Will there be DVB-S support in 0.6+?

Hi,

Yes, DVB-S support has been removed for 0.6 due to lack of developer support, there are plenty of users. 0.5 only had support because the tuning/scanning code that I was using was shamelessly stolen from the dvb-apps guys. 0.6 has its own tuning/scanning code but there are some remnants of the DVB-S code in there waiting to be completed. It's not impossible, I'm waiting for a developer with a DVB-S card to put his/her hand up. The code is written in such a way to allow for DVB-S to be added.

In regards to the EPG only updating the current transponder, that's the way it is here in Australia. Once again, I'm waiting for a developer to put their hand up who can implement and test this feature.

Thanks,

Michael

What's the actual status quo of DVB-S integration in Me-TV 0.7+?

Hylli

I have not heard from any DVB-S developers so there has been no change in status.

OK, thank you for your answer. Hope this will change in near future.

Hylli

Any further news about DVB-S?

Hylli

No news is bad news, right?

Do you know a developer with a DVB-S device?

No, only a "tester", sorry! ;)

Hylli

Hi there!

In the last few days I tried to see how far I can get with DVB-S integration. I have no experience or knowledge of the DVB standard(s), and the DVB API documentation is not that helpful either. On top of that, I'm not a C/C++ coder. All that memory management kind of confuses me. ;-) But so far I've managed to...

# Let me-tv tune my DVB-S device according to the "intital transponder line" (/usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-s/Astra-19.2E).
# me-tv automatically started parsing the data stream for any channels broadcasted on that transponder (SDT, PDT, or whatever that is called) - that is only 13 channels, actually. And they are not at all interesting.
# I added support for "NIT" (Network Information Table) parsing, so now me-tv extracts frequencies, symbol rates, etc. for other transponders out of the data stream and saves them
# Last but not least, I changed the dvb_scanner so it actually tunes to those transponders after reading the NIT and channels from the first transponder.

Now here is my problem where I hope someone who is more knowledgeable may help me. The "re-tuning" to new transponders fails 90% of the time. It's only for some of the transponders where it works. However, and that is what's driving me mad: If I copy the frequencies, symbol rates, etc. of a "failed" tune process into my "intital tuning file" (see above) and comment out the default initial transponder, the tuning works. So I suspect that maybe I have to do some cleaning-up or closing of certain ressources which I'm not aware of.

I compared two debug outputs where I print anything that might be wrong in the process. IMHO, they look exactly the same, only the first output fails to signal lock (note: after 2 seconds, but I also tried a 10 second timeout without success). Here they are.

(a: failed tuning; frequency etc. read from data stream of NIT - network information table)
05.03.2009 10:39:33: Trying to tune to freq 10788000, symbol rate 22000000, inner fec 5
05.03.2009 10:39:33: diseqc - satnum 0 , pol 1 , hiband 0 msg_3 = 240
05.03.2009 10:39:33: diseqc - created commands: voltage 0 - tone 1 - burst 0 - msg3 240.
05.03.2009 10:39:33: Diseqc'd, as this is a dvb-s device. We're hiband? 0 new freq: 1038000 polarisation: 1
05.03.2009 10:39:33: Waiting for signal lock ...
05.03.2009 10:39:35: status: 1
05.03.2009 10:39:35: Exception: Failed to lock to channel
05.03.2009 10:39:35: Failed to tune to transponder at '10788000'

(b: successful tuning; frequency etc. loaded from intital tuning file)
05.03.2009 10:40:52: Trying to tune to freq 10788000, symbol rate 22000000, inner fec 5
05.03.2009 10:40:52: diseqc - satnum 0 , pol 1 , hiband 0 msg_3 = 240
05.03.2009 10:40:52: diseqc - created commands: voltage 0 - tone 1 - burst 0 - msg3 240.
05.03.2009 10:40:52: Diseqc'd, as this is a dvb-s device. We're hiband? 0 new freq: 1038000 polarisation: 1
05.03.2009 10:40:52: Waiting for signal lock ...
05.03.2009 10:40:52: Got signal lock
[...]

I'm in #me-tv on FreeNode a few hours a day, my nick is jui-feng. :-)

I don't see you in #me-tv now. We closed down that room a week ago because no one used it except to ask for new features.

Feel free to mail me.

Certainly increasing the timeout will help and that's the first thing that I would've recommended. Good work in figuring that out.

It's really quite difficult for me to see what those debug messages mean without the code. Are you familiar with bzr? If so, I invite you to create a branch off the Me TV development branch. The benefits of this are numerous but most importantly I (and others) will be able to see your code.

Thanks Michael Lamothe, that solved my question.

Florian has now provided a lot of DVB-S specific setup in his experimental branch and he is now able to scan on his DVB-S card. The rest is just plumbing that I will do.

You should send him a "thanks" to let him know to keep up the good work.

Michael

Hi Florian,

thank you for your efforts to implement DVB-S support in Me-TV 0.7x+. Please keep up the good work.

Hylli

Hi,

big thx for DVB-S to you both!

Rattel

The latest updates are in the development branch and will be released in Me TV 0.8.0.

My work was not really "good work", the code was lacking some quality. ;-) But I got it working at least, and Michael cleaned up the "mess", so we're all happy now. And it's fun working with Michael.
Let's just hope that it works for any DVB-S device, any satellite and any transponder. If you have the possibility to compile the current development branch and test DVB-S, that would be great!

For those that are interested in building, https://answers.launchpad.net/me-tv/+faq/352.

I couldn't build Me-TV, had some problems with a few packages. So I'll wait till 0.8 is released, hopefully soon. ;)

Hylli

Thx! Great work! As soon as I earn some more money I will dump you some. Great work!

I personally don't want money for this but thanks for the offer. If you want to help out then just let people know about Me TV. It's good for people to have choices so long as they know what's available.