Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

[Rainer Dorsch]

Hi,

I have a Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) and did connect it to a cubox-i 
running openelec.

The known issues on

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_DVB-S2_Stick_%28461e%29

seem to be gone (at least I did not hit them).

Instead there seems to be another (new?) issue, that HD streams have 
artefacts, see

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=220129

and

https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/19582?r=19584#message-19584

I tried to add that to the wiki, but my registration attempt was rejected.

Can somebody with write access to 
http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_DVB-S2_Stick_%28461e%29 please 
add the new issue?

Certainly any hint how to solve this issue is welcome.

Thanks
Rainer

-- 
Rainer Dorsch
http://bokomoko.de/

Re: Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

[Andy Furniss]

Rainer Dorsch wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) and did connect it to a
> cubox-i running openelec.
>
> The known issues on
>
> http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_DVB-S2_Stick_%28461e%29
>
>  seem to be gone (at least I did not hit them).
>
> Instead there seems to be another (new?) issue, that HD streams have
> artefacts, see
>
> http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=220129
>
> and
>
> https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/19582?r=19584#message-19584
>
> I tried to add that to the wiki, but my registration attempt was
> rejected.
>
> Can somebody with write access to
> http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_DVB-S2_Stick_%28461e%29
> please add the new issue?
>
> Certainly any hint how to solve this issue is welcome.

I added a comment on the tvh forum - will paste here as well in case
anyone is interested -

You could try spinning up you cpu(s) with

nice -19 dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null

If you have multiple cores maybe start more than one.

I have a couple of DVB-T2 PCTV sticks and got some usb/power save/xhci
issues on my h/w.

Above would mostly fix. Rather than do that I found that the issue was
far less if I disabled USB3 in bios to avoid using the xhci driver.

Of course your issue may be totally different - but it's worth a try.

Your symptoms do point to ts packet loss - which I know from my
experience can be at usb level. There are posts on here from the past
where people with PCIE cards also had to do similar.

Re: Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

[Rainer Dorsch]

Hi Andy,

thanks for your reply.

On Saturday 16 January 2016 23:16:41 you wrote:
> Rainer Dorsch wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I have a Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) and did connect it to a
> > cubox-i running openelec.
> > 
> > The known issues on
> > 
> > http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_DVB-S2_Stick_%28461e%29
> > 
> >  seem to be gone (at least I did not hit them).
> > 
> > Instead there seems to be another (new?) issue, that HD streams have
> > artefacts, see
> > 
> > http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=220129
> > 
> > and
> > 
> > https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/19582?r=19584#message-19584
> > 
> > I tried to add that to the wiki, but my registration attempt was
> > rejected.
> > 
> > Can somebody with write access to
> > http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Pinnacle_PCTV_DVB-S2_Stick_%28461e%29
> > please add the new issue?
> > 
> > Certainly any hint how to solve this issue is welcome.
> 
> I added a comment on the tvh forum - will paste here as well in case
> anyone is interested -
> 
> You could try spinning up you cpu(s) with
> 
> nice -19 dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null

I added four of these, but if at all then there was only a minor impact.

> 
> If you have multiple cores maybe start more than one.
> 
> I have a couple of DVB-T2 PCTV sticks and got some usb/power save/xhci
> issues on my h/w.
> 
> Above would mostly fix. Rather than do that I found that the issue was
> far less if I disabled USB3 in bios to avoid using the xhci driver.

The cubox-i has no USB 3 port and no bios :-/

> Of course your issue may be totally different - but it's worth a try.

> Your symptoms do point to ts packet loss - which I know from my
> experience can be at usb level. There are posts on here from the past
> where people with PCIE cards also had to do similar.

Sounds reasonable. Can I enable logs which would make these drops explicit?

Thanks,
Rainer

-- 
Rainer Dorsch
http://bokomoko.de/

Re: Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

[Andy Furniss]

Rainer Dorsch wrote:

>>> Certainly any hint how to solve this issue is welcome.
>>
>> I added a comment on the tvh forum - will paste here as well in
>> case anyone is interested -
>>
>> You could try spinning up you cpu(s) with
>>
>> nice -19 dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/null
>
> I added four of these, but if at all then there was only a minor
> impact.

Oh, OK it was worth a try.

>> If you have multiple cores maybe start more than one.
>>
>> I have a couple of DVB-T2 PCTV sticks and got some usb/power
>> save/xhci issues on my h/w.
>>
>> Above would mostly fix. Rather than do that I found that the issue
>> was far less if I disabled USB3 in bios to avoid using the xhci
>> driver.
>
> The cubox-i has no USB 3 port and no bios :-/

Ahh, quite different h/w then. Mine was a quad core baytrail DC board.

>> Of course your issue may be totally different - but it's worth a
>> try.
>
>> Your symptoms do point to ts packet loss - which I know from my
>> experience can be at usb level. There are posts on here from the
>> past where people with PCIE cards also had to do similar.
>
> Sounds reasonable. Can I enable logs which would make these drops
> explicit?

Not that I know of at kernel level. The only way really is to infer loss
from the continuity counters, which TVH already logs.

Re: Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

[Rainer Dorsch]

Hi Andy,

thanks for your reply.

On Sunday 17 January 2016 10:27:15 Andy Furniss wrote:
> Not that I know of at kernel level. The only way really is to infer loss
> from the continuity counters, which TVH already logs.

That is already new for me. I do not find the tvheadend.log in openelec, and 
grep did not find a match either. Do you how I enable logging continuity 
errors in tvheadend?

Thanks
Rainer 

-- 
Rainer Dorsch
http://bokomoko.de/

Re: Pinnacle PCTV DVB-S2 Stick (461e) - HD Streams with artefacts

[Andy Furniss]

Rainer Dorsch wrote:
> Hi Andy,
>
> thanks for your reply.
>
> On Sunday 17 January 2016 10:27:15 Andy Furniss wrote:
>> Not that I know of at kernel level. The only way really is to infer
>> loss from the continuity counters, which TVH already logs.
>
> That is already new for me. I do not find the tvheadend.log in
> openelec, and grep did not find a match either. Do you how I enable
> logging continuity errors in tvheadend?

I don't know about openelec, but for me tvh by default (well I can't
remember setting it up and the debugging tab under configure is empty),
logs to /var/log/daemon.log and /var/log/sys.log.

It may be different on openelec, have a look in /var/log/.