HD Channel Stuttering & Freezing Problems After Installing Additional 2nd Tuner Card (1 Viewer)

[mm1352000]

TBS channel B (at dish)=1.6Vdc. i.e. Not working!

If possible you should check if there is a short circuit between the inner core and the outer braid/sheath in that cable. Voltage should be either 12-14V (linear vertical or circular right) or 17-19V (linear horizontal or circular left) depending on the polarisation of the tuned transponder. Voltage may be lower if the tuner is not active (ie. not tuned to any transponder).

You should be very careful not to short circuit the cable when testing the voltage too. Any short circuiting runs the risk of irreversibly damaging the tuner's power supply, which is the same thing that can happen when changing cables if you don't turn the computer and STBs off first.

 

[RobAtBentley]

If possible you should check if there is a short circuit between the inner core and the outer braid/sheath in that cable.

I swapped the cables over at the back of the TBS and the problem stayed with the B channel. i.e. Channel A successfully scanned with good Signal Level and Quality. Channel B did not! i.e. The problem didn't follow the potential "bad" cable

I suggest we go back to my original problem and setup with TBS-A and the Cinergy card to see what the problem is there. ...despite it producing the pixilating problem. My concern with investigating the TBS-A & B only setup is that I think that the TBS6981 card is faulty in some way and I beleive we'd get more mileage out of resolving the Cinergy/TBS combination issue.

Current setup (see attached "TV Server Configuration" screen-shot):
Enabled Cinergy single channel.
Disabled TBS channel B
Set Number of IPTV cards from 1 to 2

Any suggestions?

EDIT: I'm re-scanning using the TBS-A channel which, hopefully, will give me good channel data and lock so that I can use this data on the Cinergy channel. I believe that the Cinergy card is the weaker of the two and should not be used for channel scanning. Let you know how I get on.

 

[mm1352000]

I swapped the cables over at the back of the TBS and the problem stayed with the B channel. i.e. Channel A successfully scanned with good Signal Level and Quality. Channel B did not! i.e. The problem didn't follow the potential "bad" cable

Right, that pretty much confirms it: tuner B is no good. Whether it was faulty to begin with or the power supply was killed by a short circuit at some point we can't tell now. But the critical thing is that you can now eliminate it (and know to be careful with your other tuners).

I suggest we go back to my original problem and setup with TBS-A and the Cinergy card to see what the problem is there. ...despite it producing the pixilating problem. My concern with investigating the TBS-A & B only setup is that I think that the TBS6981 card is faulty in some way and I beleive we'd get more mileage out of resolving the Cinergy/TBS combination issue.

Yeah, no problem. The reason I wanted to deal with the TBS issue first was (a) to eliminate whether you had a signal or tuner issue and (b) to establish one tuner as a reference tuner that we know works. From experience, it is really hard to try to deal with an interaction issue if you haven't got the two tuners behaving consistently by themselves. Now that we have that we can move on.

Current setup (see attached "TV Server Configuration" screen-shot):

That's fine.

Set Number of IPTV cards from 1 to 2

By the way, you know that this setting only affects internet/IPTV streaming, right? In other words, it has no effect on your satellite tuners whatsoever.

Any suggestions?

Yeah, this is what I would do.
1. Delete all channels.
2. Ensure "enable DVB-S2 scanning/tuning..." is ticked for both the TBS and TerraTec tuner.
3. Click "update satellite list".
4. Rescan with the TBS tuner.
5. Capture log files.
6. Map the channels to the Cinergy rather than scanning. This saves time and also enables you to check that the Cinergy can receive all channels that the TBS tuner can.
7. Reproduce the problem in the way that you were doing it before (eg. 2 x recordings on different transponders, or recording + timeshifting on different transponders etc.).
8. Capture log files.
9. Post both sets of log files and describe how you reproduced the problem - channels + dates/times.

Regards,
mm

 

[RobAtBentley]

Done as per your instructions. However, it now seems to working as it should. i.e.

• I can now record 2 channels at the same time
• Both recordings looked good.
• Attempted to view a 3rd channel and received the expected message "No spare tuners"
• Cancelled both recordings.
• Attempted to view some HD channels that were previously a problem, but now seemed to be okay.
• Repeated the above with good results.

...but I'll need more time to double-check my full list of UK FreeSat channels.

Good news that it "seems" to be working but "not so good" in the sense I don't know why it "seems" to be fixed. Anyway, I've attached the log-files that you requested hoping that you can shed some light as to why it now seems to be working okay

EDIT: Missing a few channels from the re-scan; some don't start broadcasting until 7pm (e.g. BBC Four HD & BBC Three HD) so will do a re-scan after 7pm. ...but others (e.g. ITV2+1 & ITV4+1) should be available now but weren't found.
EDIT: Scanned after 7pm to fix the lack of BBC three and four HD channels. Still no ITV2+1, ITV4+1 and many of the unencrypted Sky channels such as Movies4Men, Horse & Country etc.

By the way, you know that this setting only affects internet/IPTV streaming, right? In other words, it has no effect on your satellite tuners whatsoever.

No, didn't know that. Don't know where I got my interpretation from!!