channels showing up in the guide with HD id's on some of the programs.

More work to do, but feeling positive about it!

Any thoughts very welcome.

mevans

[brewston]

I seem to recall when installing my PCTV 290e that ScanChannelsBDA wouldn't scan the HD channels but I can't remember what the exact failure mode was

Since it was a new install of Sage I ended up running a scan from Sage itself which found them (Since it was Freeview, I had to add in one of the predefined frequencies which Crystal Palace had started transmitting on)

[mevans]

Thanks for the info.

I did have a go at running the scan from the Sage software (having made a new 'location' with just the frequency of the Mux i'm interested in. It was picking up loads of channels though so i gave up.

I'll revisit it sometime over the next few days...

In the meantime any more thoughts from others are most welcome.

I must admit that i was slightly supprized that the tuners show up as 4, and not 8 (i.e. 4 SD, 4 HD).

Brewston, if you are receiving freeview HD from the Crystal Palace transmitter, would you mind sharing your tuning info from your frequency file ??

[brewston]

Originally Posted by mevans

Brewston, if you are receiving freeview HD from the Crystal Palace transmitter, would you mind sharing your tuning info from your frequency file ??

Here you go :

CH:63 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17472 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:BBC-HD

CH:64 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17604 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:ITV1-HD

CH:65 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17664 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:Channel-4-HD

CH:66 onid:9018 tsid:16516 sid:17540 frq:546000000 band:8 ctrl:1 #:BBC-One-HD

[mevans]

Thanks for the tuning info. it is exactly the same as what i had compiled from my scan with ScanChannelsBDA.

Still no joy though with getting any signal, so i did a scan with Sage, it picked up all the freeview channels and wrote them to the frequency file for that tuner, i deteleted the tuner from Sage and then edited the frequ file to just contain the HD channels on the correct (freeview) channel numbers. Then it worked on my HD200's (although not really via Placeshifter - again i assume this is a codec issue...).

I set up another of the TBS tuners in the same way, they worked with the scan, and i could preview the channels after the SageTV scan, but couldn't get any of the other tuners to work once i had edited their frequency files.

for what it's worth I have a second XMLTV channel lineup set up with just the freeview HD channels. The program guide is happily populated with the correct info from Digiguide for these new channels too.

More thought required!

Mevans

[pjwerdna]

Originally Posted by mevans

it picked up all the freeview channels and wrote them to the frequency file for that tuner, i deteleted the tuner from Sage and then edited the frequ file to just contain the HD channels on the correct (freeview) channel numbers.

You do know that this card wil receive both SD and HD trough all 4 tuners dont you? You dont have to limit the channels on these tuners to just the HD ones as it does both DVB-T and DVB-T2.

Originally Posted by mevans

I set up another of the TBS tuners in the same way, they worked with the scan, and i could preview the channels after the SageTV scan, but couldn't get any of the other tuners to work once i had edited their frequency files.

Did you restart SageTV ater changing the frq files? Sounds like youve gone through the same process as I did with my Dual tuner version and I have no issues!

[mevans]

Originally Posted by pjwerdna

You do know that this card wil receive both SD and HD trough all 4 tuners dont you? You dont have to limit the channels on these tuners to just the HD ones as it does both DVB-T and DVB-T2.

Yes i did. But because i have four DVB-T tuners in the form of my two HDHR's. I figured that i would limit the TBS tuners to the HD channels. Maybe Sage is clever enough to just manage any issues/conflicts of not all tuners having all the channels - it wouldn't supprise me if it was!

Originally Posted by pjwerdna

Did you restart SageTV ater changing the frq files? Sounds like youve gone through the same process as I did with my Dual tuner version and I have no issues!

Ah-ha!! i don't think i did. Fingers crossed this sorts me out...

Thanks for the reminder

[michaeldjcox]

I installed a TBS6284 DVB-T2 at the weekend.

Also noticed the 90% signal strength as with an earlier poster but seems to make no difference.

I opted not to use the optional power supply lead as a saw a review that said it was very unlikely to be needed.

Couldn't find any information about how one would know it was needed. Could it be related to signal strength?

There was a point at which it seemed not to be able to work out what broadcasting standard the tuner had but this seem to resolve after a reboot box following driver install and restart sagetv followed by a channel scan.

Had 4 programs simultaneously recording no problem.

Just copied my defined .frq file from copied data from my previous SD tuner files so no HD testing yet.

I'm already using XML TV for EPG so not been hit by encryption issues.

In in conclusion a little stung by the cost but very pleased with the performance of this card so far.

Michael

[rickgillyon]

I have two of them running now, no issues. Using the four HD channels also without issue. I had one card that had two tuners which wouldn't scan or tune, but the replacement worked fine.

I read that the power connector is just because the card is the same design as the Sat cards, where power is only required for LNBs - for these cards, not required.

[michaeldjcox]

I just tried to run a scan because they have changed the frequencies at Tacolneston.

SageTV scan returns 0 channels

ScanChannelsBDA has more success but as it has always done for me crashes half way through.

Michael

UPDATE:

http://simeonpilgrim.com/blog/2013/0...vb-t-freeview/

This seems to have helped i.e. setting

mmc/dvbt_region=

in Sage.properties

Forces a very long scan but at least its finding channels

UPDATE 2: Worked but found no HD channels

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by michaeldjcox

UPDATE 2: Worked but found no HD channels

Replied to your PM... it has everything you should need.

[michaeldjcox]

Thanks Ben!

[i0zjh02]

I have a TBS 6284 and this has been running well for last 6 months. I'm looking for a 2nd card now and noticed that it looks like its been replaced with the TBS 6285. Does anybody know whats changed on the cards and has anybody tried the new card with SageTV ??

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by i0zjh02

I have a TBS 6284 and this has been running well for last 6 months. I'm looking for a 2nd card now and noticed that it looks like its been replaced with the TBS 6285. Does anybody know whats changed on the cards and has anybody tried the new card with SageTV ??

The TBS 6285 is the DVB-T equivalent of the TBS 6985 for DVB-S. Basically they've updated the PCIe controller interface to be more compatible and split the tuners into 4 physical tuners where before the 4 tuners where grouped into 2 sets of physical tuners A-B & C-D.

However it should still work natively on SageTV as the TBS 6284 does, just a better and more compatible interface.

There is another thread in the UK forum regarding the TBS 6985 and I know someone is currently using it, so chances are you will be fine with the new TBS 6285 as well

Eddy

[starfire]

Originally Posted by i0zjh02

I have a TBS 6284 and this has been running well for last 6 months. I'm looking for a 2nd card now and noticed that it looks like its been replaced with the TBS 6285. Does anybody know whats changed on the cards and has anybody tried the new card with SageTV ??

Did you ever try a TBS 6285 ?

[sota]

I can confirm that the TBS 6285 card works fine in native mode in SageTV. You should also install the Tuner pre-roll plug-in to avoid recording errors, though.

[starfire]

Thanks