I have a strange problem with my Nova-TD Stick (USB ID 2040:9580). A couple of months ago, I rebuilt my antenna setup and replaced all the cables, the amplifier and splitter by high-quality versions, and since then all the other cards (one Nova-T 500 and one Nova-T Stick) have gotten much improved signal quality. But for some reason, the Nova-TD Stick won't lock. MythTV claims 100% signal strength but doesn't achieve a lock. Since I really don't *need* the TD tuners (I got the TD before I got the "simple" T stick and before there was any hint of any Linux drivers for it, and three tuners really "ought to be enough for anybody[tm]"), I was content with leaving the TD stick unconnected. Yesterday, however, my system crashed again (due to i2c errors), and I went to work updating the box to the latest (F7) kernel, updated the hg tree and recompiled all the dvb drivers (haven't seen any i2c errors since then, btw -- Yay!). Just for the fun of it, I plugged in the TD stick to see if the situation had improved. It hadn't. I tested using the MythTV suggestions; use tzap -r to set it to streaming, and cat > video.mpg. tzap claims it gets a lock, but I receive no data from the stick. The tzap output looks like this: # tzap -r -a 4 'TV6' using '/dev/dvb/adapter4/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter4/demux0' tuning to 642000000 Hz video pid 0x0437, audio pid 0x0436 status 0a | signal ffff | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | status 1a | signal ffff | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1a | signal ffff | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1a | signal ffff | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1a | signal ffff | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK Being a bit careless, I accidentally left the cat and tzap running while unplugging the device from the amplifier. Lo and behold, the signal level dropped, and it started feeding data into the mpg file. Only temporarily while the cable was aimed in the "wrong" direction, but yet -- the dvr0 device actually generated data! Once I completely disconnected the signal cable, the signal dropped down to 0 (pretty much expected): # tzap -r -a 4 'TV6' using '/dev/dvb/adapter4/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter4/demux0' tuning to 642000000 Hz video pid 0x0437, audio pid 0x0436 status 00 | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | status 00 | signal 0000 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000000 | Interesting, I thought. So I dug out the little "mobile" antenna that comes with the stick. I didn't expect to get anything working, but with that antenna I *do* get a lock even though the signal strength and quality for that is *much* worse than through the active antenna and high-quality amplifier. MythTV can tune, claiming ~20-40% signal quality (depending on which multiplex I tune to). The picture works just fine, and tzap is displaying something in between the two outputs above: # tzap -r -a 4 'TV6' using '/dev/dvb/adapter4/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter4/demux0' tuning to 642000000 Hz video pid 0x0437, audio pid 0x0436 status 07 | signal 6343 | snr 0000 | ber 001fffff | unc 00000046 | status 1f | signal 634f | snr 0000 | ber 000002b0 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal 634b | snr 0000 | ber 00000220 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal 6358 | snr 0000 | ber 00000290 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK status 1f | signal 634e | snr 0000 | ber 00000420 | unc 00000000 | FE_HAS_LOCK Conclusion: The Nova-TD stick doesn't like when the signal is too strong. Is there anything in the driver code that makes this happen? I'm thinking perhaps noone ever thought of receiving a 'ffff' value for the signal strength and use that as a kind of error signal? Stranger things have happened... ;) Antenna Signal Data feed ------- ------ --------- None 0% No data Passive 38% Data Active 100% No data Active + Amp 100% No data Does anybody have any idea of how to get the TD stick operational with its antennas fed from a strong signal? I've tried everything I could think of... // J _______________________________________________ linux-dvb mailing list linux-dvb@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-dvb
