[Habanos]

Update - the TBS card was NOT the cause of the problem. The sensitivity of the TBS 6981 seems fine.

Has anybody compared the sensitivity of the TBS 6981 against other cards?

I have missed a ton of Olympics recordings because they either didn't start (no lock) or were unwatchable due to high errors. I thought my dish was perhaps out of alignment but the next time the TBS 6981 was struggling (wouldn't even lock) I tried my Hauppauge HVR-4400 and it picked up the same transponder perfectly (no errors, let alone locking first time). I really wish Hauppauge would get their back sides into gear and release a dual tuner version of the 4400.

I hadn't noticed this until the Olympics, where the weaker transponders were brought into use temporarily. Also, both tuners on the card behave equally.

[Mr_Fantastic]

There are a number of dual tuner PCI-e cards available therefore there are other options other than TBS. That might be one reason why Hauppauge don't make one themselves.

I have seen quite a few people who were satisfied with the TBS dual tuner DVB-S2 cards.

My Mystique card hasn't had any problems with regard to reception and signal locking. It's just a pity that it doesn't work well on my PC because it causes some corruption when both tuners are used. However, it works fine on my brother's PC.

[Habanos]

I've had another look today. This morning, one of the tuners locks onto the weak transponders ok, whereas the other tuner cannot see it at all. Swapping cables over makes no difference.

Looks like I have a bad card (out of warranty, of course). (see update, TBS not to blame)

Originally Posted by Mr_Fantastic

There are a number of dual tuner PCI-e cards available therefore there are other options other than TBS. That might be one reason why Hauppauge don't make one themselves.

Hauppauge's entire product range is out of date. They don't have a DVB-T2 receiver, internal or external in their range (PCTV Systems doesn't count). They don't have any dual DVB-S2. And the "new" WinTV-T Video Edition is a rehash of the HVR-900H. 5 years ago Hauppauge were leading the market (ignoring their crappy WinTV2000) whereas now they're not competing from products released 2 years ago, at least in Europe.

[imilne]

I have two HVR-4400s, and they've been flawless (albeit expensive) apart from one problem.

Whenever any of the tuners - and I use all four: 2x DVB-T and 2x DVB-S - locks onto a signal, either by changing a channel or a recording starting in the background, then the streams from any of the other tuners are momentarily interrupted causing small - but annoying - glitches in their video.

I haven't confirmed if this is only because I have two tuners, or whether it happens even just watching DVB-T on one tuner with a recording starting on DVB-S.

[Habanos]

I have seen that issue with a single HVR-4400. Tuning DVB-S interrupts the DVB-T. I haven't seen it happen the other way around.

[Mr_Fantastic]

Originally Posted by imilne

I have two HVR-4400s, and they've been flawless (albeit expensive) apart from one problem.

Whenever any of the tuners - and I use all four: 2x DVB-T and 2x DVB-S - locks onto a signal, either by changing a channel or a recording starting in the background, then the streams from any of the other tuners are momentarily interrupted causing small - but annoying - glitches in their video.

I haven't confirmed if this is only because I have two tuners, or whether it happens even just watching DVB-T on one tuner with a recording starting on DVB-S.

That sounds similar to what I get with my Mystique card when used on my PC. It works fine on other PC's but not mine I have been meaning to change it for one that works but reviews are a bit limited when exploring the cards tuner sensitivities which didn't give me much confidence in getting something which would work well. I did look at the TBS cards, BlackGold which seems a bit of a gamble, DVBSky or German cards which I didn't want to bother with after my experiences with the Mystique card.

If I can find a replacement that works on my main PC I would use the Mystique card in a Htpc.

[Habanos]

In order to be fair to TBS (since AVForum posts rank quite highly in Google), I have updated my earlier posts. In short, the TBS 6981 was not the problem, and it is now working perfectly.

Longer version...
Following the identification of the "bad" tuner, I disabled that tuner in DVBViewer so that it would only use the other one. This appeared to work fine, except for I would occasionally get recordings which were completely garbled. This occurred in the Olympics closing ceremony on BBC One HD (so not one of the weaker Olympics transponders).

I plugged in a spare USB DVB-S2 tuner to tide me over until I had chance to replace the PCIe card.

A couple of days after that I was awoken (even though it was in another room, it was that loud) by the computer's fan screaming at 100%, as it had frozen when going to sleep after a recording. I was quick to blame the USB tuner and subsequently removed it. Most of the recordings after that were just DVB-S, so went through the Pinnacle 4000i card, and were all perfect. The next time a DVB-S2 recording was made, again, garbled.

This morning the computer woke me again, fan screaming, same situation. I have now swapped the power supply and the TBS card appears to be locking all transponders correctly, even the DVB-S2 that was problematic (98% quality on both tuners).

So it appears that the whole time this has been caused by a dying power supply (stock Dell 305W unit).