How to get Technisat AirStar-HD5000-PCI working with QAM?

[bingho]

Hi,

In my quest to actually get a working QAM GB-PVR system, I pulled out an old QAM-capable tuner to test under GB-PVR, the BBTI AirStar-HD5000-PCI (made by Technisat). A quick search of the forum indicates that there was working Technisat DVB-S installations. This card is in the same chipset/tuner family as Technisat's DVB-S cards.

The card works beautifully with the linux-dvb drivers with mythtv for in-the-clear QAM.

Here's a description of the card.
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Te...HD5000-PCI

As an aside, it has an interesting interface, FlexCop, which mimics a network controller, so it appears as a network card in Device Manager. (Shades of HDHomeRun!)
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/B2C2_FlexCop

I emailed the US tech support today regarding support for in-the-clear QAM with the BDA driver, and they explicitly confirmed support with the BDA driver.

Here's the Windows SDK - a quick look at the help file shows promising words like filter, pins, etc.
http://www.bbti.us/download/windows/Tech...K_1_13.zip

What editing in the bda.ini file is necessary to try to get this card to work? I'm happy to post log files if they are necessary.

Thanks again!

[sub]

Run the filtercheck.exe utility from the gbpvr directory, then zip and attach the filtercheck.log and I'll take a look.

[bingho]

Run the filtercheck.exe utility from the gbpvr directory, then zip and attach the filtercheck.log and I'll take a look.

Here it is. It appears to be very similar to the existing entry in bda.ini TechniSat DVB-PC TV Star PCI (BDA), so I tried it. When I did a channel scan with whurlston's hrc virtual channel qam.ini (my cable company uses hrc), it would only allow 68 channels to scan. Is that a driver issue?

Incidentally, you have also been helping me try to get a ViXS PureTV-U 48B0 working with QAM and I noticed that the filtercheck.log has an inconsistency - the ViXS PureTV ATSC Tuner in KSCATEGORY_BDA_NETWORK_TUNER filters doesn't appear to have a (output) to match the PIN_TUNER_OUT in bda.ini. Might this be the cause of the problem for preventing recordings, while allowing LiveTV to work? (and can I somehow modify the the filters to support this?)

Thanks for everything - this truly has been quite a challenge to get qam working!

[sub]

Here it is. It appears to be very similar to the existing entry in bda.ini TechniSat DVB-PC TV Star PCI (BDA), so I tried it. When I did a channel scan with whurlston's hrc virtual channel qam.ini (my cable company uses hrc), it would only allow 68 channels to scan. Is that a driver issue?

Try adding these definitions to your bda.ini file.

[TechniSat AirStar-HD5000 (ATSC)]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
FILTER_TUNER=TechniSat BDA Digital Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=TechniSat BDA Digital Capture
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

[TechniSat AirStar-HD5000 (QAM)]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
TUNING_SPECIAL=2
FILTER_TUNER=TechniSat BDA Digital Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=TechniSat BDA Digital Capture
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

The QAM definition may or may not work. I have no idea. It'll only work if TechniSat implement support for it in a way very similar to Hauppauge. If it doesnt work initially, you could try setting it to "TUNING_SPECIAL=1". If that still doesnt work then you're probably out of luck on the QAM front.

Incidentally, you have also been helping me try to get a ViXS PureTV-U 48B0 working with QAM and I noticed that the filtercheck.log has an inconsistency - the ViXS PureTV ATSC Tuner in KSCATEGORY_BDA_NETWORK_TUNER filters doesn't appear to have a (output) to match the PIN_TUNER_OUT in bda.ini. Might this be the cause of the problem for preventing recordings, while allowing LiveTV to work? (and can I somehow modify the the filters to support this?)

Often the output pin doesnt actually appear until the input pin is connected. The name for PIN_TUNER_OUT doesnt actually matter, and isnt used.

Thanks for everything - this truly has been quite a challenge to get qam working!

This is why I recommend people buy common well supported cards like those from Hauppauge...

[jbodin]

On the plus side, for folks who don't need QAM support the ATSC tuner portion of the AirStar-HD5000-PCI card works great -- I was previously using an older first-generation Technisat Air2PC card that worked well with GBPVR, so I had already sorted-out all the associated BDA operational issues with my GBPVR install. The AirStar-HD5000 card installed with no problem and was immediately detected by the latest version of GBPVR; channel scans worked fine, and I was up-and-running in no time.

The AirStar-HD5000-PCI card has a 5th-generation LG tuner, which solved almost all of my multipath reception problems (I'm within 3 - 5 miles of the transmitters in my area, and I live in the city). Not all that easy to find, but if you can find one, it's a good solution for OTA ATSC reception with GBPVR (the card also supports QAM, but I can't comment on it's QAM performance).