Digital USB 2.0 DVB-T HDTV TV Tuner Recorder & Receiver

Johnboy1951

bk109 wrote: »

You might want check this thread out - http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=53928
I have to admit,I had forgotten that you were talking about VLC in Linux,so it was a bit more 'involved' than Windows (Though it's not as it used to be only 4-5 years ago).

I guess the variations in output are the reason it is 'experimental'.

Btw,I'd recommend trying out MythTV as a better alternative to VLC,because I've heard that it's a bit more efficient in processing HDTV live streams on the fly than VLC (maybe it's a better VDPAU implementation)

I will try installing MythTV ..... have not looked at it for some years as really have no need of such a setup here.

Strange thing is that in VLC I get broken up picture and perfect sound, while in Kaffeine I get perfect picture and no sound.
So it seems I am right on the edge of it working ..... just a bit short ... and the two packages most likely prioritise the streams differently.

Thanks for the pointers

bk109

About the sound issues with Kaffeine - can you check if you've got libxine-extracodecs installed, because I remember reading a couple of months back that this library was usually the culprit. As for MythTV, i was thinking more in the lines of a LiveCD just to see if it's working better than a stock *buntu

It BeeMee

I bought mine on Dealextreme

Slightly dearer at apx €13 but has the advantage of being able to plug a normal coax aerial in without need for an adapter.

Johnboy1951

bk109 wrote: »

About the sound issues with Kaffeine - can you check if you've got libxine-extracodecs installed, because I remember reading a couple of months back that this library was usually the culprit. As for MythTV, i was thinking more in the lines of a LiveCD just to see if it's working better than a stock *buntu

There is no difficulty with codecs ...... the same install duplicated on another machine works perfectly.

Kaffeine will produce sound for a few seconds and then it gets dropped in favour of the video processing.
VLC will drop video frames in favour of producing the sound stream.

I got MythTV installed, but have a problem presently with the backend server ...... so its not functioning yet. So I do not know if it will be lighter on resources than the other players I tried - yet.

regards.

Johnboy1951

Just to finish up this .... MythTV did not help unfortunately.
I got the backend problem sorted but still had a problem.

New Motherboard & CPU is called for

vibe666

It BeeMee wrote: »

I bought mine on Dealextreme

Slightly dearer at apx €13 but has the advantage of being able to plug a normal coax aerial in without need for an adapter.

the ones i bought already had a little coax adapter with them.

bk109

vibe666 wrote: »

the ones i bought already had a little coax adapter with them.

That's awesome,especially if you are in an area with bad coverage,though in some areas (like S.Dublin) even the crappy antenna provides 100% signal strength and if you find them cheap,you can really get creative (I got me a second dongle + WMC remote for like 7Eur)

goodgood

bondja80 wrote: »

I bought dvb-t usb stick just without the remote for 5$ (3,90e) with free shipping on site dhgate.com. Works ok, only I could not register the software blazedtv 2.0 although I had serial key on cd which I got with item. So that I could not run the software.

After I downloaded blazedtv 6.0 from internet trial version and now is working, only hamper the image. I don't know why is that? Maybe because I do not have installed any codec pack in my computer.
What do you think?



Here is site where I bought: http://www.dhgate.com/wholesale-2-0-usb-dvb-t-tv-stick-digital/p-ff808081292a016701294941dccb7beb.html

Thank you for your introduction, I was looking for this thing

elsparko

anyone know if there is any way to keep the dongle powered constantly? sick of switching from my dvb-s channels and having to wait for the usb dongle to power up and the blue signla light to kick in before i can watch any of the saorview channels.

corcaigh07

It BeeMee wrote: »

I bought mine on Dealextreme

Slightly dearer at apx €13 but has the advantage of being able to plug a normal coax aerial in without need for an adapter.

you dont have to use the crappy aerial provided, do you? my tv/monitor can pick up the mpeg2 and normal analogue signal no prob already....

m4r10

corcaigh07 wrote: »

you dont have to use the crappy aerial provided, do you? my tv/monitor can pick up the mpeg2 and normal analogue signal no prob already....

No, you don't have to, but the tuner which some us us bought initially came with a special type of connector for the aerial, the one posted on dealextreme is with a regular connector which allows you to hook it up to your existing aerial.

Do-more

bk109 wrote: »

Sorry to jump in,but it might be an issue with the codecs you're using? My Compaq is working good with RTE2(HD) with this cheap DVB-T stick and an integrated Radeon HD3200 Video with the CPU staying most of the time at 550Mhz(Cool'n'quiet enabled) while watching and recording in Windows 7's Media Center.
Edit: The problem might be that your GPU isn't offloading the HD processing ? May I ask what are your basic specs - Video/Ram/Processor?

Amazed!

Ordered this from the buyincoins link above last Wednesday the 11th. and it arrived in today's post postmarked from Singapore, I wasn't expecting to get it for another month at least!

Hopefully I can get it to work now!

pavyx1991

hi all im new to this but i also have been using the tv tuner and love it but the thing was i couldn't get much of a signal where i am in limerick so .i went at the tv tuner to try increase the signal. so i found a way that really worked and help a lot without haveing to buy and extra antenna or anything..
i used the antenna that comes with the tv tuner ..where the magnet is it can come off..witch shows where the wire meets the antenna.
what i did was i got a bit of lose wire rolled it up in a ball and placed it in the bottom of the antenna..after i closed it up and plugged it to the tv tuner and i got a blue light to come on and stay on.
if ye want to try this plz do this at your own risk thanks and hope it help!!


bottom of the antenna


ball of wire!


thank you fore looking!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64205339@N02/5845271963/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64205339@N02/5845823428/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/64205339@N02/5845271217/in/photostream/

AntiRip

Just got one of these today (BuyInCoins) and when I do a scan on either BlazeTV or WMC I get 17 channels (Test Channels/Future Services) including just RTE News Now and Radio Stations.

No RTE 1, 2, TV3, etc.

Any suggestions?

bk109

Ouch.Aside from probably using a bigger antenna or something,I don't know what much you can do,BUT if you get the the second multiplex,this means that maybe there's just some sort of temporary outage 'round you. (Still depends on which transmitter and from how far you're trying to get,because even though I'm using the craptastic included antennas I get good signal off Three Rock even without a clear line of sight on it @10 kms)

AntiRip

bk109 wrote: »

Ouch.Aside from probably using a bigger antenna or something,I don't know what much you can do,BUT if you get the the second multiplex,this means that maybe there's just some sort of temporary outage 'round you. (Still depends on which transmitter and from how far you're trying to get,because even though I'm using the craptastic included antennas I get good signal off Three Rock even without a clear line of sight on it @10 kms)

I'm probably the same distance from Cnoc An Oir (Kerry). Can see the mountain from my window (clear line of sight). Don't know, strange. I'll rescan later.

Johnboy1951

AntiRip wrote: »

Just got one of these today (BuyInCoins) and when I do a scan on either BlazeTV or WMC I get 17 channels (Test Channels/Future Services) including just RTE News Now and Radio Stations.

No RTE 1, 2, TV3, etc.

Any suggestions?

That would appear to be the output from testing the second mux if I understand what I read about the content.

You need to use the first mux to get the present full channel listing.

.... or so it seems to me ..... but as Maghera has not fired up any content on mux 2 I cannot confirm.

lindtee

Got one of the buyincoins one this morning and for most of the day thought I had a dud, however lots of handfuls of hair later it finally scanned in the channels on Windows media centre on my laptop, the reception is a bit iffy at best though..I think I live in some sort of black spot area even though according to mpeg4ireland there is a transmitter in my area.

My new problem is that I actually want to get it working on my acer revo which has Ubuntu OS which is connected to the telly in my bedroom, but I am having big problems in doing so. Now it has to be said I have tried lots of different things whilst really not knowing what I'm doing:o If anyone has successfully got it working on Ubuntu could they post a link to an idiots guide to getting it working please. Thanks in advance:)

bk109

lindtee wrote: »

Got one of the buyincoins one this morning and for most of the day thought I had a dud, however lots of handfuls of hair later it finally scanned in the channels on Windows media centre on my laptop, the reception is a bit iffy at best though..I think I live in some sort of black spot area even though according to mpeg4ireland there is a transmitter in my area.

My new problem is that I actually want to get it working on my acer revo which has Ubuntu OS which is connected to the telly in my bedroom, but I am having big problems in doing so. Now it has to be said I have tried lots of different things whilst really not knowing what I'm doing:o If anyone has successfully got it working on Ubuntu could they post a link to an idiots guide to getting it working please. Thanks in advance:)

Good luck with that - I did manage to run it on 'buntu (both in MythTV and Kaffeine),but there are some rather annoying issues - ie loss of sound when watching RTE2(HD). That and it really taxes your hardware compared to WMC. In my case to get decent enough playback in 'buntu I have to leave the CPU on on-demand (and it doesn't drop much below 100% @2.2Gigs ) whereas I can watch HD and record a second channel in WMC with the cpu locked to 1100MHz which is still more than sufficient.

Ah,for the record which version of 'buntu you're using,because I think in 10.10 and before there were some issues with the driver

Still,you might be lucky with better video drivers(compared to the ATI ones),but frankly I'd still use 7 on a HTPC instead of a 'buntu flavour

Johnboy1951

lindtee wrote: »

Got one of the buyincoins one this morning and for most of the day thought I had a dud, however lots of handfuls of hair later it finally scanned in the channels on Windows media centre on my laptop, the reception is a bit iffy at best though..I think I live in some sort of black spot area even though according to mpeg4ireland there is a transmitter in my area.

My new problem is that I actually want to get it working on my acer revo which has Ubuntu OS which is connected to the telly in my bedroom, but I am having big problems in doing so. Now it has to be said I have tried lots of different things whilst really not knowing what I'm doing:o If anyone has successfully got it working on Ubuntu could they post a link to an idiots guide to getting it working please. Thanks in advance:)

You need to know the tuner number as well as the device type.
You may need a fairly recent kernel, and a firmware file .... again depending on the tuner and device.

Johnboy1951

bk109 wrote: »

Good luck with that - I did manage to run it on 'buntu (both in MythTV and Kaffeine),but there are some rather annoying issues - ie loss of sound when watching RTE2(HD). That and it really taxes your hardware compared to WMC. In my case to get decent enough playback in 'buntu I have to leave the CPU on on-demand (and it doesn't drop much below 100% @2.2Gigs ) whereas I can watch HD and record a second channel in WMC with the cpu locked to 1100MHz which is still more than sufficient.

An interesting observation.
Is that a multicore CPU?

My 3.2Ghz P4 is not able for the HD content of RTE 2.
Kaffeine will drop the sound completely, while VLC will drop video frames.

I *guess* the difference you observe could be due to the (in)efficiency of the decoder ....

regards.

bk109

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

An interesting observation.
Is that a multicore CPU?

My 3.2Ghz P4 is not able for the HD content of RTE 2.
Kaffeine will drop the sound completely, while VLC will drop video frames.

I *guess* the difference you observe could be due to the (in)efficiency of the decoder ....

regards.

A 2.2GHz RM-74 dual-core,yeah. Plus the thing is not really supposed to use that much CPU power in the first place on account of UVD offloading it to the GPU,but I'm fairly certain that isn't happening in 'buntu. (That + the regression of the battery efficiency with the latest kernel's the reason why I've reverted to using 7 almost-full time on my laptop)

musiknonstop

I used these instructions to get dvb-t working on Ubuntu 11.04 on a netbook.

http://www.mpeg4ireland.com/saorview-dtt-linux

It all works fine apart from RTE2 HD which is too processor intensive for the netbook.

Also, Ubuntu detected the dbt-t stick and setup the drivers. I got the original tuner posted by the OP (ie not buyincoins one)

bk109

musiknonstop wrote: »

I used these instructions to get dvb-t working on Ubuntu 11.04 on a netbook.

http://www.mpeg4ireland.com/saorview-dtt-linux

It all works fine apart from RTE2 HD which is too processor intensive for the netbook.

Also, Ubuntu detected the dbt-t stick and setup the drivers. I got the original tuner posted by the OP (ie not buyincoins one)

Ooh,this would've been really useful back when I was installing 10.10 But in all seriousness,the Revo is essentially a netbook itself and RTE2 is probably one of the most watched channels(even with Freesat/Cable),so lindtee might be better off if he tried W7 on the HTPC(provided he has enough space.. if he has the 8gig SSD.. ouchie). Best choice'd be a multi-boot so if it does work noticeably better he can migrate painlessly on the Windozer... If there's no improvement,he just loses 30-40 gigs of HD-space for a couple of days

For the record,he still should try to see if the 9400M he has in the Revo offloads video decoding off the CPU before trying out w7

Do-more

bk109 wrote: »

Ooh,this would've been really useful back when I was installing 10.10 But in all seriousness,the Revo is essentially a netbook itself and RTE2 is probably one of the most watched channels(even with Freesat/Cable),so lindtee might be better off if he tried W7 on the HTPC(provided he has enough space.. if he has the 8gig SSD.. ouchie). Best choice'd be a multi-boot so if it does work noticeably better he can migrate painlessly on the Windozer... If there's no improvement,he just loses 30-40 gigs of HD-space for a couple of days

For the record,he still should try to see if the 9400M he has in the Revo offloads video decoding off the CPU before trying out w7

lindtee

Its Ubuntu 10.04, the revo has very low specs so it probably won't work properly anyway:( But thanks for the help and pointers. Think I'll just connect my laptop to the TV when I feel need to watch Soarview as this is much too complicated for me:o The Revo doesn't recognise the tuner at all so the instructions from mpeg4ireland were no good to me.

(Thanks Do-more for pointing out those errors btw;))

Johnboy1951

lindtee wrote: »

Its Ubuntu 10.04, the revo has very low specs so it probably won't work properly anyway:( But thanks for the help and pointers. Think I'll just connect my laptop to the TV when I feel need to watch Soarview as this is much too complicated for me:o The Revo doesn't recognise the tuner at all so the instructions from mpeg4ireland were no good to me.

(Thanks Do-more for pointing out those errors btw;))

Immediately after plugging in the tuner stick, in a console do

dmesg

and the last lot of lines (maybe 10+) should show details of the device.

Those details can be used to set it up.

lindtee

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Immediately after plugging in the tuner stick, in a console do

dmesg

and the last lot of lines (maybe 10+) should show details of the device.

Those details can be used to set it up.

Do I type that in the terminal? Thanks. (as I said I'm a bit clueless:o)

AntiRip

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

That would appear to be the output from testing the second mux if I understand what I read about the content.

You need to use the first mux to get the present full channel listing.

.... or so it seems to me ..... but as Maghera has not fired up any content on mux 2 I cannot confirm.

Any idea how I do this in BlazeTV or WMC? I just see an option for scan channels?

thanks

Johnboy1951

yes in a terminal .... this is what I get on the last lines .... bear in mind this is a working device so the tuner is recognised etc .... but you should get some info that will be useful to set up your device.

dvb-usb: found a 'Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
dvb-usb: found a 'Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick)
af9013: firmware version:4.95.0.0
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Afatech AF9013 DVB-T)...
tda18218: NXP TDA18218HN successfully identified.
Registered IR keymap rc-empty
input: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2.3/rc/rc1/input9
rc1: IR-receiver inside an USB DVB receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2.3/rc/rc1
dvb-usb: schedule remote query interval to 500 msecs.
dvb-usb: Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick successfully initialized and connected.
Afatech DVB-T 2: Fixing fullspeed to highspeed interval: 10 -> 7
input: Afatech DVB-T 2 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb1/1-2/1-2.3/1-2.3:1.1/input/input10
generic-usb 0003:15A4:9016.0006: input,hidraw3: USB HID v1.01 Keyboard [Afatech DVB-T 2] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-2.3/input1