TBS5580 - Third time's the charm?

[ancient]

After the failures with the TBS6910SE and the TBS6903X, I tried a USB connected tuner, specifically the TBS5580. Same dish, same LNB, connected to the same Tvheadend backend, but this time it appears to be working with no signs of the "interference" that plagued the TBX6903X. Unlike the USB model it replaced (the TBS5520se), the TBS5580 comes with a 12 volt power supply and input jack. Therefore, it is not dependent on the USB connection for power (which was apparently an issue with earlier models). Anyway, Tvheadend was able to recognize it (see my first post at TBS 6903-X Professional with Tvheadend: Success! to see the settings I used).

If you already have TBS cards and you are running Tvheadend in Linux, you probably use the /etc/modprobe.d/dvb.conf file to specify tuner order so your tuners don't appear in random places on each reboot. To make the 5580 appear as the last tuner, you can put a line in that file such as "options dvb_usb_tbs5580 adapter_nr=tunernumber" where "tunernumber" is a number that is one number higher than the tuners you already have.

One complaint I have heard for years about the USB connected tuners is that they get hot in operation, and this sometimes leads to premature failure. This unit was no exception, after a few minutes of use it was very warm to the touch. So I now have it basically sitting on top of a PC case fan using a plastic bracket that came out of something, don't ask because it is kind of a weird contraption made with available parts and zip ties, but the point is that with the pc fan underneath it blowing cool air up onto the case it stays cool to the touch. If you have a 3D printer and the design skills you could probably design a much more suitable plastic bracket to hold the device and fan, but recycling an existing plastic bracket isn't a bad thing either. The fan is connected to a "wall wart" 12 volt DC power supply that I happened to have lying around (sometimes there are benefits to being a bit of a pack rat). This may not be strictly necessary but on the other hand it can't hurt, and I feel better knowing the electronics in this thing aren't cooking themselves to a premature death.

I have only used this tuner for about an hour and a half of actual recording, but in that time I saw no errors. None. Zero. In that amount of time the TBS6903X would have thrown thousands of errors. The downside of the 5580 is that for those of us in North America there is only one useable tuner (in parts of the word that use DVB-T or ISDB-T as the terrestial TV standard then you also get a tuner for that and can even use a CI card because there is a slot for that, but I am not sure how many places in the world have both DVB-S2X satellite signals and one of those two formats for local TV). Obviously I could not test the other tuner because there is nothing to receive here. At some point I hope TBS can support support ATSC3 but that is a whole other big can of worms.

I wish this forum allowed you to make edits to posts at a later date rather than having to create entirely new posts, because I am a little reluctantant to say this tuner is an unequivocal success after being burned by the TBS6903X (and it really seems strange that the more expensive card failed when this one appears to succeed). However, early tests appear very encouraging. If you don't see any followup posts to this one, that means that I haven't run into any problems with the TBS5580. And I really hope I don't have to make any followup posts to this one!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

You can change your post for a limited time. However after that time goes by then they can no longer be edited.

The reason for that is for two reasons...

1) We had some members who would post bad information acting like they were experts and then after when they figured out what they posted was wrong they would come back and edit their posts making it seem like they were right all along.

2) SatelliteGuys is a time machine with 20+ years of history. Some folks in the past decided they didn't want their posts here anymore and would go in and delete all their text, making the timeline of history hard to follow. As our user agreement says all posts become property of SatelliteGuys and this is to keep the history in tact. Users have asked us in the past to remove their posts, to which we have declined. However we have instead offered to change their username on their posts so they are not longer attributed to "them" and again this is to keep the order of history alive.

Lets hope that Tuner serves you well. Thanks for reporting on it.

 

[ancient]

You can change your post for a limited time. However after that time goes by then they can no longer be edited.

The reason for that is for two reasons...

1) We had some members who would post bad information acting like they were experts and then after when they figured out what they posted was wrong they would come back and edit their posts making it seem like they were right all along.

2) SatelliteGuys is a time machine with 20+ years of history. Some folks in the past decided they didn't want their posts here anymore and would go in and delete all their text, making the timeline of history hard to follow. As our user agreement says all posts become property of SatelliteGuys and this is to keep the history in tact. Users have asked us in the past to remove their posts, to which we have declined. However we have instead offered to change their username on their posts so they are not longer attributed to "them" and again this is to keep the order of history alive.

Lets hope that Tuner serves you well. Thanks for reporting on it.

Okay, Scott, I understand your reasoning, however I will say this is not the norm - most other forums let you go back an edit posts even after quite some time. As for removing bad information in posts, I would attribute that to a sincere desire to remove bad information, not to make the member seem like an expert. I don't think of myself as an expert at all, but if I have inadvertently put out bad information (or just made a dumb spelling error) I would like to be able to come back and fix it. My previous thread about the TBS6903X was a perfect example - at first it appeared that card would be a solution until I actually figured out how bad it was at receiving a DVB-S2X signal. But I couldn't alter my original post, and I couldn't even fix the topic title to remove the word "Success" which is clearly misleading because in the end it was not a success at all.

I don't post that often anyway, but I have to say that the inability to edit posts makes me more reluctant to post. The older I get the more I have "brain farts" and make dumb spelling mistakes, or refer to something by the wrong model number or something of that nature, and it would be great to have at least a few days to catch and fix those things. As the saying goes, "don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity", or in this case, the lessened ability of aging minds to get things completely right the first time.