Thema: SmartDVB 0.2.5 RC 1

[moonchild]

Danke

[jackjavo]

hi Moonchild. From my tests cl10 and 11 work okay. For 11 you might want to stop the evr graph as sometimes on my system i still have a freeze there when not stopping evr, not with cl10 which runs best on my system at least.

[moonchild]

All is fine now with pdvd 10 clcvd.ax 1.0.0.1930 and vmr7/9. Actually just putting the .ax on my system and registering the old way made the filter unusable, i had to install the whole powerdvd trial program.

I have a Logitech diNovo mini now, and trying to make smartdvb work like htpc application (doing it all on fullscreen).

[ritschibie]

Hi moonchild,

This sounds pretty interesting! Is it too demanding from my side asking you some more details about your htpc system?

- What major parts are involved in the htpc (left aside the Logitech diNovo)?
- Is it running in the winworld or in the penguin universe?
- What kind of soft are you using on the htpc?
- Do you have a picture of it?
- Is it easy to use?

I for my side have renounced to build a htpc. My TT 3200 is running on the PC with the DVBViewer and alternatively the Smartdvb soft. In the living room I enjoy the simple comfort of a dualtuning Humax Icord and that's more than enough for my TV aspirations.

[Jürgen]

BTW, I just ran SmartDVB for several hours, and I did not find any kind of freezing issues here.

Conditions;

Signature system 1.), using the Cinergy tuner on 7Pro x64 SP1, all latest drivers and updates

ITV1 HD  on 28.2°E, 10936 V 22000, L~64%, Q=100%, true FullHD 1920x1080 50i

EVR, set to Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder (v6.1.7140.0) for all decoders, using Realtek onboard analogue stereo audio.
Don't have any DVD player software / codec bundle installed yet, just the original software for my tuner, and MS codecs resulting from some initial TV recordings playback attempts in WMP.

All AMD / ATI Video related settings are default
Screen is attached by HDMI, running at native resolution and frame rate, 1920x1080p60

BTW,
CPU load between 6 and 10 %, running at 4x 800 MHz (instead of 4x3GHz), 44W package power (instead of max. 140W), 39 - 41 °C core temp, 12cm CPU fan at 1000 RPM
System temp. 39°C (normally around 34°C)
Radeon HD 6570 temperature 76°C, passive heatpipe cooling (normally around 61°C)  
All values taken from SIW

So, the h.264 hardware decoding heats up my graphics card for 15°, and it results in an extra total system power consumption of slightly above 15 Watts (read from my fine energy cost meter), compared to DVB off.


Can't give full report on scanning behaviour yet, as I am still working on my dishes, LNBs, switches and a few of the cables.
Means, some more fine adjustment and testing to be done, specially for the critically weak England beam transponders.
My 28.2°E LNB is on a multifeed, 9° off centre on a cheap old 1m dish, last aligned several years ago...

However, I've noticed, I have to set the lock timeout to 5000 (at least), to not lose to many transponders, mainly of those with low symbol rates.
Perhaps the timings should be possible to store, tuner specific, as they may also depend on the tuner in use.
One reason is, AGC is pretty slow on my Cincergy.

Another proposal, when trying to update from NIT, and all transponders selected, this should not stop without result, if the first transponder is inactive.
Should be better to allow proceeding with the next one then.
Perhaps (full) NIT scanning should even step trough all transponders of a position, first all from existing the list, then perhaps also through the daisy chained newly found.
Reason is, on some positions, there is more than one network, and some are not linking to (all) others.
Perhaps it may be useful, to also add NIT search to the normal scan routine (optionally).
My receiver does it that way, adding an extra scan on the newly found transponders at the end.

Oh well, I've discussed most on this years ago already, like with the authors of ProgDVB and DVBsVCR2.
But (for different reasons) both are history for me now...  

On channel switching, I can also find a few seconds of initial stuttering, that's it.
  
All together, SmartDVB is great, a must-have these days.
Pretty close to perfection.
Allow me to thank you for all your effort  

Best regards

Jürgen

[moonchild]

Hi moonchild,

This sounds pretty interesting! Is it too demanding from my side asking you some more details about your htpc system?

Ohne dieses Topic zu kapern einige Antworten. Mit htpc meine ich TV, Aufnahmen gucken und Musik hoeren, Wetterberichte, Twitter und anderen Unsinn brauche ich hier nicht.

Seit vielen Jahren gebrauche ich den Pc im Arbeitszimmer um im Wohn/Schlafzimmer zu gucken. Video/Aidio Kabel gelegt und mit MT un Ati Remote Wonder gucken.

Die Hardware wechselt immer. Zur Zeit Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD 5670 (TV) und 4350, TT 3200 und hdd/ssd etc.

Da ich die Ati RW zur Zeit noch nicht mit smartdvb gebrauchen kann, bin ich jetzt mit der diNovo mini am experimentieren.

[jackjavo]

about the htpc working. Right now there is a simple osd channellist but i remember the key-shortcuts for that were not intuitive (never put that much work into the evr/vmr osd as it was always my intention to make something new after making that initially). I'll see if i can change the osd channellist shortcuts more intuitive. And also the entering of 'numbers' to change channel (ch #) is not working optimal also so will see to look at that also as to not make htpc usage too tedious. As the bugs seem to have lessened, and i also like to make new stuff, i've started work on a blindscan interface (as i have a prof7500 want to test that out a bit) using crazycats streamreader. Anyone here with blindscan cards and interested in that? If so drop me a note and i'll send a test version the coming days when testable in my eyes. I know i said i didn't want to add new functionality for the coming version, but testing is going well and i kinda promised this a while back and this blindscan interface will/should have no effect on the rest (and i also can't help myself something as this also is a hobby and i just like to see that stuff in action lol)..

@jurgen: thanks. I actually looked at this NIT updating some time ago. As some american did (forgot the name of the app atm) it's possible to get all frequencies by continually parsing the nits and updating channels where needed no scans would be necessary anymore (and sifting to the frequencies recursively i guess as you say). But left the idea as i was unsure if this would work for all providers all over the world (does work ok in america it seems), so at best it perhaps could be some backup mechanism to keep frequency lists/channels updated automagically. But with all these blindscanning cards/and software popping up i wonder it it's worth the trouble and if perhaps integrating blindscan to correctly work within smart concerning channel/frequency maintanance is the better option (most cards have no blindscan possibility ofcourse so).

[Jürgen]

Regarding NIT scanning, there are at least two position I know, that require more than one seed channel for complete results, and those are 13°E and 28.x°E.

Found out about this some years ago on experiments with DVBsVCR2, that came without transponder lists.
It seems, the situation is not better these days.
So, NIT scanning alone is not enough, just an additional option.
And as LOFs of real LNBs always will deviate and float a bit, the nominal transponder frequencies, that are read from NIT or external sources, are not supposed to be really identical with blindscan results.
For normal users, it's merely impossible to find out about each LOF deviation on his dish set precisely.
Though, this might perhaps be specified automatically by calculating from AFC values against NIT one day?

BTW, none of my computer tuners is truely blindscan capable. Nothing but dirty software tricks and limitations...

[jackjavo]

@moonchild: that ati rw remove, does that perhaps work with something like eventghost with smartdvb? It's a tool which works with various remotes and can send keystrokes or winlirc commands for example to smartdvb. I remember testing on this years ago. It's hard to configure i remember, but it's open source. There are also other commercial remote programs like girder, intelliremote of which intelli seems the easiest to setup.
I don't remember if you can create something like profiles or whatever with eventghost. If i have time i'll try to set it up sometime again (new pc) would be nice if it works to create smartdvb profiles if possible for various remotes which could be put in the forum etc..

[jackjavo]

@jurgen: i meant more like feedhunting frequencies etc, those will perhaps never be on any nit list at all, so an entire NIT based application seemed a bad choice, had a discussion at one time with some let's say american with that :-). But if it's not too much work i'll at least make some recursive nit scanning possible so let's say you select a couple of transponders for nit scanning (perhaps save that as nit selection or whatever) then nit scan these channels and the scan also scans found frequencies/polarities until finished?

Well i've been testing now, have a hardware blindscan card (prof 7500 usb card) which is supported by crazycat streamreader. Very early testing but it looks like at least you can blindscan 19.2 in about 8 minutes (not checked if list is complete or whatever yet, but looks reasonable at first sight). But you have to have hardware blindscanning capabilities supported by crazycat's blscan and streamreader.dll. And i don't even know if i have a fast blindscan card as it's the first time i'm looking at this. Your cards don't support that ofcourse so you get software blindscanning, i won't even support that :-)

jack

[Jürgen]

Astonishingly I am getting tons of feeds from NIT on 30°W Hispasat.
About 80% or more of those are inactive ATM. Few have an empty carrier, still not allowing a lock. Some carry a place holder still picture.
Means, on every full scan I am getting just a handful of changes.
And NIT is working from many regular transponders, if not all.

This is just one way a satellite system may be handled by the owner.

Compared to this, the situation on 28,x°E Astra2/Eurosat is completely different.
Had to try a bunch of transponders, before finding one carrying NIT. The only one I've found up to now is 12688 H 22000.
So, if your box or software does not know about that seed transponder, no way to search by NIT alone there.

And as I told before, on 13°E Hotbird you would need a set of seed transponders, to collect data for all networks there on.
Else your results would be target country specific, more or less.

So all together, NIT is a nice feature, but no more that some extra comfort and time savings, plus true transponder frequencies, not effected by LOF deviations.

Regarding my other tuners, the Noxon DAB(+) one misused for DVB-T won't give me any NIT here, and with my MSI digivox mini2 DVB-T stick it's the same.
My XORO HRT-7500 DVB-T STB does not even provide NIT scanning, though it's satellite brother HRS-8500/-8520 DVB-S2 does.
Makes me believe, at least German DVB-T is not supposed to use NIT. A possible good reason may be, different transponders may have different local coverage.
The HRS-8500 provides standard, NIT and blind scan. Blind scan takes quite some time, may be about half an hour, but it seems to work quite well, even for SCPC
symbol rates below 02000.
Steps of 2 to 3 MHz are used for empty gaps. but not inside of the space occupied by proven active signals. Those are jumped over.

Sad to say, the vendor does not provide any tool, to open and analyse or even edit the channel database of the HRS-8500 on a computer.
Will have to do some intense research on this occasionally, as sorting more than 2000 stations (marked as free, only) by use of the onscreen menu and normal remote controller, always one by one and step by step, is a really stupid idea...

However, on the computer we have several alternatives to make scanning and sorting easy, like by transponder lists from the internet, a small characters ready hi-res GUI, multiple selecting cut & paste, mouse controlled action...
That's one big benefit I don't want to miss.

[off-topic]
Just one thing left I am missing badly, a fast and high resolution spectrum analyser.
Suitable sat meters cost a real fortune.
But a suitable software on a small notebook with USB tuner might be really helpful (on the roof).
No need to get a PLL lock for this, just raw level values with a fine frequency stepping and perhaps a (semi) logarithmic level reading.
For me this could help a lot on LNB skew adjusting, for example, as it would be possible, to look for the pola cross talk minimum.
(Same perhaps also possible for position cross talk then.)
Just see what should not be there, between the normal transponders, and adjust for the minimum.
That would in any case be far better than going for the maximum of the sum of all signals, wanted or not...
In analogue days this was easier, like for skew we just had to tune to a transponder, set the polarisation to the wrong state, adjust for minimum picture on the TV screen, done...  
But on DVB-S this can't be done, as long before finding a minimum, you would lose the lock and get no valid readings any more.

However, for an alignment intended spectrum analyser, AGC effects could well be ignored, as we don't need absolute but relative readings (mainly).
Again, just to see what should not be there...

So I am wondering, if some DVB software could be made to work as a fast spectrum analyser, providing the 2D scale by OSD on a HD screen, refreshed every couple of seconds or manually.
Does not have to scan the whole band in one go, a (selectable) fraction covering a group of about 4 to 6 transponders would surely be enough.
[/off-topic]Or is it any possible, to get some value for unwanted signals like cross talk, from our tuners? A sum of all signal components that don't belong to the transponder tuned?

Obviously I am suffering badly, from to many ideas...  

Best regards

Jürgen

[moonchild]

Hi Jack, thanks for mentioning eventghost. I got the Remote Wonder recognized as x10 remote, and was able to map a  couple of buttons to "emulated keyboard" keys. So i should be able to assign remote keys to all keyboard keys mentioned in smartdvb's settings.ini. Alltough eventghost is not quite intiutive to use

Eventghost also came with quite a lot of plugin modules for other dvb apps. Guess those are ment to be used if the application does not work with keyboard keys?

Ati Remote wonder remote came bundled with the all-in one Wonder graphics/tv card, so there should be fast amount of 2nd hand remote's available. I have 2 spares lying around, so could sent you 1 if you are interested.

Might have run into a smartdvb bug too: Even after deleting all channels from the remote channel list, the first new channel i assign to that list is given number "4". Can i reset the counter somewhere?

[jackjavo]

Hi Jurgen. I see, i remember that other app also used seeds (one i think in .cfg) which should be configured per sat i think, so i guess that would be the way to go, or as i said making a seed selection possibile and saving this per satellite should get the most out of the nit then without too much hassle. Would be interesting to know if coverage this way is also kinda complete in europe for all sats, but in any case, i do envision some background NIT thread or whatever then which automagically keeps updating your channel information, including frequencies/ini's etc, or perhaps could also be used for other useful channel information which keeps changing or needs changing on the fly. When i thought about it i remember this seemed the best option instead of a full-nit based app. I never really fully researched this as you notice so any more insights in this is interesting, sounds more useful from your info in europe than i thought in the past. Didn't know about dvb-t, i do know what the atsc system in america (and canada i think) is used totally different there than here, they use it there like some kind of feedhunting ota as there are many stations it seems sending different things out (not as here in europe where at least in holland we just have digittene and one set of channels nationwide)

Well i can't tell you much about low SR sensitivity of my prof 7500 blindscanning (having probs scanning those here, but i think my setup is to blame atm, very windy conditions here lately had to go out and fix things), but i can certainly blindscan 19.2 and 13 in under ten minutes for sure, but there are probably better low sr cards around, although i know lots of american feedhunters use prof 7500 (and tbs) so can't be that bad. Still need to check it's completeness against the .ini tables (will make some sync option or perhaps save blindscan tables to other types of .ini's not sure yet)..

@moonchild: lol i remembered i needed some time with eventghost to figure out the damn thing too :-).  Been long ago but i think eventghost uses plugins to support different kind of remotes. Just looked quickly at the eventghost site and you have plugins/addons for extra remote support, and some kind of plugin (.py python scripts) to automate applications. So when installing a .py script for dvbdream for example made by someone you'd at least have the mappings to dvbdream setup (i see from the .py code he looks up the main dvbdream windows to send keys to, i remember this is also something that needs to be configured in eventghost for the client app to be able to receive the keystrokes .(or winlirc etc is also possible i think as another possibility to use this in smartdvb instead of keys). That's what i meant i want to see if i cannot make those mappings myself and just include such a plugin in the forum or whatever as i already noticed most people won't take the trouble to use a tool like eventghost, too hard to setup, but maybe with some auto-config more people would use this. If you want you can send me the ati rw :-) (you still have my address?) although i can use any remote to test, but i can also look at this X/10 thing as preferrably i'd like smart to support as much as possible natively.

edit: about dvb-t nit scanning, have you tried this only with smart or also other tools? Not sure out of the top of my head if this might even be skipped in smart, not sure would have to check..
oh and i'll check about that ch# bug you're having moonchild, might just be a bug as i think i never removed the list in one time, some things you just forget to test and need to be pointed out..

edit2: didn't have time to read and answer everything before. About that spectrum analyser, have thought about that for the blindscanner in the future, not now. But your sat tech knowledge is better than mine i have more of a programming background so if you know any codebase that would help (in c preferrable, but .net or vb/delphi whatever, as long as i get the picture), as it willl not be high on my priorities but i myself would like something like that if i can make it quickly, otherwise it will take a while. In any case whenever i get around to that i'll have in mind what you said about the fullscreen 2D spectrum analyser, sounds like a feasible idea and would not be that hard to do. And btw, the blinscan interface of crazycat supports some kind of spectrum analysing functions, as in standard bda there are no calls etc for this, just signal/strength etc, you need more info for that i think no? So crazycats dll accesses these cards outside of the bda driver, so directly on the chipsets (which is lots of low level hard programming work also), which is beyond the scope of time i can now invest in these things lol

[Jürgen]

Regarding NIT on DVB-T, I've not yet found any suitable application, to give it a try.
I'll surely do some research on this soon after the festive days, as those make me stay away from doing severe changes on my system.
Just imagine running into TV related trouble on Christmas or New Years Eve, relatives might kill us for this...

Technical aspects and knowledge of course are a must for me, as I am a certified TV mechanic, and a hobbyist even longer.
Just missing a suitable job right now.
That's one good reason for me now, to make the best out of the hardware at home these days.
And as I don't yet have a sat compatible spectrum analyser here, I'm running into deep thinking mode...

However, a really helpful spectrum analysis might even be impossible with BDA tuners.
Main reason, being on the roof and adjusting LNBs, you would need to have pretty fast sweeps, at least one every couple of seconds.
You could not wait several minutes there, to see the effects of tiny changes. 
But I don't believe, BDA allowed such fast sweeps, without waiting for a lock on every signal, just looking for raw level only, on every little step.

Means, I am preparing to try and get some 2nd hand sat scope sooner or later, off ebay.
Whenever my finances and the rare offers may meet...
I have already seen nice new hand held DVB receivers from Chinese vendors, that are made for this, but I don't like the idea of bargaining with those directly.
And regarding German distributors, if one day found any, usually they really like to rip us off...

We will see, and in case of any progress made, I'll keep you informed here anyway.

But now we should better concentrate on relatives, Christmas holidays and alike, I supose 

[jackjavo]

@jurgen: Well yes looking at the bda calls available i don't see a possibility for that, alhough one might test what happens when leaving various bda parameters for locking out perhaps dunno. But in any case
don't think this will ever be fast enough in such case through bda for your pursposes with the limited calls available there (would also make no sense for ms to support something like that in a general access architecture i would think also). Although about locking i have noticed that some cards on signal information checking are perfectly happy to report just level/signal and no lock (like my prof7500 works like that, older ss2 couldnt do that for example i remember, so one could imagine just calling the bda get signal routines, getting level asap nevermind about the lock and continue from there and see how fast a sweep like that would be perhaps on such cards with bda, but my guess would be probably not enough).
@richiebie: i totally overlooked the private message from you from a while back (about ci) on this board till now sorry. I looked at that bda.log for your technotrend ci. I don't see any ci messages in the bda.log (of sending pmt) are you sure you have ci processing turned on in the settings (under ci header)? If not try settings this on and the pmt send count to at least 3 or something if things don't work in standard mode..