[mythtvnz] Satellite tuner recommendations please

[Austin Green]

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for all the helpful info.

On Mon, 23 May 2016 23:02:29 +1200
Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:

> On Mon, 23 May 2016 17:03:34 +1200, you wrote:
> >I currently have two TeVii S421 DVB-S tuner cards, which suffer
> >from a couple of problems:
> >(1) They seem to be not very sensitive, in that my Freeview box
> >can tune all stations with no trouble, but the cards are a bit
> >iffy on some channels.
> >(2) They are supposed to work with the 3.13 kernel under Trisquel,
> >an Ubuntu-derived Linux distro, but they don't.  They work on the
> >same hardware under Debian Wheezy, using the Liplianin drivers and
> >an older kernel (3.2, I think).
> >
> >I would like to know if anyone can recommend anything better.
> >Need something that:
> >* Works with stock 3.13 kernel
> >* Is reasonably sensitive
> >* Available in NZ
> >* Not too outrageously expensive
> 
> What sort of card are you looking for?  The S421s are PCI, and PCI
> tuner cards are not very easy to find now.

I have PCIe slots too.

> Nor are DVB-S2 tuners as
> generally available in NZ as they used to be, let alone Linux
> compatible ones, so you may have to buy directly from overseas.

Fine; can get 2 units of TBS 6902 from the site you mentioned,
around $250 including shipping. That will allow recording from
all three Freeview transponders simultaneously.

> I have a TeVii S470 PCIe DVB-S2 tuner, and a TBS 5922 USB DVB-S2
> tuner.  Both work OK, but for the TBS one you need to compile the TBS
> drivers as it is not supported in kernel.

I'll give compiling a try before I buy any hardware; the Liplianin
drivers won't compile for my current kernel, so if the TBS ones will,
that'll do me.

> They have a large selection, including USB as well:
>   http://www.tbsdvb.com

Link didn't work ... 'server not found'

> While looking at my options, I ran across the Vbox Ethernet tuners.
> They are now supported in MythTV (certainly in 0.28, but possibly also
> in 0.27).  Their web site sells to NZ, and they have dual tuner DVB-S2
> and combined DVB-S2/DVB-T models:

Interesting, but we sometimes like to record many channels at once,
and the VBox ones appear to be limited to two.