[linux-dvb] Re: Which DVB-S card ?

[Denis Cheong <denis@denisandyuki.net>]

Robert Schlabbach wrote:

> From: "Vincent Bernat" <bernat@free.fr>
>  
> > Now, trying each card is a  bit expensive. Are  there some cards which
> > are better  than the  Nova-S  (in the  budget category)  ?  Skystar  2
> > maybe ?
> >    
> I'd lean towards a card with the Zarlink tuner/demodulator with the
> enhanced autoscanning capabilities. The STV0299B on the NOVA-S can only
> autodetect the FEC rate, but not the symbol rate like the Zarlink can.
>
> I'm not exactly sure which card(s) the Zarlink is on, though, and how good
> it is otherwise.
>  
I would definitely recommend against the STV0299 (and as far as I'm 
aware any Budget-CI).

Despite months of efforts trying to get a TT-Budget-CI working with 
Irdeto 2 decryption I'm giving up and am now waiting on my full-featured 
card to be delivered.

While it may be a single eroneous line in the DVB driver, a fundamental 
floor in the STV0299, something particular to my Irdeto 2.09 CAM, the 
smart card, the encryption, or with MythTV, I've run out of patience 
with the blasted thing. 
I now see that the budget-ci issue has been discussed here to some 
extent - that is, it simply doesn't decrypt anything even though it has 
a signal, a lock, and has found the audio/video streams.  The 
workarounds others have are very creative, but bottom line is they don't 
work for me, and I think I've tried everything that anyone could suggest 
to fix it.  The most I can get under Linux is a show recorded once or 
twice, then for no apparent reason it will drop out and never find a 
stream again.

This card worked first time, perfectly under Windows XP, and I swear did 
used to work reliably under Linux at one stage, but now it's broken - 
and despite having tried to revert to all of the old working versions of 
the drivers & software, it's remains 100% stuffed.

I would be interested in hearing any success stories with the STV0299 
based budget-ci cards & Irdeto decryption, as it's been a long time 
since I've seen anything on the decrypted-end of my smartcard.

Denis.