DVB-T2 HD Reception Success Story (1 Viewer)

Ere Maijala

Portal Member
April 25, 2013
34
16
47
Home Country
Finland Finland
Hi All,

since there hasn't been so much talk about DVB-T2 especially using a cheap USB stick receiver, I decided to try it out and write about my experiences. My starting point was a working single-seat MediaPortal installation with three cheap RealTek RTL2832 based DVB-T dongles. Windows identifies these as DK DVBT DONGLE, VID_1D19, PID_1101. They use RTL2832UBDA.sys and RTL2832UUSB.sys drivers. These sticks have been rock-solid, which is something I can't say about a couple of others I've tried (Elgato EyeTV Hybrid and TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Dual RC. I couldn't get the EyeTV hybrid to have good reception at all with Windows even though it worked fine on a MacBook Pro. The Terratec was fine otherwise, but it disappeared from the system at worst once a day requiring it to be unplugged before it would work again (I did miss quite a few recordings because of that).

Anyway, after looking around I decided to order a generic DVB-T2 receiver that seems to be sold by a number of sellers (e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281166739271). There was no information whether it would work with Windows 8.1 and Finnish DVB-T2 broadcasts, but I found a Russian forum discussion and a link to updated drivers. There was even a mention that the manufacturer had worked with the Russian folks to resolve some issues with

About three weeks later I got the package, installed the latest drivers (nice to see a budget card with up-to-date drivers) and went on to search for the HD channels. First stumbling block was that the information of the new mux wasn't in MediaPortal's database. I found that the mid frequency was 586 MHz, but entering 586000 in TV Service's advanced options turned up nothing. I decided to try and search for all known Finnish frequencies, and it found the channels at 586125 KHz or something close to that. I couldn't get good reception, though. There were a couple of discontinuities per second, and the image and sound were stuttering. I added an antenna amplifier where the cable comes in, and it improved the signal level and quality. It's still not completely free of discontinuities, but it doesn't affect the perceived quality of reception anymore. This just shows that HD reception over DVB-T2 is a lot pickier with the signal quality than SD reception via DVB-T.

One more tweak I had to do is up the time TV Service waits for the channel to tune. I had it at 2 seconds, but sometimes it seems to take a bit more than that, which caused "No signal" errors. So far fast channel zapping's not there, but that's not a problem for me.

I'm running both MediaPortal TV Service and Client on an old Laptop with AMD Turion RM-70 (2 GHz) and Mobility Radeon HD 3400. I was a bit skeptical if it would handle HD channels well (it can't handle HD with Flash or SilverLight players well), but the LAV decoders seem to do a great job and utilize DXVA+ which makes it work really smoothly with less than 50% CPU utilization for most of the time. I haven't tried any image enhancements available in the LAV codec.

--Ere
 

mm1352000

Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 1, 2008
    21,577
    8,224
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    Hi Ere

    Interesting - thanks for the report. :)
    I have an RTL2832U based tuner as well, and can confirm it is quite reliable:
    http://digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/Dabby.html

    ...and I have some TBS DVB-T2 tuners which are also able to receive DVB-T2 here in NZ. Unfortunately all the channels are encrypted (Irdeto cloaked CA - no smartcard :( ) so I can't say much more than that... but I confirm good signal quality is important.

    mm
     

    Owlsroost

    Retired Team Member
  • Premium Supporter
  • October 28, 2008
    5,540
    5,038
    Cambridge
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    Anyway, after looking around I decided to order a generic DVB-T2 receiver that seems to be sold by a number of sellers (e.g. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/281166739271).

    I've been playing with one of those sticks recently in my test system (on UK Freeview HD) - I agree it works well with MP but DVB-T2 tuning is slow (needs a 3s timeout allowance). Otherwise it seems to be as good as the PCTV 290e I have on my main HTPC at 1/3 of the price.....:)

    There's some info on the hardware here - http://blog.palosaari.fi/2013/10/naked-hardware-14-dvb-t2-usb-tv-stick.html
     

    Ere Maijala

    Portal Member
    April 25, 2013
    34
    16
    47
    Home Country
    Finland Finland
    ...and I have some TBS DVB-T2 tuners which are also able to receive DVB-T2 here in NZ. Unfortunately all the channels are encrypted (Irdeto cloaked CA - no smartcard :( ) so I can't say much more than that... but I confirm good signal quality is important.

    Here we only recently (last month, as far as I know) got the first unencrypted HD channels from the Finnish national public service broadcasting company available via UHF and the typical towers the antennas point to. Unfortunately the most popular commercial free-to-view SD channels only have subscriptions available for their HD counterparts, but I hope that in the future HD will become a basic service..

    --Ere
     

    PLAzmA

    New Member
    May 9, 2014
    4
    0
    44
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    I have exactly the same RTL based dvb-t2 stick, however after trying everything, full scans, partial scans etc etc, media portial was unable to find and HD channels with it (only sd), WMC does find them and works fine....

    I was using the latest driver...

    Sadly as nice as the new MP interface is im stuck with WMC for the time being if i want any HD reception.

    Hopefully this is something that can be resolved some how.
     

    PLAzmA

    New Member
    May 9, 2014
    4
    0
    44
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    Sadly ive wiped drive and blown a wmc image back, however i did manually confirm the sutton coldfield uk xml had the right frequency in there, but it also didnt work when i tried a full all regions scan.

    One thing i did consider was the width was 8 on all the xml files, where as a site i found with the transponder width was something like 32ke 40.xxmb however as others report it works for them i doubt its that.

    I would say its due weak signal, but i dont have any issue in wmc with the channels.

    http://www.ukfree.tv/txdetail.php?a=SK113003
    https://github.com/MediaPortal/MediaPortal-1/blob/master/TvEngine3/TVLibrary/TVServer.Base/TuningParameters/dvbt/UK.Sutton Coldfield.xml

    The transponders with hd are all 256qam where as all the sd are 64qam, its like the scan just ignored the 256qam. Looking at the xml you will see the correct frequencies are in there.
     
    Last edited:

    Jasmeet_181

    Portal Pro
    September 5, 2007
    421
    344
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    I also bought one of these sticks after reading Ere's post (different seller though) and had the same problem as you PLAzmA. In the end I removed the updated drivers and tried the ones on the supplied CD, which found the HD channels. I also had to set the tuning timeout to 4 seconds to view them.
     

    PLAzmA

    New Member
    May 9, 2014
    4
    0
    44
    Home Country
    Great Britain (UK) Great Britain (UK)
    The cd that came with mine had driver version 140105 (01/2014) the latest build is 140216 (02/2014), the strange thing is wmc scans and works fine with the later dba driver..?!?!

    What version do you have?
     

    Jasmeet_181

    Portal Pro
    September 5, 2007
    421
    344
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    My disc has 140105 as well, since it worked and I mainly use satellite, I didn't look into it an further. The old driver is available here if anyone else needs it.
     
    Last edited:

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom