Hi Chris (and list)
I've just been doing a bit more testing with my recently acquired Nanostick 290e...
I added a fake channel with the frequency 618000000 MHz (my HD mux), QAM256, and everything else set to auto or random values. I then switched to it. vdr then picked up BBC HD, ITV1 HD, Channel4 HD, and BBC One HD.
It was clever enough to switch to the Nanostick for the HD mux because it's the only device that can do QAM256 (not sure if _only_ DVB-T2 includes QAM256 or whether my other devices are too old ot do it as part of DVB-T).
I get now/next EPG for the HD channels but it's encrypted (it needs a plugin to decode, from what others have said).
If I switch to BBC One HD, femon gives me a video bit-rate of about 7 Mbit / s and an audio bit-rate of about 150 kbit / s. It claims to have a signal strength of 70% but I'm not sure I believe that! By comparison, BBC One gives me something like 3 Mbit / sv video and 260 kbit / s audio, and signal strength of 70%.
vdr has now written out the new entries to channels.conf:
BBC HD;BBC:618000000:B8C23D23M256Y0:T:0:101=27:102=eng@17,106=eng@17:0:0:17472:9018:16516:0 ITV1 HD;ITV:618000000:B8C23D23M256Y0:T:0:201=27:202=eng@17,206=eng@17:0:0:17604:9018:16516:0 Channel 4 HD;CHANNEL FOUR:618000000:B8C23D23M256Y0:T:0:301=27:302=eng@17,306=eng@17:0:0:17664:9018:16516:0 BBC One HD;BBC:618000000:B8C23D23M256Y0:T:0:6601=27:6602=eng@17,6606=eng@17:0:0:17540:9018:16516:0
These are from the Emley Moor transmitter (I'm not sure how whether PIDs, etc., are the same between different transmitters but it might help someone.)
I'm not seeing anything on my tele' but I suspect my output device (a Matrox G450 with softdevice) can't go up to that high a resolution! Actually, I don't think it will currently play anything other than MPEG2.
I have a recording going from BBC One HD and there is a 00001.ts file which is growing rapidly.
I just played it back on a different PC. Mplayer output:
Playing 00001.ts. TS file format detected. VIDEO H264(pid=6601) AUDIO AAC LATM(pid=6602) SUB DVB(pid=6605) PROGRAM N. 132 FPS seems to be: 25.000000 Load subtitles in ./ ========================================================================== Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264) ========================================================================== ========================================================================== Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->192000) Selected audio codec: [fflatm] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg AAC in LATM) ========================================================================== AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample) Starting playback... Unsupported PixelFormat 61 Unsupported PixelFormat 53 [h264 @ 0xeccca0]mmco: unref short failure Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect. VO: [vdpau] 1440x1080 => 1920x1080 Planar YV12
Looking good!
As far as I can tell, it seems to be working.
:-)
Next step, get the epg sorted out...
Cheers,
Laz
Hi I too have just acquired a 290e and I am having difficulty getting it to work with VDR. Apart from the flakey driver at the moment, 'seeding' VDR's channel.conf is difficult. I tried using w_scan like this:
w_scan -c GB -o 7 -I my_init_tune_file
My tuning file (UK Sandy Heath) contained 1 line like this: T 474166670 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM256 32k 1/32 NONE
w_scan produced this: BBC HD;BBC:474166670:I999B8C23D0M998T999G32Y0:T:27500:101:0:0:0:17472:0:0:0 BBC One HD;BBC:474166670:I999B8C23D0M998T999G32Y0:T:27500:6601:0:0:0:17540:0:0:0 ITV1 HD;ITV:474166670:I999B8C23D0M998T999G32Y0:T:27500:201:0:0:0:17603:0:0:0 Channel 4 HD;CHANNEL FOUR:474166670:I999B8C23D0M998T999G32Y0:T:27500:301:0:0:0:17664:0:0:0
However, VDR uses the first available tuning device when one of these channels is selected, which happens to be a DVB-T device and not the 290e DVB-T2 device.
Is this a problem with channels.conf or do I need to use a later version of VDR? I am currently using VDR 1.7.15.
Laz how exactly did you 'seed' your channels.conf?
Thanks Stuart
--- On Fri, 19/8/11, Laz laz@club-burniston.co.uk wrote:
On Friday 19 Aug 2011, Stuart Morris wrote:
I did have a go at modifying the output from w_scan and appending it to my channels.conf but it kept choking on it (probably my fault!).
What I did was go to the channel list from within vdr and created a new channel with the correct frequency for the HD mux. I think the only other thing I changed was to set QAM256 and as many things as possible to auto.
I then switched to that channel. Shortly afterwards, vdr had picked up the proper channels and added them to channels.conf. All I then had to do was delete the fake channel I created.
This was with vdr-1.7.19 (currently running happily with 1.7.20): don't ask me whether anyhting drastic has changed since vdr-1.7.15 but you could check dvbdevice.c to see if QAM256 is defined in it.
My 290e doesn't seem to want to tune to anything but the HD mux if I use scan, w_scan, etc. I will try again from withing vdr later on this evening. It's not really a problem for me if it refuses to tune to a DVB-T mux and only the DVB-T2 HD one: I've got another 4 DVB devices for the DVB-T channels!
:-)
I've just installed the eepg plugin and updated my config files for tv_grab_uk_rt to include the HD channels.
It might be time to seriously consider a new output device...
Cheers,
Laz
Hmmm, interesting, Qam256 is used in the US for Unencrypted cable. Does anyone know if a ClearQam US tuner would work with VDR if you pointed it at a Freeview UK HD Mux? Will have to bring one when I next visit my sister in London. However, if it did, the plethora of cheap ClearQam tuners would help get VDR users HD Freeview..
Laz,
I've finally managed to tune my 290e in as well. I have discovered that I need to remove all of the 2-way splitters that I'd been using to connect everything up to the wall socket, and then w_scan and scandvb can find the HD signal. But my version of ffmpeg (0.6.3) is struggling to decode the stream and so I'm not getting any sound. The pictures are OK, though. So maybe it's just that this PC is slightly underpowered? (2x2.66GHz P4 Xeons with HT enabled). I'll try using a beefier machine tomorrow.
And if I'm still getting a HD signal tomorrow, I'll know that my 2-way splitters really are the problem too :-). Although the loss of the splitters will be a problem in the long-term, because now I'm limited to only one DVB-T/T2 receiver.
One problem at a time...
Cheers, Chris
On Sunday 21 August 2011 02:35:53 you wrote:
For me, it was actually very easy to get going:
- install drivers (I'm currently on the ones pulled in by the media_build script but I htink the vanilla 3.0.x kernel drivers would have worked)
- create a fake channel on the frequency of the HD mux and with QAM256 (I think vdr could find the new mux because I'd been getting loads of "can't tune to channel 0" messages for a while which I put down to the HD mux and not having anything that could tune to it at the time: maybe it would have "just worked" given time)
- tune to the fake channel and let vdr add the real channels
- delete the fake channel!
My current vdr box isn't beefy enough to play back HD recordings (2.7 MHz P4) but it can happily record them and I can play back on my "main" PC using a vdpau-enabled Nvidia card.
My 290e doesn't want to tune to any of the SD muxes at all but works fine on the HD one! Could be faulty but if it works OK for HD it's fine for me! The signal from my aerial goes through an amplifier to another amplifier with four outputs! I could probably do with a new aerial!!
The problem I currently have is the encoded epg from the HD channels. I've got eepg running now but I htink that only processes EPG from the DVB stream rather than processing existing EPG data. This is a problem because I'm downloading EPG from Radio Times and feeding it in using xmltv2vdr. Even so, I don't think eepg was unencoding any new EPG data.
The epgsearch plugin manages to find A LOT of recordings when your EPG is garbled!!
:-s
One step at a time...
Cheers,
Laz
The signal from my aerial goes through an amplifier to another amplifier with
four outputs!
I could probably do with a new aerial!!
Interesting, it hadn't occurred to me to use an amplifier. Although the HD MUXs are all broadcasting at low power at the moment until Digital Switch-Over is finished, so it's possible that this problem will sort itself out then. But right now, it looks like my splitters degrade the HD signal to the point where the tuner refuses to lock. Maybe I could buy better splitters, or maybe putting splitters on coaxial cables is not as "plug and play" as I'd supposed and my tangled pile of wires was generating interference.
One other point: your amplifier arrangement seems rather sophisticated. Are you *sure* it's sending the same amplified signal to each of its four outputs? This might explain why your 290e can't find the SD MUXs.
Cheers, Chris
-
Chris Rankin -
Laz -
Rob Davis -
Stuart Morris