Zgemma H2S + usb dvb-t tuner or H7S

DopeTech

Hi, I'm looking for some advice from someone who may have used both. Are the H2S and H7S the same spec apart from the 3rd tuner? If they are I was thinking of buying a H2S as they are much cheaper and adding a usb tuner. Maybe someone has done this before.

niallb

The boxes are years apart. The H7S is a much better bet if you plan on keeping it for a while. It will receive software updates for a longer time.
That said, the H2S was a great box and I still use one as part of a bigger setup.

Besides having a faster and more modern processor, there are these basic differences:
H2S has 2xUSB 2.0, 100Mb ethernet, 256MB flash and 512MB RAM. 1080p display

H7S has 2xUSB2.0, 1xUSB3.0, 4GB flash and 1GB RAM with up to 4K display output

USB Tuners are very hit and miss with the H2S. I have 3 or 4 of them and only one works reliably without overheating.
The H7S also has space for an internal hard drive if you want to add one.

Johnboy1951

I have often wondered why I cannot buy a Zgemma with 2xDVB-S and 2xDVB-T tuners.

I now have a Zgemma H5.2TC with 2xDVB-T and 1xDVB-S tuners and also a H.2S for the extra DVB-S tuners.

I got the H.2S as a discarded, no longer used, device (was a dodgy box) and bought the H5.2TC used, from the UK.

I had used a couple of DVB-T USB tuners but thought the purchase of the H5.2TC for stability was worth the cost.

niallb

I've got a fairly decent USB tuner working with the zgemma H2S!

It's the xbox tv tuner (€15 from CeX at the time) and the magic sauce was:

 opkg install enigma2-plugin-drivers-dvb-usb-dib0700

Thinking seriously of replacing my tuner backend with it.

Firmware is OpenATV 6.4 with kernel version 4.10.12

Minisatip was available out of the box too with the following.

opkg install minisatip

Johnboy1951

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119200216#Comment_119200216

Yeas I have done similar with the H2S ... using a Afatech 9015 and also an RTL2832.

Unfortunately the H2S could not seem to manage both tuners at the same time.

I had first tried 2 x RTL2832 USB tuners and had the same result --- one tuner OK.

The best tuner I have tried is the TBS PCIe dual card. Rock solid.

Unfortunately it requires a PC and I have been trying to avoid that .... but I was glad to have it available recently when things went a bit pear shaped on me. 😀

EDIT:

Those RTL2832 devices also do SDR and AM & FM on the desktop with the right software.

I have not used them recently as such because of lack of aerial at the PC.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/radio-receiver/miieomcelenidlleokajkghmifldohpo

niallb

Hi there! Hope you're doing well.

The USB bus on the H2S isn't likely to manage two tuners at the same time unfortunately. Have you ever used afa9015 while also using USB attached storage?

I'm only going to work with it as a satip server which should be fine. I've got a DVB-T hat on a raspberry pi which works well too, so could have two tuners on the network if they were necessary.

I'm pleased to get the xbox tuner going because I never got an Afa 9015 or 9013 to work reliably longterm. They get very hot too. The XBox tuner is on a very long tail which makes cooling easier to manage if it runs anyway warm after a while.

RTL2832 based dongle do work well alright, but I've better things to be doing with an SDR than leaving it plugged into a box in the attic! I have a 6" meat skewer on a plug which gives me surprisingly good 433MHz reception.

Johnboy1951

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119209649#Comment_119209649

Hi, glad to see you are still enjoying fiddling with this stuff 😁

No, I have not used a USB stick and USB tuner at once but can well believe the limitations now having failed to get two tuners working.

I really did not think there would be any trouble with the USB capacity - I thought it was due to a CPU lack of power.

Last night I tried the TBS card in a couple of i3 Lenovo SFF PCs, but was surprised when the card was not seen at all. It was as if the PCIe sockets were disabled. They weren't.

I abandoned that again and went back to the old P4 PC which runs Libreelec perfectly.

The difference, besides physical size, is that the P4 consumes about 100W while the smaller devices run about 5 to 10W max. So I am attempting to figure out how to get good solid reception while at the same time use low power. The card consumes about 9W in use.

Great fun! By the time I figure it out it will be time to change to some other form of system. hehehehehe

Johnboy1951

I set up a Zegmma H5.2TC today.

I was unhappy with minisatip. It appeared to be inconsistent, and when it was running there was a limit to the number of channels that could be viewed.

So I changed to satpi ..... did a short set of tests.

It was nice that satpi set itself up (no need for file editing).

I played 7 channels across the two Saorview muxes for about 30 mins without any problems so have joined it into the system for real-world evaluation.

So far it appears that switching channels is not as quick as previously - but not unacceptable.

I set up the DVB-S tuner also but do not need that in the system with the Digibit so left it unconnected.

This is my first experience of satpi so will be watching it for problems.