[ET8x00] Anyone using ET8000 with 3*T2-tuners, does your recordings pixelerate?

[BoxFreak]

Hello,

A friend of mine has the Xtrend 8000 box with 3 T2(/C) tuners (model: TDA18273 (DVB-T2) ). There has been problems with the tuners since the beginning. The signal strength pumps in DVB-T bouquets (0-95%) and for DVB-T2 bouquets it is more stable but quite low (10-30%). The ACG is not shown at all. Recordings fail (pixelerate) constantly (not every time though). There were an professional cable guy to measure the signal to the box and from each out-coming interface of the box, but did not find any problem with the signal (or signal strength). Currently box is running on Apollo 88 with xtrend drivers dated 20141029.

Anyone else having this kind of problems, or should we start to suspect HW failure?
Also if someone has an good contact to xtrend, please sent the info to me by PM to get this sorted out.

Thank you (again) in advance!

 

[BoxFreak]

Nobody else using...
Ok. Well yesterday I was investigating this problem for couple of hours. It looks like the tuning goes -1 MHz off from configured. So there is 4 DVB-T bouquets: ch32=~25%, ch44=~85%, ch46=~25% and ch53=~0-20%. So with latest drivers no more so much variation (as incorrectly stated in last post). But what is interesting is that all these bouquets are not locked to the configured frequency. Now if I change the frequency +1Mhz in terrestrial.xml and try to search channels nothing is found. All tuners are looped through to (Samsung) TV where there are no problems receiving the same bouquets (It does not show the signal strength, so cannot compare to that). Could this be an driver issue?

 

[BoxFreak]

Forgot to mention that measured signal strength for all those bouquets is ~80db.

 

[twol]

Nobody else using...
Ok. Well yesterday I was investigating this problem for couple of hours. It looks like the tuning goes -1 MHz off from configured. So there is 4 DVB-T bouquets: ch32=~25%, ch44=~85%, ch46=~25% and ch53=~0-20%. So with latest drivers no more so much variation (as incorrectly stated in last post). But what is interesting is that all these bouquets are not locked to the configured frequency. Now if I change the frequency +1Mhz in terrestrial.xml and try to search channels nothing is found. All tuners are looped through to (Samsung) TV where there are no problems receiving the same bouquets (It does not show the signal strength, so cannot compare to that). Could this be an driver issue?

I know it is not much help , but I use 3 sat cards without problems except issues with the crap Samsung tuners and their ability to pick up weak 8PSK signals like ITV Hd, so assuming you have Samsung tuners, it could be an inherent issue, although not seen anything on the German forums.

 

[BoxFreak]

So, an update on this. Contacted Xtrend in the beginning of december, and they acknowledged that there are issues. But now when I have tried to ask the status I get no reply's. Seems that this box is waste of money as Xtrend shows no interest in fixing their drivers (or admitting that they should replace the HW). Three months without anything done... extremely poor support for what I thought was an "premium" brand.

 

[twol]

How did you contact Xtrend? .... and whom? haven't seen these problems on the German WEB sites

 

[BoxFreak]

How did you contact Xtrend? .... and whom? haven't seen these problems on the German WEB sites

Via the only e-mail address found in their web site support section (RMA request form). Reply's from there were always signed "your Xtrend team"
If anyone has better connections, please sent with pm to me...

 

[BoxFreak]

So an update on this issue. The TDA tuners still not fixed. They sent me couple of tuners to test (TDA) and they showed exactly the same problem. Since I reported back to them test results nothing happens. Xtrend is veeeery slow to respond back...
Then I did an experiment on the newer Si2169 tuners (3 tuners) and they look to be stable (but showing lower SNR ~50%, probably an cosmetic issue). But when running the Apollo 163 now for 17 days and the picture and recordings started to pixelerate, only restart helped. Has anyone else run this (or ET10000) longer period of time? Could this problem be now in ViX side and not longer with Xtrend drivers?