UK-TBS 6285 DVB-T pixelation on HD-Does not happen at high CPU load

[al_uk]

Just replaced 2 PCI Happauge Nova 500 DVB-T cards with a single PCI Express TBS 6285 quad HD tuner.

I find I get pixelation and blocky picture every few seconds, especially on HD, but also on SD sometimes. This is watching using an HD300.

if I run the CPU on the SageTV server at 100% using "HeavyStress" then the picture is perfect. Even when recording 4 HD channels at once.

Killing off the high CPU then brings back the blockiness within a minute or so.

Signals are 100%. I had no problems with SD channels on the Hauppages.

Any ideas why this is happening?

CPU is an i3.

[taylormadearmy]

You could try to disable CPU throttling?

http://isboxer.com/wiki/HOWTO:Disabl...ing_in_Windows

[al_uk]

Hi, I've tried that now, and it doesn't make any difference :-(

Anything else I can try? Thanks.

[KryptoNyte]

I was thinking that disabling throttling was a slam dunk. Are you able to verify that the CPU is holding at 100% (using CPU-Z for example) and isn't throttling down in some fashion?

How did you get the CPU to 100% in your previous example? Any more system specs you could provide?

[al_uk]

Hi. I'm still having problems here.

The processor is an i3 530 Clarkdale on an Intel DH55HC mb. There were 2 Nova T500 PCI cards and a Hauppague PCI HD freesat cards. Now there is just the Sat card and the new TBS card.

8GB RAM running Win 8.1. The machine does also run Blueiris CCTV and Homeseer, but I have tried stopping these and it makes no difference to the blockiness. The box used to idle around 20% CPU with some Sage activity and Blueiris recording.

SageTV has its own 2TB sata drive to record to. This is NTFS with 64k cluster size.

I downloaded a tool called "HeavyLoad" which runs the CPU load up to 100%. This was based on another forum post here

http://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=142&t=8868

I also tried disabling SpeedStep, as per this forum post

http://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=8600

but doesn't make any difference. I notice in windows task manager that the cpu frequency still fluctuates.

[KryptoNyte]

I'm not sure that the processor usage is the right thing to be chasing, but I believe there may be some additional power settings in the BIOS.

Check PDF page 28 and 29 of this document:

http://download.intel.com/support/mo...bymenu_v13.pdf

for various power management features to be disabled.

Usually, pixilation is a signal issue, or even a bad tuner, and not a computer performance issue, so I'm surprised that a heavy load on the processor resolves the pixilation.

Is there any software other than Sage that you can use to tune a station to see if the problem is isolated to Sage?
Does the pixilation occur when you watch the program in the server GUI, or is it only with the HD300?

[al_uk]

This card is frustrating me!

I've now got a new "server" machine which is a Supermicro X10SL7-F motherboard, a Xeon E3-1230V3, and Samsung 850 EVO SSD.

I tried a vanilla install of Windows 8 (not 8.1) and immediately installed the TBS drivers and then SageTV. This worked fine. Good picture on HD and SD channels through an HD300.

Then I tried the hypervisors

1. UnRaid latest beta with Xen and PCI passthrough
- Windows 8 guest, TBS drivers and Sagetv. Picture was blocky on HD channels again, and occasionally blocky on SD
- Windows XP guest with SP3, TBS drivers and Sagetv. Picture was blocky on HD channels, and occasionally blocky on SD

2. VMware ESXi latest version. Windows 8 guest. Sagetv found the tuner but no channels. Some more searching said that VMware doesn't pass through the PCI properly, so this is a dead end

3. Citrix Xen Server 6.5.0
- Windows 8 guest, TBS drivers and Sagetv. Can't get the guest to see the tuner cards - it never appears in the device manager. I tried passing through another device (usb controller) and this worked ok.


I don't think it is a signal issue, because it works fine with Windows 8 native, and also the non HD Hauppauge cards in my "live" sagetv box are fed from the RF out of the 6285, and they work fine.

Just to re-state, I tried the card in my 4 year old "live" sagetv server running native Windows 8.1 (see 1st post) and got the same blockiness, which went away when I loaded up the cpu to 100%.

I've run out of ideas - anyone got any thoughts before I try to return the card?

[al_uk]

Anyone any ideas to try and get this working? Cheers.

[starfire]

I'd try different TV software than Sage and see if you see the same issue, may help track down where the issue lies.

[feeling]

Hello,

I have the same problem. I have a map TBS-6285 tuner (rev21) and my server is Citrix Xenserver 6.5.

I configured the card in PCI-passtrough on my virtual machine in Windows 8.1 Pro x64.

Unfortunately, the map is not visible in the Task Manager.

I saw a post he had perhaps change the firmware of the tuner card, but I do not really know what to do.

Here is the link to the post:

https://github.com/ljalves/linux_media/issues/58

Thank you in advance for your help.

[al_uk]

Just to close the loop, I've resolved the problem. I moved the card to the other PCI-E slot, and forced it to "PCI-E Generation 1" in the bios.

Working perfectly now under UnRaid v6 latest beta with Xen server and pass through.