New machine, new problems....

[John@TunerUK]

Hi all

I'm currently building a machine for a friend, and since I couldn't get Technotrend DVB-S S2 cards easily anymore, I bought a couple of FloppyDTV cards from Digital Everywhere.
So as to avoid confusion, I only installed one, hooked it up, and connected my sky feed, only to get no channels found when I did a scan.
I then updated it's firmware, and tried again, with no joy.
I then tried the software that came with the card, I found some channels, but either the signal is terrible, or the viewing software just isn't up to the job.

The software with the cards comes with a checkup tool, which produced this report

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Digital Everywhere Support Report: (1. 0. 8. 0)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Generated on (Y/M/d): 2009.02.12

FireDTV / FloppyDTV devices:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
devices found: 1

Status for device 1
Model : FloppyDTV S2
GUID : 0x00128724040026BF
HW Ver.: 01.24.04
FW Ver.: 1.5.0 Build 22720
Driver : 5.0.1

Frontend Status:
Sig.Str.: 88%, BER: 0
Locked : YES

CAM Module: ORION xx -3.00

Windows System Information:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OS Path: C:\WINDOWS

OS Version:
Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (Build: 2600)

OHCI Controller:
Manufacturer: IEEE 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller Vendor
Description: OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

Windows Hotfixes:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KB896626: not installed
KB885222: not installed

FireDTV Tools:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No running FireDTV tools found

I tried installing the hotfixes it pointed out, but windows wouldn't let me, as apparently they're not required for XP Pro service pack 3.
I've tried the Floppy dtv forums, but it's just full of unanswered questions, and the offiial website support procedure doesn't seem too quick off the mark.

All software is up to date as far as I can tell, including Sage.

Does anyone here have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance

John

[gplasky]

Did you try the other card to make sure it's not a card problem? Only other suggestion I would have it to load XP but only go to SP2.

Gerry

[John@TunerUK]

I've tried both cards, both get the same result. I'm going to plug the sky feed back into my other machine now, just to double check that, but it was working this morning so I don't think it'll be that.
This Windows XP Pro was bought this week, so it's SP3 out of the box. Is it still possible to roll back to SP2?
I suppose I could try it in my other machine, which is the one listed in my sig, but that one runs perfectly, and I'm not too keen on messing with it.

[John@TunerUK]

Well, this morning I started getting other issues. Windows wouldn't shut down, I couldn't view my computer properties, and for a time I couldn't open system restore. But I eventually managed to get system restore open after a few reboots, and restored back to a point last night where some windows updates were installed.
Violla, everything now works perfectly.

Just one of those things I guess

[John@TunerUK]

Well, I spoke too soon. As soon as I insert a CAM, all of the channels stop working. Free to air and encrypted channels just show a blank screen with no audio.
It's the same CAM I use on my other machine, and that worked without any alterations whatsoever.

Anyone got any experience with these cards, or have any ideas where to even start?

There is some CI software that installed with the drivers, but I get the same whether that's running or not.

[deanm]

Hi John,

Not sure if this helps but had a similar problem to yours. I have 3 DBV-C cards plugged into a old and cheap PCI Firewire Card and everything worked very well. That was until I installed SP3. There was no signal and you could not scan channels. After uninstalling SP3 everything worked fine again.

To cut a long story short it looked like the driver for the Firewire Card was the problem. And never found a fix for it even replaced the Firewire Card but nothing fixed it.

After having an other problem with two PCI Nova DBV-T card I changed my mother board with built in Firewire and now my Floppy DBV-C cards work with SP3 with out any problems.

So I would try your cards in a PC with SP2 or try and find a good Firewire Card.

Dean.

[John@TunerUK]

Cheers for the reply. After many emails to the manufacturer of the tuner, it would appear that they're really fussy about which CAM you have. It looks like I'm going to have to swap for a couple of Diablo lite CAM's. A bit of a pain when you consider they're almost twice the price.