[mythtvnz] LIRC and mySKY / Pace TDS850NNZ

Thu Sep 28 11:01:01 BST 2017

On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 22:04:58 +1300, you wrote:

>> On 28/09/2017, at 21:13, Stephen Worthington <stephen_agent at jsw.gen.nz> wrote:
>> 
>> The new decoders are Kaon boxes and the standard MySky boxes seem to
>> now just be the same hardware but with your card programmed to tell
>> the box to be able to record.  The new decoders seem to be programmed
>> to use the same remotes as old MySky boxes.  I am not sure what a
>> MySky HDi uses though.
>
>It doesn't work with the spare old Sky remote I have, so I know its not the RC-30.
>
>
>>  I seem to remember someone was reporting
>> success with a new decoder using some MySky tables they found
>> somewhere.  So if you can find that post, those tables might work for
>> you too.
>> 
>
>Ive found mention of a data sheet for an IR repeater here:
>
>https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=106&topicid=199099
>
>but the PDF isnt available anymore, and its not in the Wayback Machine.
>
>
>
>> But I really think you should be changing completely how you record
>> from Sky.  The new boxes seem to only have a composite video output
>> that you can record from, which gives terrible quality.
>
>This Pace TDS850N has HDMI, Component, and SCART. Ive currently got a SCART to Component running to a Hauppage HD PVR. The DSR2000 has SCART so Ive just plugged in this new decoder in its place, we havent got the HD Ticket from Sky, so its adequate for the moment.

SCART should have S-Video out, so converting that to component is not
so bad - composite is just terrible.

>>  And using an
>> IR blaster to change channels is always problematic - it does just
>> fail sometimes for no particular reason.  If, however, you get a card
>> reader and put your Sky card in that, then use Oscam to talk to the
>> card, you can set up MythTV to record digitally as many channels as
>> you like via DVB-S2 tuners.  I am currently set up to record as many
>> as 5 channels at once, and 10 channels when the recordings overlap on
>> the same channel (I have a TBS6909 8 tuner DVB-S2 card).  I have
>> minisatip running my DVB-S2 tuners and talking to Oscam to do the
>> decoding, then I have my Sky channels defined in MythTV as IPTV
>> channels using SAT>IP (RTSP) protocol, recording from minisatip.  It
>> is much more reliable than I ever achieved using my old decoder and IR
>> blaster - just as good as my DVB-T recordings.  And the picture
>> quality is so much better than I got with S-Video and my PVR-500 card.
>
>That should be the way to go. I do actually have a Phoenix/Smartmouse Card Reader but Ive never tried it.  Is it likely to be an appropriate reader?

Yes, Phoenix protocol card readers should just work.  I have an
Omnikey 3121 reader, which uses the PCSD drivers, but just works once
you follow the install instructions.  I think Phoenix readers either
use RS-232 (for the old ones), or a USB RS-232 interface (newer ones).
So if yours is an old one, you will need an RS-232 port on your PC to
connect it, or need to buy a USB RS-232 converter.  The new ones
should create a new RS-232 interface to talk to when they are plugged
into a USB port.  There is plenty of documentation on the net about
how to set them up.  Then install a recent Oscam and see if it can see
your card.  You will need to know the boxid of your MySky box to
configure Oscam - in my new decoder it is available buried down in the
System menu somewhere.  Without the boxid value, Oscam crashes when
trying to read the newer Sky cards.  Since Oscam clearly can not read
the boxid from the card, it may be that any boxid value will work,
rather than just the correct one, but I have never tried that.

>The new decoder has the 2 tone blue card from https://skytv.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/831/~/how-do-i-find-my-smart-card-number%3F

I am not sure if that card is supported, but since you already have
the card reader, you should just try it and find out.

>What distro are you using currently?  Was there anything extra you had to do to get the TBS6909 supported? (like you did with the TBS 9522) 

I am using Mythbuntu 16.04.3 with MythTV 0.28 at present.  I also have
a test PC running Mythbuntu 16.04.3 and MythTV v29.  Both work with
Oscam and the TBS cards.  You do still have to compile the drivers to
support the TBS6909 (and my new TBS6209 8 tuner DVB-T2 card).  But the
drivers for them are open source ones based on the backport kernel
multimedia drivers, so there is hope that at some point they will get
merged into the kernel.  These new drivers also support my TBS9522,
but do not do the automatic DVB-S to DVB-S2 switching that the old TBS
drivers did.  That switching was never in the Linux DVB standard and
is now deprecated.  However, I did find that the backport drivers
caused my old Hauppauge PVR-500 card's drivers to crash on boot, where
the standard kernel drivers worked fine with the PVR-500.  That driver
crash caused systemd to get confused and fail to shut down the PC
correctly - I had to use Alt-PrintScrn-RESUB to shut down.  Since I
was no longer using the PVR-500, I just removed it.  But it is
possible that if you have other old tuner cards, they might have
driver problems with the new drivers.

As a bounus, the way Sky does its HD tickets is not via the
encryption.  So recording directly via DVB-S2 allows you access to the
HD versions of all the channels you have a subscription for, without
having to pay for an HD ticket.