card defective? errors on 138 MHz (strange ones) and 418 Mhz
Posted: Mon May 06, 2013 10:57 amI have a problem with my TBS6280 and I think it is hardware related:
I get visually (and sometimes even audibly) "perceptible deviations" on the frequenzies of 138 and 418 MHz, which I do not get using my Terratec H6 USB stick.
Another thing to this is:
The errors on 418 MHz are more or less stable (meaning they do not increase in rate, at least not much). They are visible, but you can watch it, though I wouldn't recommend using the material for pernsoal archiving.
The errors on 138 MHz on the other hand are occuring only when using Tuner A, but NOT when using Tuner B - of the same card, I have to make that very clear. And unlike the stable errors on 418 MHz, these are increasing from the likes of a dozen per second up to some unwatchable chew of (errors per second!): 20 -> 30 -> 80 -> 240 -> 30 -> 20 -> 2 -> 340 -> 80 -> 120 -> 230 -> 10 -> 30 -> 200 -> 0 -> 0 -> 0 -> 8 -> --- reaching 20.7k missing packets against 4.3k that where received in the end. Crawling around at an effective data rate of 18kbps at maximum. (TransEdit, DVBViewer)
And for comparison: Tuner B lets see after what aoumt of time passing by is in need for the first error to even occur? ... I'll wait and watch Transedit analyse the frequency ... sorting of PIDs from most on top to least at the bottom. ... Ok, five minutes currently. I'm a more or less patient man, but there isn't really any happening at all regarding errors. That truly is some marvelous incoherence to the inaccomplishments of Tuner A. This behaviour is more recent in it's appereance.
[storymode]
My system was down for over a month in february. Up to then there were no such strange phenomenons. There where more errors before, but that was when the cable company did some digging to get us on the net and when they switched the television provider to that local cable company afterwards.)
I flashed an older version of the mainboards BIOS, which did not support my built in CPU. But I only realised that later, after I had already sent it in and received it back with a note: "[not booting up] The described error could not be replicated". After a month ... I got another CPU (supported by the elder BIOS) and then flashed the only BIOS version supporting my CPU. Everything was fine again and I fell sry for myself, not realising that in the first place.
I still watched to watch TV while my desktop PC was out of order. So I got myself a DVB-T/C USB stick for my netbook. I shure thought about the opportunity to later -should that occour- have 3 maintainable channels: watching one (maybe a live show) and recording the two blockbusters on other channels. I coul then watch them some of the days, when there aint much going on. So I watched and recorded using my netbook from now on and everything was nice and shiny again.
[/storymode]
However, some of my first new recordings back on my rebuild desktop machine and my 6280 (as of early april) where tremendously obscured by ... green. Almost 90 per cent of the entire picture. I thought of something with the "rewiring" from the USB stick back to the 6280. When I checked going back to the USB stick, that turned out to be ok. But there was no real pattern at first. On some channels one show was good and antoher awful, for some channels the recordings were never awful, but always hat some stutter in it.So I plugged the USB stick to the output (throughput?) of my 6280 and configured DVBViewer accordingly.
It became clear, that I could not watch TV on 138 and 418 MHz using my card, but using the stick was fine. The stick on the other hand had problems with 138 MHz, when attached to the 6280.
By now TransEdit is showing no more channels for 138MHz using Tuner A and no stream having a data rate of more than 30kbps and a positive ratio of received/missing packets (meaning more received than missing). By the way: Tuner B had some errors now.
The USB stick not attached to the 6280, but directly to the cable still has no relevant error rates (maybe 3 per 5 minutes or so).
Oh, I also swapped from the PCIe x1 to the nearby PCIe x16 slot and moved my graphics card to the next PCIe x16 (Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 Rev.3.1). The 6280 was bought in 2012, on the 24th of July - so it shouldn't be it's "age".
So, after all that text: Shall I assume that my card is defetive?
I do not want to send in another peace of hardware to wait for for weeks, if not really necessary. Or month in that case, as I live in Europe and got the card from BuyDVB, which is US-based. That means they may possibly even send it to China/Hong Kong, if it's repairable. And though shipping to the US shall be free, I may be charged with the shipping costs from the US to China/Hong Kong. Both, time and cost, are preferrably avoided.
I get visually (and sometimes even audibly) "perceptible deviations" on the frequenzies of 138 and 418 MHz, which I do not get using my Terratec H6 USB stick.
Another thing to this is:
The errors on 418 MHz are more or less stable (meaning they do not increase in rate, at least not much). They are visible, but you can watch it, though I wouldn't recommend using the material for pernsoal archiving.
The errors on 138 MHz on the other hand are occuring only when using Tuner A, but NOT when using Tuner B - of the same card, I have to make that very clear. And unlike the stable errors on 418 MHz, these are increasing from the likes of a dozen per second up to some unwatchable chew of (errors per second!): 20 -> 30 -> 80 -> 240 -> 30 -> 20 -> 2 -> 340 -> 80 -> 120 -> 230 -> 10 -> 30 -> 200 -> 0 -> 0 -> 0 -> 8 -> --- reaching 20.7k missing packets against 4.3k that where received in the end. Crawling around at an effective data rate of 18kbps at maximum. (TransEdit, DVBViewer)
And for comparison: Tuner B lets see after what aoumt of time passing by is in need for the first error to even occur? ... I'll wait and watch Transedit analyse the frequency ... sorting of PIDs from most on top to least at the bottom. ... Ok, five minutes currently. I'm a more or less patient man, but there isn't really any happening at all regarding errors. That truly is some marvelous incoherence to the inaccomplishments of Tuner A. This behaviour is more recent in it's appereance.
[storymode]
My system was down for over a month in february. Up to then there were no such strange phenomenons. There where more errors before, but that was when the cable company did some digging to get us on the net and when they switched the television provider to that local cable company afterwards.)
I flashed an older version of the mainboards BIOS, which did not support my built in CPU. But I only realised that later, after I had already sent it in and received it back with a note: "[not booting up] The described error could not be replicated". After a month ... I got another CPU (supported by the elder BIOS) and then flashed the only BIOS version supporting my CPU. Everything was fine again and I fell sry for myself, not realising that in the first place.
I still watched to watch TV while my desktop PC was out of order. So I got myself a DVB-T/C USB stick for my netbook. I shure thought about the opportunity to later -should that occour- have 3 maintainable channels: watching one (maybe a live show) and recording the two blockbusters on other channels. I coul then watch them some of the days, when there aint much going on. So I watched and recorded using my netbook from now on and everything was nice and shiny again.
[/storymode]
However, some of my first new recordings back on my rebuild desktop machine and my 6280 (as of early april) where tremendously obscured by ... green. Almost 90 per cent of the entire picture. I thought of something with the "rewiring" from the USB stick back to the 6280. When I checked going back to the USB stick, that turned out to be ok. But there was no real pattern at first. On some channels one show was good and antoher awful, for some channels the recordings were never awful, but always hat some stutter in it.So I plugged the USB stick to the output (throughput?) of my 6280 and configured DVBViewer accordingly.
It became clear, that I could not watch TV on 138 and 418 MHz using my card, but using the stick was fine. The stick on the other hand had problems with 138 MHz, when attached to the 6280.
By now TransEdit is showing no more channels for 138MHz using Tuner A and no stream having a data rate of more than 30kbps and a positive ratio of received/missing packets (meaning more received than missing). By the way: Tuner B had some errors now.
The USB stick not attached to the 6280, but directly to the cable still has no relevant error rates (maybe 3 per 5 minutes or so).
Oh, I also swapped from the PCIe x1 to the nearby PCIe x16 slot and moved my graphics card to the next PCIe x16 (Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 Rev.3.1). The 6280 was bought in 2012, on the 24th of July - so it shouldn't be it's "age".
So, after all that text: Shall I assume that my card is defetive?
I do not want to send in another peace of hardware to wait for for weeks, if not really necessary. Or month in that case, as I live in Europe and got the card from BuyDVB, which is US-based. That means they may possibly even send it to China/Hong Kong, if it's repairable. And though shipping to the US shall be free, I may be charged with the shipping costs from the US to China/Hong Kong. Both, time and cost, are preferrably avoided.
