TBSDTV Community Forum

Just bought this card to replace a Peak DVB-T card for the HD channels.

System is a homebuilt one ....
i5 3470
GA-Z77-DS3H
8GB DDR3 1600
GTX 660
Samsung 830 128GB SSD
Samsung F3 1TB HDD
Windows 7 x64 Home Premium

everything worked well with the Peak card including Sleep and Resume

Now with the TBS card I find that when I resume from sleep I cannot watch TV - in WMC i see an error message about Tuner Conflict or Tuner Unavailable (I should have written down the exact words I guess) and TBSviewer doesnt work either so its not just WMC. Im using the 1.0.1.0 drivers and there's only one PCI-E x1 I can use so cannot swap slots.

Any suggestions?

Ben

The only suggestion I've recieved from TBS tech support is to swap the card around to a different slot including the PCI-E x4 slot (my board supports Crossfire) but not only did that not fix my 'resume from sleep' issue but it meant the tuner was sharing an IRQ with my graphics card which was not good for performance.

I've stumbled across this website which mentions this specific problem and (reading between the lines) it looks like this is not an uncommon problem
http://www.cclonline.com/product/107207 ... d/VGA0968/


"Windows 7 Power-saving / resume from sleep
Some customers have reported that the TV tuners on these TBS cards become disabled after the PC resumes from sleep mode. This is due to Windows 7's power saving configuration on the PCI Express bus. In order to prevent the problem occurring, please change the PCI Express Link State Power Management setting to 'off'. It can be found in Control Panel > Power Options > Change Plan Settings > Change advanced power settings > PCI Express > Link State Power Management."

I'll report back when I've had time to test this thoroughly

The solution from CCLonline worked.

Two days of testing - putting PC to Sleep at night and waking up in the morning - having it wake up to do a recording then going back to Sleep afterwards - worked flawlessly.

Incidentally I had an issue with pixellation and stutter on the HD channels that turned out to be down to codecs - I had Nero installed and although I don't use Showtime and it wasnt my default app for anything - it was causing my issues so once I uninstalled Nero - WMC played all channels including HD - flawlessly.

I've had Hauppage cards in the past - a TD500 and a NOVA SD2 - and this TBS card compares well now I've ironed out the 'kinks'

After a couple of trouble free days this issue has happened again and the card disappears from Device Manager when in Sleep mode.
I have to reboot the PC to get the tuner to reappear and be usuable.
Any ideas?

Benedict Wrote:After a couple of trouble free days this issue has happened again and the card disappears from Device Manager when in Sleep mode.
I have to reboot the PC to get the tuner to reappear and be usuable.
Any ideas?

I had this problem with a TBS6284 card. Same symptoms as yours when installed in a 1x slot, but moving it to a 4x slot allowed it to work OK. I also tried it in the 16x slot (the one usually used for the graphics card), but that had the same problem as the 1x slot. I also had problems with a Kworld DVB-T card in the 1x slot, and a Belkin USB2 card in the 1x slot. In the end I came to the conclusion that my PC (a Dell XPS420) has defective BIOS, but as it is no longer in production, no fix was forthcoming from Dell.

The TBS DVB-T2 cards use PCI-E version 1.0a (note the "a" suffix), and it seems that quite a few motherboard manufacturers forgot to support 1.0a when they were adding support for PCI-E version 2 and later PCI-E version 3. Check your motherboard BIOS to see if it has a "version 1 compatibility mode", and enable it if it does (mine does not). If your motherboard is still in production, you could try contacting the manufacturer to see if the motherboard supports 1.0a, and ask the manufacturer to fix the BIOS if it does not support 1.0a.

My solution (not yet enacted): build a new HTPC with a different motherboard.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

Hi

I'm having similar problems with my TBS6280 in a new self-build system, although I guess things are worse in my case as I can't get the card to reappear with even a reboot now. It's particularly frustrating as I also installed a TBS6981 and that's working fine with no issues. Anyway system is as follows

Intel Core i7-3770K
ASRock Z77 Extreme4
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Vapor-X 3GB GDDR5
16GB Corsair Vengeance LP DDR3 1600
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB
Windows 8 Pro with Media Center x64

Started having problems soon after first install which was on 10/03/2013. A reboot appeared to resolve it at first but then it started getting more problematic.

I began keeping detailed notes of its behaviour on the 14/03/2013 after getting the following message from Windows Media Center: "Viewing or listening conflict no tuner available". This occurred after the PC resumed from sleep. I decided to do a cold reboot (power off and on the system). Computer hung after the ASRock splash screen and just stayed black. I eventually pressed the reset button. This time the computer successfully booted to the operating system but when I went to Device Manager I found 'TBS 6280 Dual DVB-T2/T BDA Tuners' was missing. I did another cold reboot, this time the system got stuck on the Windows 8 logo screen. I had to press reset and this time the system booted. When I checked Device Manager the card was back. Ran Windows Media Center and everything worked fine again.

Then I found this thread and thought the solution suggested at CCLonline would solve the problem so I set PCI Express Link State Power Management to 'off'. Later that day (16/03/2013) the system went to sleep again and when it resumed I checked Device Manager but the TBS6280 was gone again. Next day I uninstalled the driver and reverted to an earlier system restore point but that didn't solve the problem. I then removed the card from the PCIe 2.0 x1 slot and placed it into the second PCIe 3.0 slot (the one intended for a second graphics card). The card did not appear after boot up.

Yesterday I put the card back in the PCIe 2.0 x1 slot. Booted up the system but it still would not appear. I restarted the system shortly after and when I checked Device Manager to my surprise the card was back. I reinstalled the driver (always used the latest V1.0.1.0. version). I ran Windows Media Center and everything was fine. Decided to turn off sleep function on PC. I powered off the system last night and this morning the card is missing again. Tried restarting it a few times but the card wouldn't appear.

Actually, I've just checked Device Manager again now after typing out the above and the card is back. That must be at least an hour after my last restart so I don't know how long it took for it to finally appear.

I'm beginning to think setting the PCI Express Link State Power Management to 'off' has made things worse in my case. It certainly hasn't improved anything. Think I'll switch it back and see what happens.

Following CyberSimian's post I checked my BIOS but couldn't find anything about "version 1 compatibility mode". Will have to do a bit more checking on it though.

Update on this.

Checked the motherboard BIOS again and looked under Advanced\North Bridge Configuration. Changed PCIE2 Link Speed from Auto to Gen1. My BIOS version is 2.00 and only has options visible for Auto or Gen1. From what I can see 2.20 also includes Gen2 and Gen3. Having just two options confused me a bit at first as it wasn't immediately obvious what difference the change would make. Anyway after making the changes I restored the default power options and when the computer next resumed from sleep the card was working fine again. So hopefully the problem is fixed. Will take me some time to be totally confident about it though.

I think I would have worked this out earlier if the TBS6981 had been experiencing problems too. Just couldn't understand what it was about the TBS6280 that was causing all the trouble.

I thought I had a fix.

I posted to Gigabyte Tech Support and they advised installing a beta bios for my GA-Z77-DS3H mobo.
I did this and reset all bios settings to Optimized Defaults except SATA from IDE to AHCI and it worked.

For several days I enjoyed a faultless PC - Resuming from Sleep and recording TV then going back to Sleep - all worked smoothly
then today - because I bought Bioshock Infinite - I installed a new driver from Nvidia which is optimized for this game - 314.22

And now Resume from Sleep is broken again - but only with my TV Tuner - it's the only part of my PC that disappears from Device Manager during Sleep.

Benedict Wrote:For several days I enjoyed a faultless PC - Resuming from Sleep and recording TV then going back to Sleep - all worked smoothly then today - because I bought Bioshock Infinite - I installed a new driver from Nvidia which is optimized for this game - 314.22. And now Resume from Sleep is broken again - but only with my TV Tuner - it's the only part of my PC that disappears from Device Manager during Sleep.

That is really strange; I would not have expected a new device driver for the graphics card to affect the behaviour of the TV tuner card (but I am no expert). I guess that it could be a further problem with the motherboard BIOS, or a problem with the Nvidia driver. You could try reporting this problem on the Nvidia forums; Nvidia personnel sometimes respond to problems (although they did not respond to the problem that I had with an 8400GS PCI card). You will need to register to get access to the forums:

http://www.geforce.com/

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

I decided to experiment and go back to the 314.07 drivers.

Did a thorough uninstall (not a rollback) - reboot - install old drivers and now the TV tuner is behaving again.

Performance in Bioshock Infinite is not as good and there are some lighting glitches so this is not an ideal solution but at least I have a working solution. I can post on the geforce forums and maybe get some help and I can experiment with future drivers knowing I can go back to the 314.07