OTHER TBS6902 vs TBS6983

[ZetaMale]

Should I buy the "professional" TBS6983 or TBS6902? Big difference in price and capabilities. But can I take advantage of the enhanced capabilities of the TBS6983? I'm not sure if I should buy the more expensive model. I'm looking to get something that does 16apsk. The lack of linux based blindscan software concerns me but I don't see anything else out there that would convince me to buy some other brand. I may have to brush up on my C programming and try to build my own linux based blindscan software - programming is very time consuming so I'm reluctant to do it so I guess I'll just have to live with whatever is provided by the vendor.

 

[Titanium]

The 6983 is no longer in production and I understand was replaced with the 6903.

Like buying a base vs performance car. The card choice depends on what you what to receive. Think of the 6902 having the equivalent of regular STB in capabilities. The 6903 would add reception of the Music Choice channels and IP based programming. Multiple transport and generic stream services are becoming more frequent.

 

[ancient]

I will just say this much. I know of someone who tried to receive 16APSK using a consumer-grade TBS card, specifically a TBS6905, and failed completely. Then he tried a TBS6903 and had no problems other than the usual one of the signal turning to crap for no apparent reason every now and then, typically worse on the weekend. Some people have claimed that they've got a consumer grade card to work with those signals but I think they must either have huge dishes, or they are sacrificing goats under a full moon while uttering the incantation, "Galaxy, come to me" in ancient Sumerian, or something like that. Just kidding of course, but I think your chances would be much better with the professional grade card, particularly if your dish is 10 feet or less in diameter, and honestly unless you have at least a 10 foot dish I don't think you have much hope anyway.

 

[ancient]

The lack of linux based blindscan software concerns me but I don't see anything else out there that would convince me to buy some other brand. I may have to brush up on my C programming and try to build my own linux based blindscan software - programming is very time consuming so I'm reluctant to do it so I guess I'll just have to live with whatever is provided by the vendor.

I wanted to respond to this separately. I really wish you or someone would create this and make it work on systems that do not have a desktop, such as the server-only editions of Debian or Ubuntu, but make it VERY user friendly. I've heard that there are a limited set of tools out there now, but they either require a the installation of a desktop, which you really don't want if you're just running a server such as TVHeadEnd, or they use arcane options that have to be invoked on the command line and therefore they sort of work, but maybe only ten people in the world have ever figured out how to use them effectively. The big problem with such programs is they need documentation with actual examples showing how to use them, and not just man pages designed for programmers that scare off normal users. In other words, pretend you're writing it for a Windows user, just make it run on Linux.

IDEALLY it should detect your tuners and ask which you want to use, then ask whether it's C or Ku band (maybe with an option to specify a local oscillator frequency if not one of the standard ones), and then ask if there's a DiSEqC switch present and if so, which DiSEqC position to use, and maybe do the same for a 22kHz tone switch. Then it should just blind scan the tuner and show the results, then offer to print them to a text file. Make it simple for the user. Of course if you wanted to get fancy you could have a minimal GUI that runs from the command line (similar to Midnight Commander or some configuration utilities), but that's not really necessary if you don't feel like putting in that much effort.

This would be really great if you could do it and were willing to share the result. Just saying...

 

[dem0nlord]

I wanted to respond to this separately. I really wish you or someone would create this and make it work on systems that do not have a desktop, such as the server-only editions of Debian or Ubuntu, but make it VERY user friendly. I've heard that there are a limited set of tools out there now, but they either require a the installation of a desktop, which you really don't want if you're just running a server such as TVHeadEnd,

Not really. X has been client/server since its inception in the 80s. I don't have an X server installed in my tvheadend box, in fact it doesn't even have a monitor. Just install an X server on whatever remote device you want to use for display, then when running X clients on your Tvheadend box have DISPLAY configured for the system with the X server. Your X client(nowadays some may call it an application) will be running on the Tvheadend box, but remotely displayed on whatever you install an X server onto. Free X servers can be had for about anything, I have them on Windows and Android. In the photo you can see that I am using a Windows notebook, but have X clients displayed on it.