[mythtvnz] SkyStar 2 DVB-S card failing to load after 20.04 upgrade

[Stephen Worthington]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2021 13:17:01 +1300, you wrote:

>
>>> I finally remembered the TBS6909 has 4 aerial inputs and requires creating a modprobe conf file to set the card to use the single aerial input #3 across all the tuners.
>
>I have a TBS6904, and wondering if it has a similar feature?  Presently using a 4-way splitter, which works OK but the cabling is a bit cumbersome.  It would be nice to be able to do away with the splitter.

No such luck, I'm afraid.  If it was using the same technology as the
TBS6909, it would only have two inputs, one for each pair of tuners.
So you are stuck with having a splitter.

The TBS6909 seems to have a low noise amplifier on its aerial inputs,
and it is able to change the level of amplification depending on how
many tuners it is feeding from each aerial input, so that each tuner
gets the same signal level as arrived on the input.  This is a really
great innovation, but TBS only seem to put it on the cards with
greater than 4 tuners on the card.  The 8 tuner cards are expensive,
so I am guessing that the new tech is also expensive and might price
them out of being able to sell the smaller cards if they used it
there.

Apart from wanting at least 5 tuners, this new tech requiring just one
aerial input was what prompted me to get an 8 tuner TBS6909, and then
an 8 tuner TBS6209 DVB-T2 card also, despite the prices.  I was able
to buy both on decently reduced "special" prices, so that they came
into NZ under the then GST limits, by just a few dollars.  So anyone
who wants one should look out for TBS to be advertising specials,
which seems to happen twice a year.  The special prices are sometimes
from their main store, but sometimes only from their Chinese ebay
store.