[linux-dvb] Woe with budget-ci that lacks ci

[David Zanetti <dave2@wetstring.net>]

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I recently bought a budget card, which originally I thought was just a
plain budget (no CI), but turns out has the tracks for the CI interface,
but no components on it.

I'm yet to get a stable DVB feed out of the card, hence this post. 

Firstly, environment and hardware:

01:06.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7146 (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Technotrend Systemtechnik GmbH: Unknown device 100f
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 3
        Memory at e4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]

Using stock kernel drivers from:

Linux pvr 2.6.6 #4 Sat Jun 5 16:18:34 NZST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux

Module                  Size  Used by
budget_ci               9984  0 
budget_core             8580  1 budget_ci
stv0299                13832  0 
dvb_core               87144  3 budget_ci,budget_core,stv0299
saa7146                19108  2 budget_ci,budget_core
ttpci_eeprom            2880  1 budget_core

kernel: saa7146: register extension 'budget_ci dvb'.
kernel: saa7146: found saa7146 @ mem d084e000 (revision 1, irq 3) (0x13c2,0x100f).
kernel: DVB: registering new adapter (TT-Budget/WinTV-NOVA-CI PCI).
kernel: TT-Budget/WinTV-NOVA-CI PCI adapter 0 has MAC addr = 00:d0:5c:02:af:8a
kernel: probe_tuner: try to attach to TT-Budget/WinTV-NOVA-CI PCI
kernel: drivers/media/dvb/frontends/stv0299.c: setup for tuner SU1278
(TSA5059 synth) on TechnoTrend hardware
kernel: DVB: registering frontend 0:0 (STV0299/TSA5059/SL1935 based)...

Problems:

1) Tuning seems to drop away after a while:

# dvbtune -f 1152000 -s 22500 -p v -m
[...]
Signal=51201, Verror=7424, SNR=51546dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51211, Verror=4864, SNR=52083dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51516, Verror=3072, SNR=52035dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51517, Verror=8704, SNR=52119dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|C|V|)
Signal=51516, Verror=5120, SNR=51537dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51517, Verror=5120, SNR=52068dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51207, Verror=6144, SNR=52017dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|)
Signal=51516, Verror=3328, SNR=51975dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51205, Verror=9472, SNR=51906dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=51513, Verror=3072, SNR=52143dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=50910, Verror=4352, SNR=52086dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)
Signal=45421, Verror=64512, SNR=32520dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|)
Signal=2831, Verror=65344, SNR=32991dB, BlockErrors=0, ()
Signal=45435, Verror=65480, SNR=43008dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|C|V|)
Signal=43582, Verror=65504, SNR=38976dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|C|)
Signal=50412, Verror=14848, SNR=51498dB, BlockErrors=0, (S|L|C|V|SY|)

Takes about 15 seconds or so.

2) What stream I can get from the card is fairly corrupt. 

Short of providing a sample, all I can say is it's got a numerous audio
and video errors, smearing, etc. This was done with:

 # 12.456 w/11.3 delta, Optus B1
 dvbtune -f 1152000 -p v -s 22500 
 # TVNZ Wellington TV2
 dvbstream -o 519 657 | mplayer - 

When I've managed to get MythTV recording from the card (which lately has
not been much at all), I did get a ton of these constantly:

 DVB#0 WARNING - Transport Stream Continuity Error. PID = 517
 DVB#0 PID 517 contcounter 7 cc 14
 DVB#0 WARNING - Transport Stream Continuity Error. PID = 517
 DVB#0 PID 517 contcounter 0 cc 7
 DVB#0 WARNING - Transport Stream Continuity Error. PID = 655
 DVB#0 PID 655 contcounter 11 cc 0 
 DVB#0 WARNING - Transport Stream Continuity Error. PID = 517

At the rate of 4-5/sec. Same video/audio corruption as with the
dvbstream/mplayer combo.

Things I've eliminated:

1) Signal. There's a set-top box attached to the same feed from the dish,
no problems.
2) Tuner is physically bung. Installed Windows on the same hardware, used
card-provided tuning/playback software, no problems at all. 

What other info would be needed to help identify this problem?

Thanks :)

- -- 
David Zanetti           |  (__)             
#include <geek/unix.h>  |  ( oo    Mooooooo 
http://hairy.geek.nz/   |  /(_O ./         
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