3rd Party Tuner Support

  • hello


    so unfortunate from you DMM guys that you dont pay attention to NA customers


    anyway, the actual DM800x tuner does not support Turbo-Fec 8PSK and Turbo-Fec QPSK which are used by both Dish network and BellExpressView for their HD channels


    therefore DM800s becomes useless and cant get those HD channels


    there is a genpix tuner called Skywalker-1 that can tune those 2 modulations and many other, it's usb tuner and designed to be a DVB-S card


    Genpix tried to develop beta drivers, he succeeded but the channels are almost unwatchable, with high cpu usage and stuttering image followed by sound desynchronization


    here is his last statement about the situation:





    i think it's in your benefit to help us out, people will not buy a DM HD receiver if they will not get HD channels, if you add support or you make the tuner architecture open source, NA FTA market will go towards DM


    Im pertty sure If Euro went 8psk, the driver would be available in minutes...LOL :grinning_squinting_face:




    Thx and i hope i will get an answer

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von anis_ber ()

  • The first versions suffered from huge amount of CPU used due to a issue with vtuner driver. Polling the driver always immediately returned, even if no new data is available. This should be solved with latest DM800 driver. Please check your source for POLLIN. POLLPRI should be used insted to avoid the load issue.


    Do you know if this tuner is sold in europe, too? This is the first usb DVB-S2 device know to work with DM-800. Very cool news :smiling_face:


    EDIT:
    I don't belive that DMM will fullfill the request for the source code (I'd be happy too, to have it). Most of the information they get from vendors to develop the drivers are only available with an NDA signed.


    Regards


    Roland

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von rmie ()


  • Genpix Skywalker-1 is sold only in NA (USA and Canada)


    the tuner works with dm800x but with a lot of issues


    i dont understand POLLIN and POLLPRI, maybe Genpix will understand since he is the one who designed the driver


    BTW i invited him and many others to join this threat


    I hope DMM will say something :kissing_face:

  • Zitat

    i dont understand POLLIN and POLLPRI, maybe Genpix will understand since he is the one who designed the driver


    It's not really a question of the driver. When you have a working linux driver for that USB Tuner so it gets detected and usable, you can use my latest usbtuner binary to use the vTUNER stuff that is supported on dm800 and dm8000 boxes and link that USBTuner to the vTuner Device. Then the tuner will be fully supported by enigma and can get used like a normal tuner.


    My USBTUNER binary transfers data from usbtuner and controls the usbtuner and writes all data into the vtuner device. With the latest fix regarding pollin/pollpri and my latest usbtuner binary from 16/06/2009 it shouldn't have a high CPU Load anymore. I have a CPU Load of ~10% when using my USB Tuner connected to my DM800 ... I have basicly no problems here, the only problem is that I have a USB 1.1 Tuner which has not enough bandwidth for channels with a higher bitrate and I am limited to 5-6Mbit ...


    Here the latest vTuner / USBTuner binary that I am using. You need latest drivers for it ... *.c sourcecode included ...

  • that's what was said regarding your binary by genpix




    Zitat

    usbtuner is not a driver.
    It's a pump (sends stream from user memory space into kernel memory space).
    And this pump would use most of CPU time (exactly as gp does).
    You still need a working driver for your USB DVB-s card to be able to use this pump.

    I invited you to join the NA forum by pm, i hope you will be in soon so you help us out


    thx


  • With the latest fix regarding pollin/pollpri and my latest usbtuner binary from 16/06/2009 it shouldn't have a high CPU Load anymore. I have a CPU Load of ~10% when using my USB Tuner connected to my DM800 ...

    thanks for the POLLPRI hint.
    I'll modify my pump and see how things go.

    Do you know if this tuner is sold in europe, too? This is the first usb DVB-S2 device know to work with DM-800. Very cool news :smiling_face:

    SkyWalker-1 does not support DVB-S2, unfortunately.
    It supports DVB-s and 7 other modulation/fec flavors, but not DVB-S2.
    It's USB 2.0 card, btw.


    I wrote first beta driver for DM with my own version of the pump (nearly identical to USBtuner) a while back. But did not have time to follow up. Hopefully, things are much better now :smiling_face:

  • short question:
    is new vTuner (with POLLPRI) already included into any of recent public DM800 images?
    or do I need to compile my own?

  • Yes, it's part of all recent experimental builds for dm800, and will be used for all new release candidates (and releases) too.


    The reason why we are not supporting 8PSK is simply that available hardware so far was either limited to 8PSK *or* DVB-S2. We'll see if that changes in the future. Of course we are interested in supporting the NA market, but the european market remains our priority for now, simply because we know the requirements of this market. That doesn't mean that we don't want to support the NA market, it just means that we have to carefully look at those markets to see what kind of requirements they have, and if our hardware and software is able to support that.


    Regarding the vtuner-interface, this is still in beta-phase, thus we are not officially supporting it. In case anyone has problems with it, feel free to write me a mail, but it's not yet a feature that is mature enough that it will be supported officially.

  • Yes, it's part of all recent experimental builds for dm800, and will be used for all new release candidates (and releases) too.


    The reason why we are not supporting 8PSK is simply that available hardware so far was either limited to 8PSK *or* DVB-S2. We'll see if that changes in the future. Of course we are interested in supporting the NA market, but the european market remains our priority for now, simply because we know the requirements of this market. That doesn't mean that we don't want to support the NA market, it just means that we have to carefully look at those markets to see what kind of requirements they have, and if our hardware and software is able to support that.


    Regarding the vtuner-interface, this is still in beta-phase, thus we are not officially supporting it. In case anyone has problems with it, feel free to write me a mail, but it's not yet a feature that is mature enough that it will be supported officially.

    thanks a lot for the quick OFFICIAL answer
    I see, i hope that you will think of NA DM users in the futur and make a new hardware special for NA DVB-S tuners supporting Turbo-fec, like you are doing for DVB-C and DVB-T, actually all FTA receivers on the NA do so
    Now everything turns HD and unfortunately DM800HD are not up-to-date
    please report this request to the business and management department, at least they will know we exist :grinning_squinting_face:
    otherwise, we will have to stick with vTuner even though it's in beta state, i hope you will add your support to be final soon


    thx a lot

  • Zitat

    usbtuner is not a driver.
    It's a pump (sends stream from user memory space into kernel memory space).
    And this pump would use most of CPU time (exactly as gp does).
    You still need a working driver for your USB DVB-s card to be able to use this pump.


    I've never said it's a driver. Indeed it's just a pump to write data from one device to the other.


    But it works fine and I don't see any bigger problems with wasting 10-15% CPU Ressources. Indeed there are better ways without using userspace and directly writing into kernel stuff, but for now that vTuner method works very fine for me, even when streaming HD Channels via LAN from my other dreambox. CPU load was never above 15%, while it used up to 90% without the PollIn/PollPri fix.


    Indeed wasting 15% of CPU Ressources isn't the best, specially if you have to use that tuner as a primary tuner (I only use it as 2nd tuner) but for now it's simply not possible on another way and it's doesn't ruin your project in any way, you just need ~15% CPU Ressources. So you can't say that it's not working at all. The more important thing is that it works! I have a stable and good picture, without any errors or outages, just have to make sure the bitrate is not above the USB 1.1 bandwidth. With a USB 2.0 it should work very well here on my box, I am pretty sure. Because I tested that stuff also with TunerSharing via LAN from another dreambox and there I don't have any problems with bandwidth and no errors in audio/video stream when bitrate too high. Even HD Streams work fine most of the time without any errors, and there is still some way to make it better and use caching and buffers for stream data to work better on LAN or in my case a terrible W-LAN.


    So instead wasting your time with the 15% CPU Load, you should focus on the other stuff and get your tuner working like my USB 1.1 Tuner here. And live with the loss of 15% CPU Ressources for some more time ...

    Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiß, aber nichts funktioniert.
    Praxis ist, wenn alles funktioniert aber niemand weiß warum.


  • hello again


    thx for the contribution


    Genpix has just released a new gp pump and gess what, it is kinda working much much better now according to some genpix SW-1 users with 30 - 40% of CPU though, here are some feedbacks




    Zitat

    Looks like the new gp pump is running much, much better now. Before I couldnt watch HDTHR (the dreambox would hang if I did anything, like access the web interface). It is now much improve that I could navigate through all the menues without the DB freezing on me, including the webinterface.






    Zitat

    to tell you the truth I'm not sure. I havent done anything, that I know of, that would cause 3 intances of enigma2 running.


    Also for the new gp pump, ive seen it go low as 26% and high as 44%. I've havent got a single freeze.

    BTW is it normal to have 3 instances of enigma2 runing at the same time?


    i hope you will join the NA forum i sent you by pm to see more feedbacks


    thx

  • Sounds good :smiling_face: Not sure why CPU load is higher then here, might be the USB 2.0 Tuner using more bandwidth, or the driver from that tuner uses more ressources. Or your "GP pump" is using more ressources then my usbtuner pump.


    Have you guys already tried my usbtuner file? It should work with other tuners too, as long as it can be found under /dev/dvb/adapter1/***

    Theorie ist, wenn man alles weiß, aber nichts funktioniert.
    Praxis ist, wenn alles funktioniert aber niemand weiß warum.

  • Sounds good :smiling_face: Not sure why CPU load is higher then here, might be the USB 2.0 Tuner using more bandwidth, or the driver from that tuner uses more ressources. Or your "GP pump" is using more ressources then my usbtuner pump.


    Have you guys already tried my usbtuner file? It should work with other tuners too, as long as it can be found under /dev/dvb/adapter1/***


    i dont own a sw-1, but others do


    i would ask you again to join our NA forum so you can see it yourself, no one of SW-1 users are registered here so i cant report everything here, that's why your presence in the other forum is more than helpful for good communication


    thanks a lot

  • anis_ber,
    it's a very bad idea to post here quotes from other forums in the way you present them:
    you quote someone's answer to the question which you don't mention at all.
    That's why these quotes sometimes look "stupid" (as if the person you are citing has no idea what he is talking about).


    please refrain from doing so, or quote the original question as well.

  • anis_ber,
    it's a very bad idea to post here quotes from other forums in the way you present them:
    you quote someone's answer to the question which you don't mention at all.
    That's why these quotes sometimes look "stupid" (as if the person you are citing has no idea what he is talking about).


    please refrain from doing so, or quote the original question as well.


    Sorry but just tried to help


    actuallt i didnt post quotes that are answers, they are in statments about some facts


    sorry just tried to help, at least my method worked to speed up the work :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

  • Sounds good :smiling_face: Not sure why CPU load is higher then here, might be the USB 2.0 Tuner using more bandwidth, or the driver from that tuner uses more ressources. Or your "GP pump" is using more ressources then my usbtuner pump.

    these 26-44% CPU loads are on 40mbit transport streams. Genpix driver does not filter packets, it passes entire transport stream to vTuner.
    GP pump is nearly identical to your USBtuner pump now.
    There are couple of changes specific to genpix device + different size of the buffer, I use 188kB instead of your 1MB (which should not affect CPU load at all).
    I don't have my DM800 connected to my network right now (and I'm not home). I'll try to play with different settings for the buffer when I get home, but I don't expect any magic.


    btw, Genpix driver is based on the driver which is already in the recent linux kernels (I had to do some "downgrades" to accommodate semaphore functions implemented by "old" kernel used in DM800). Its performance or resource use is identical to all dvb-usb drivers. Thus, I don't expect any resource hogs here.

  • actuallt i didnt post quotes that are answers, they are in statments about some facts

    check the post #5 in this thread.
    You quoted me (from another thread).
    It was an answer to your own question "Anyone has tested this new drivers with Genpix SW-1?"


    And I answered you: "USBtuner is not a driver". It was not directed to Homey's work at all (as it sounds from your post).


    But other people here did not know that, and reacted to your post differently.


    PS: I did not change anything in genpix driver, it's still the same (as I released it several months ago).

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von genpix ()


  • if you read your quote, it really looks like a statement not an answer


    you figure it out because you were the one concerned


    anyway, I'm sorry again

  • if you read your quote, it really looks like a statement not an answer

    I tell you more: I wrote it. Who can know better what it was ?!
    This was an answer, and this was an answer to your incorrect question.
    I tried to explain you why you were wrong.


    When you quoted me here, you omitted original question.
    Without it, Homey understood that as a comment addressed to him (or his usbtuner).


    Do you see my point?


    2 Homey:
    Sorry for this mess. It was never my intention to correct/doubt you.
    And I'm very thankful to you for pointing out the most recent vTuner driver changes in DM800 (different polling algorithm), which I was not aware off.

  • i gor it, now i completely understand what happened
    wasnt intended guys
    sorry again