Linux Kaffeine + SkyStar2

[colbec]

I'm a bit puzzled by scanning results in Kaffeine (SuSe 10.1, Kaffeine 0.7.1).

SS2 card works fine, and all satellites I am scanning work well with Coolsat.

I have a number of fixed dishes that I can feed into this box, but the only sat. that works as expected is AMC-5. On nearly all the satellites and transponders I can get close to 100% signal strength, but the SNR value for all but AMC-5 hangs around 44%, AMC-5 itself gets 54% and finds channels.

The Coolsat sees very strong signals from AMC-6, SS2 sees the strength but not the SNR, very odd.

I'm reckoning this is a signal to noise ratio issue, looks like if SS2 does not get over 50% SNR then it will not register any channels. Anyone else with experience with this kind of setup?

 

[oncewaslost]

Colbec,

Was you ever able to get kaffeine to tune other sats?

I messed with it some today. SS2 with TinyMe. I only set up G16. I don't even remember how the two status bars were labeled, but they both were hitting over 80% and easily got the five channels I was looking for. I spent the rest of my time getting TinyMe to auto log in and automatically launch kaffeine. Then I tore it back down so I could put the card back in my main HTPC. I am going to look into the possibility of using XMLTV epg with kaffeine. If I can do that, I will consider giving the SS2 a new home.

 

[colbec]

No, but I am still working on it. I compiled the latest stable kernel into my box the other day so that I could see if my 103G card behaves differently. I left both the SS2 and the 103G in the box, the kernel got both of them but kaffeine sees only one card. Things are never straightforward, are they?

Good that you got strong signals, it is something for me to work towards.

 

[colbec]

FWIW I did some more work with the 103G in Linux with the following results:

I now have the latest kernel 2.6.24-default and Kaffeine 0.8.6 with the latest xine. With only the 103G installed in the box the kernel picks up a TV card but no DVB card. I think there are two detectable chips on this board and it looks as though only the TV display side is detected. The TV card shows up in Kaffeine but of course no DVB-S.

Edit: So I removed the 103G and put back my SS2 which was detected as before, adapter0. Then I added the 103G again and now I have adapter0 *and* adapter1, both visible in Kaffeine. Now the 103G is correctly identified as a DVB-S, not a TV card. Very odd. But then this card has given me identification issues before.

 

[oncewaslost]

Sound a lot like my experience with a twinhan 1025 with linux. All except the part about getting it to work

 

[colbec]

A bit more progress to report:

1. Both cards are now happily detected on each reboot of the linux box
2. Even though Yast detects the 103G as a TV card and the SS2 as a DVB card, they both appear in Kaffeine as DVB devices
3. Some tuning problems were solved by installing and using my own TP freq-pol-SR-FEC files. Since these are different from TT *.ini files I created my own database application to read an export from Channel Master and write out the necessary TP files for Kaffeine. The defaults from a Kaffeine install are not very helpful and the situation is not improved by using the download updates in Kaffeine.
4. I can now get at least some channels from most sats. But not as many as with a standalone box or the same cards in ProgDVB.

For anyone who tries to follow this same path, here is my output from

# dmesg | grep DVB

DVB: registering new adapter (FlexCop Digital TV device)
DVB: registering frontend 0 (ST STV0299 DVB-S)...
b2c2-flexcop: initialization of 'Sky2PC/SkyStar 2 DVB-S' at the 'PCI' bus controlled by a 'FlexCopIIb' complete
cx88[0]: subsystem: 14f1:0084, board: Geniatech DVB-S [card=52,autodetected]
cx88[0]/2: subsystem: 14f1:0084, board: Geniatech DVB-S [card=52]
cx88[0]/2: cx2388x based DVB/ATSC card
DVB: registering new adapter (cx88[0])
DVB: registering frontend 1 (Conexant CX24123/CX24109)...

Scanning results:
AMC 6 - not good, strong signal but SNR ~ 44%
AMC 5 - better, usually can get the NYN channels
G13 - Hot! strong signal and SNR
G10R - channels seen but lots of pixellation, not watchable
AMC 3 - poor, no channels
NSS 806 - moderate, some channels but lots missing compared to standalone box; some channels weak on standalone box are strong on the cards
Hispasat - Hot! 97% signal and 97% SNR on lots of channels, my smallest dish.

Next will be to try to resolve why some TPs are so hard to get. Maybe a poor lnb or there is some frequency adjustment to be made.