No DVBT 2 channels found for geniatech t230 tuner??

  • Hello,
    I am new to these forums and am really struggling to find an answer to my problem.
    I use VDR on the raspberry pi. ( front and backend)
    I am in the UK and use a usb tuner stick for the Freeview channels
    It works great , but recently I bought a new dvb t2 tuner stick ( Geniatech t230 DVBT2 usb tuner ) and w-scan( or is it VDR? ) will not find dvb t 2 channels.
    It finds dvbt fine and works fine- but no dVbt 2?
    Other PVR software for the Pi ( tvheadend) finds the dvbt 2 channels easily.
    A question on the openelec forum raised this explanation as a possible answer- can anybody shed any light on this??



    There has been a change to DVB-T2 support recently, and newer drivers use the new model, as does TV Headend. It could be that VDR hasn't been updated to use the new model yet?


    Older drivers (like the PCTV 290e) would tune to both a DVB-T and a DVB-T2 mux with the same tuning instruction (effectively if a DVB-T tune didn't work they'd try a DVB-T2 tune - effectively ignoring some of the demodulation parameters), possibly because there wasn't, then, a standard for sending T2 demod parameters to frontends.


    The Linux APIs now include proper T2 tuning support, so newer drivers (I think the 292e, and some of the Geniatech/August dongles) use the new API, so need to be specifically told to tune in T2 mode rather than T mode.TV Headend was modified to add support for this new T2 model (probably because it's devs are based in Sweden and the UK which both have a lot of T2 stuff)


    It may be that VDR doesn't yet have these changes made? Certainly on the VDR build in the OE 5.0.1 x86 builds I don't get a T2 tuning option (which I'd expect) for a single frequency scan. (VDR appears to be developed mainly in Germany, where T2 isn't yet broadcast.)


    I've also found that VDR doesn't appear to support the UK Huffman compressed Freeview HD EPG information (though it does support Freesat - which uses the same compression, but with differently flagged packets - as Freesat has to work side-by-side with Sky's EPG) - so you will have to use XMLTV to get EPG data for the HD channels on Freeview in VDR ?


    Buggy as TV Headend is, it still supports UK DVB-T/T2 stuff better than VDR in my experience.


    Many thanks


    pootler 8)

  • We should talk about driver support in Linux kernel first. According to LinuxTV Wiki (http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Geniatech_T230) the driver is available in kernel 3.19. Do you use kernel 3.19 or an older kernel + media_build?
    Do you have all firmware files in place so that your dmesg output looks like the one on the wiki page?
    The device seems to load firmwares on demand which could mean that you have to restart the DVB application: Start it, end it, and start it again to make the DVB devices accessible for the application.


    When you start VDR, VDR will write information into the syslog about the tuners found in the system and their DVB capabilities (T/T2/S/S2/C). Did you check the syslog if T2 is mentioned by VDR? What VDR version are you using?


    w_scan is a command line tool that is independent from VDR (as opposed to vdr-plugin-wirbelscan that lives inside the VDR). You can only use w_scan when VDR is stopped as VDR grabs all available DVB devices by default. When you launch w_scan to do a channel scan it should also tell you the capabilities of your device. You need a recent w_scan version for DVB-T2. Check the version of w_scan.


    Have you tried the stick on a non-Raspberry-Pi Linux box to see if the problem is maybe related to the Raspberry Pi USB limitations or a potential power supply limitations?


    Let's leave out your other questions for now (EPG) to check the basics.


    Cheers,
    hepi

  • Hi hepi,



    thank you for your comprehensive reply.



    - here we go then [Blockierte Grafik: https://s.yimg.com/ok/u/assets/img/emoticons/emo1.gif] -



    Not sure how familiar you are with the raspberry pi, but the distros quite often push out firmware in earlier kernels.



    the latest official build of OPENELEC ( a distro for rpi ) is at 3.1.7, but I can confirm that it has the necessary firmware and drivers in that build for geniatech t230/mygica



    VDR client is version 1.9.22



    VDR addon is 4.3.7



    W_scan version is 4.3.2



    - I think these may be custom builds maintained for the Pi ?-



    Find enclosed dmesg for the build showing recognition as a dvbt2 device.



    Also two logs showing w_scan recognising the device,and also the log of the scan in case you are able to see anything unusual.



    I am sorry but I don't know where to look for VDR's sys.log on the Pi, and also not sure what you mean by starting and stopping the device?- it appears to be seen.



    As for power , the Pi is fine and has no problems.





    Many thanks



    pootler

  • On of my test devices for w_scan is newest August T210, which is rebranded Geniatech T230.
    w_scan version 20141122 is ok for T2 and VDR has real T2 support since long time. You should see a separate loop for DVB-T2 channels, and it finds T2 here in Berlin.


    However for channelscan using wirbelscan VDR plugin, a separate DVB-T2 loop is not yet done and planned for next version.


    VDRs internal channel scanner will anyway find the missing channels without problem, as long as at least one transmission of a DVB network is known,
    can be tuned and announces the other transmissions (frequencies) correctly. In most countries i'm aware of, DVB-T and DVB-T2 are two separate networks,
    even if there is no real technical reason. So, if you know at least on transmission for T2, add it by hand to channels.conf and VDR core would find everything. But w_scan should be able to find it too.


    Please note also, that w_scan is developed && tested on x86 computers only - i dont test it with embedded systems. I may work there or not.

  • Hi Wirbel,


    Thanks for the reply - did you get my mail about this from about a week ago?
    As mentioned , I am not very tech, and it appears OPENELEC isa bit locked down in terms of adding new versions of programs.

    The only way I am able to add a version of w-scan is either from a repo with a pre compiled package, or via a .zip file.


    Is there any way you know i can add the version you are talking of, as i have no ability to 'compile' anything 8)
    The stick I had previously was an august, and it wouldn't find dvbt2.


    Quite how I would find one of the dvbt2 transmission data info and add to channels.conf is bit above me.
    Although the VDR OSD is available in OPENELEC, using wirbelscan crashes the whole distribution, thats why I ssh in from another windows computer to use w_scan.


    Thanks


    pootler

  • No, no email from you.


    For openelec i cannot (and dont want to) help. Same for compiling/usage on embedded system.


    Zitat

    The stick I had previously was an august,


    May be worth a second check, which USB IDs it has. May be, you now have actually twice same hardware.


    If other porgram like tvheadend already found your channels, why not use this info? Should be all there.

  • Thanks for the reply.


    At the moment the best bet seems to be to find the info to add to channels.conf - but I am confused as to the format used in channels.conf?, there are a lot of numbers and letters, what do they mean?- is there a wiki page that explains in detail the format of the channel info?


    That way I might be able to convert the data from tvheadend's dvbt2 channels to put in channels.conf.


    Thanks a lot :]


    pootler

  • Use google's first hit ;)
    http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/Channels.conf


    Always up-to-date is documentation from VDR source package.

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