Digital Devices Cine S2 v6.5 review

[updatelee]

Digital Devices just sent me a Cine S2 v6.5 to play around with. Im pretty impressed, its a really nice card. Its not the cheapest card out there but seems very well built and is the most expandable card on the market. Its a dual tuner card that has the option to plug in 6 more tuners all on the same bus !

Here is the dmesg from it loading.

Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.436292] Digital Devices PCIE bridge driver, Copyright (C) 2010-11 Digital Devices GmbH
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.436359] DDBridge driver detected: Digital Devices Cine S2 V6.5 DVB adapter
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.436371] HW 0001000d FW 00010004
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.437190] Port 0 (TAB 1): DUAL DVB-S2
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.437676] Port 1 (TAB 2): NO MODULE
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.438169] Port 2 (TAB 3): NO MODULE
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.438658] Port 3 (TAB 4): NO MODULE
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.438773] DVB: registering new adapter (DDBridge)
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.440652] stv090x_attach: Create New Internal Structure!
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.440654] stv090x_setup: Initializing STV0900
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.473974] stv090x_setup: Setting up initial values
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.547711] stv090x_setup: Setting up Cut 2.0 initial values
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.597949] stv090x_attach: Attaching STV0900 demodulator(1) Cut=0x30
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.598256] LNBx2x attached on addr=a
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.600122] stv6110x_attach: Attaching STV6110x
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.600127] attach tuner input 0 adr 60
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.600134] DDBridge 0000:01:00.0: DVB: registering adapter 13 frontend 0 (STV090x Multistandard)...
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.600307] DVB: registering new adapter (DDBridge)
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.600680] stv090x_attach: Found Internal Structure!
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.649978] stv090x_attach: Attaching STV0900 demodulator(2) Cut=0x30
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.650280] LNBx2x attached on addr=8
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.650287] stv6110x_attach: Attaching STV6110x
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.650289] attach tuner input 1 adr 63
Oct 11 09:31:21 DVB kernel: [150464.650293] DDBridge 0000:01:00.0: DVB: registering adapter 14 frontend 0 (STV090x Multistandard)...

You'll notice is uses the cut 0x30 stv090x demod, and that there is two of them, its actually two cards in one. two different adapters.

You can see in the screencap the

TBS6925 stv090x cut 0x30 advanced
Skystar 2 Express HD stv090x cut 0x30 consumer
Digital Devices Cine S2 v6.5 stv090x cut 0x30 consumer
Prof 8000 stv090x cut 0x20 consumer

All three cut 0x30 have no issue locking and maintaining lock throughout modulation changes. the cut 0x20 loose lock with every modulation change and has a very high pretty much unusable ber.

The DD Cine S2 v6.5 has the same tuner (stb6110A) tuner as the Skystar 2 Express HD. This tuner is a little faster than the stv6100. Both devices complete a spectrum scan in 1.2sec. The TBS6925 (stb6100) completes a spectrum scan in 2.1sec.

If you only need one card, the Skystar 2 Express HD is definitely my first choice as it can be purchased for around $80. If you need multiple tuners, ie upto 8! then nothing beats this card, the retail for this card (dual tuner) is aprox $240, dual tuner add on cards (S2, C2, T2, etc) are aprox $210 each.

I cant say how this card works in Windows, only Linux.

UDL

 

[ancient]

Just by coincidence, I saw another reference to these cards earlier this week and went to their site and had a look, and the method they have for adding additional tuners seems quite interesting. Are they actually offering their cards for sale in the USA now?

Is there any need to install any special drivers to make the Digital Devices cards work and if there is, what's involved in the installation? With TBS cards you have to build the drivers, which would not be a big deal if you only have to do it once, but I'm never sure whether I'd have to do it again if I accept a Linux kernel update. It would be great to have cards that don't require building drivers, either because they work with drivers already present in Linux or because they have a ppa that you can add to your sources list to get driver updates automatically. I wish TBS would offer something like that, but not holding my breath.

How do the Digital Devices cards compare in receiving marginal channels? Any chance those with mini-BUDs would receive more usable signals?

Honestly, as nice as their cards look, my initial reaction is that I'd love to have one but not that that price, especially when you can buy a TBS quad tuner card for right around the same price as their dual tuner card. If their cards are significantly better at receiving weak and low-quality signals then perhaps they might be worth it, but my guess is they are going to have a hard time breaking into the market in this part of the world until they can bring that price down considerably, all else being equal.

 

[updatelee]

This card is supported by the mainline Linux kernel. If you use my kernel you'll gain additional functionality like spectrum scan, IQ plot, improved blindscan, etc.

I only compared this tuner to other stv090x devices. Its performance is equal to all that I tested as you can see in the screen cap, the SNR is identical, the ber was the same as all the other cards when testing below threshold signals. Here is a screen cap of weaker signal tp. My app doesnt average, if it did you'd see the SNR and ber are all pretty much identical. Something Ive noticed but havent had much chance to test is that cut 0x30 seem to handle weak S2 a little better then cut 0x20. There are a few good choices for cut 0x30, the TBS6925 (expensive, but advanced model demod) and the Skystar 2 Express HD and TBS 5980 as well.

I only have one non stv090x device, the Genpix Skywalker-1, and its not as good as weak signal reception, so no point testing it.

I would like to try one of the new montage based tuner/demod setups, but havent bought one yet. I only got this one because I was given it by Digital Devices. Its a pretty niche market device, someone running tvheaded could really setup a huge tuner system with one of these. The ability to stream 8 transponders worth of data over a network is pretty amazing. Not many people doing that though.

Im quite excited to try out the new stv091x demod, Digital Devices and TBS both have products in the works.

UDL

 

[ancient]

This card is supported by the mainline Linux kernel. If you use my kernel you'll gain additional functionality like spectrum scan, IQ plot, improved blindscan, etc.

Your kernel? Don't know about that one. Web page?

I would like to try one of the new montage based tuner/demod setups, but havent bought one yet. I only got this one because I was given it by Digital Devices. Its a pretty niche market device, someone running tvheaded could really setup a huge tuner system with one of these. The ability to stream 8 transponders worth of data over a network is pretty amazing. Not many people doing that though.

It is amazing, no doubt, but my understanding is that essentially the same thing could be accomplished with two TBS6985 cards, at maybe half the cost. Only drawback is that the motherboard would have to have two available PCIe slots in that scenario. If the Digital Devices cards had some huge advantage over the TBS cards, that would be something in their favor, but from what you are saying I'm not seeing anything that warrants that much of a price disparity.

Im quite excited to try out the new stv091x demod, Digital Devices and TBS both have products in the works.

Sounds interesting. When you get your hands on one I'm sure everyone will want to hear your findings.

Thanks for the review!

 

[updatelee]

My kernel can be found at https://bitbucket.org/updatelee/v4l-updatelee/

The TBS6985 has many reported issues with TS discontinuities, I have never used one, so cant comment to how true it is. Most of the cards I have experience with are ST demod/tuners. Ive always had excellent luck with them.

On the 6985 note, you can also use my kernel with the TBS6985 for a fully open source driver for it vs using TBS's closed source driver.

UDL