Hello,
mi mecool ki-pro (currently running amlogic-ng 9.2.8)served me well for the last ~3 years, but now the tuner board is broken, taking with it the power supply (you can see the tuner board in this topic, I posted a couple of messages there, one of them has been flagged and I don’t know why)
If I use a new power supply and remove the tuner board the box boots fine, with the tuner board it doesn’t (too much current drawn and the tuner board gets very hot and smells of burnt electronics).
My options are:
buy the same tuner board (I found it in a couple of online stores, it would cost me around 27€ shipped), which isn’t a very good performer but it more or less works.
buy an external dvb-s2 tuner (i.e. a mygica hdstar, ~40€ from the official store on aliexpress, ~20€ from some dodgy sellers on aliexpress).
If the usb tuner works (supposedly it is supported but seeing this topic I’m not so sure) it would be a more future-proof option (if the mecool box breaks I can always use it with another box) OTOH it is “yet another box” with another power supply in the power strip to take care of.
I read that the tuner on the hdstar isn’t really good, but then neither is the one in the current board.
Thank you, but I think SAT>IP isn’t suitable for my setup: I control a dish rotor via the rotor external mechanism and that only works with a local tuner
The most economical solution is to choose a 4K enigma2 satellite receiver with DVB-S2X tuner to use as a SAT>IP tuner or m3u playlist. An inexpensive one recommended by amazon is the HiTUBE 4K Combo 1xDVB-S2X 1xDVB-T2 / C Linux Enigma 2 OPENATV IPTV and Wi-Fi Decoder
I’ve had the HDStar before and its really hit and miss, wouldn’t recommend it. There are too many different hardware revisions with differing levels of support. If you do your homework and get lucky you might be all right. If you want to go down the USB route spend extra of proven tuner like the Dvbsky S960 V2.
I’ve replaced my S960 with a Telestar Digibit R1 and it’s the best DVB-S2 tuner I’ve ever had. Haven’t had any issues with it for years.
When you say “hit and miss” you just refer to the hardware versions (AFAIK v3 is supported nowadays) or on the sensitivity of the tuner?
For less than the Dvbsky I could get a Telestar Digibit Twin, if only I could find a way to control my actuator (I guess I could patch tvheadend as I already did for my current setup, but I’m getting old and I prefer a more “plug&play” solution ).
Also, since I don’t know how the telestar has to be setup, I cannot be sure I could even do that: do you have to configure the satellites/muxes on the server or you just do it in tvheadend?
I guess I’ll have to study the SAT>IP protocol…
I have the deco linux Octagon SF8008 4K and it is good value for money. It does not heat up, it has 1GB of Ram memory, good tuner, Twin, combo … I think that in this category of tuners Linux is the best in the economic range.
@Friendforum and @cubimol for the time being I don’t consider an enigma based receiver: the switch from a pc with vdr to a tvbox with tvheadend was traumatic enough (though now I’m happy with it) so I don’t want to learn a completely different system, a system that I’ll need to patch and self -build to control my actuator.
Unless you’re saying that I can install coreelec (edit or tvheadend) on it, then I’m sold
The Digibit itself needs a little bit of config, after that its all done in TVH. I imported the Digibit into my country and there aren’t many users of it here, so it took me a bit of time to figure out the necessary config. There were plenty of guides for Europe etc.
I’m running some custom firmware that adds a few extra features. For me the biggest benefit of the customer firmware is the ability to use one input across all four tuners. I haven’t touched the Digibit config since I installed it. Once configured it just shows up automatically in TVH as a sat>ip tuner and you configure it as you would a PCIe or USB tuner.
I’m not current on the level of support fo the HDStar, I gave up on them a long time ago. I think I had both a v1.5 and a v3.0, the v1.5 wasn’t terrible, but firmware/driver support for the v3.0 was terrible for a long time.
They are saying that a linux enigma receiver is good for SAT-IP transmission for your box where CoreELEC 19 is with Tvheadend. They are saying that satellite usb adapters are unsupported and unreliable that the SAT-IP option is better. After each one does what he wants, if money is spent on unsupported gadgets that are not worth even if he is reporting … I have it clear if I had to buy and I would do it separately for CE 19 ODROID-N2 Plus, Beelink GT King pro , X96 Air, etc and apart for Satellite a Linux deco type Octagon SF8008 (which for Satellite television channels are better than anything else).
It’s not that I’m not listening to your suggestions, in fact I’m considering all of them and studying what enigma2 based machines offer and what the digibit can do. As I said, my main constraint is the old style actuator I don’t want to get rid of, and I fear either solution would need a lot of tinkering to accomplish that.
If the usb adapters are so problematic maybe my best (or less bad) option is to just buy the same board and be done with it, but I’ve taken no decision yet.
Thank you, that’s the shop I found, as well as briv.cz (same price but more expensive shipping). I guess the new tuner they sent worked?
I think the problem is overheating of the voltage regulator for the lnb, so even if I buy a new one in a few years time it will break.
It was not removed. What works will work unless something gets broken. What happened, and was extensively reported here in the forum is that the main (and only) dev for DVB disappeared exactly 2 years ago and there’s nobody left with his extended knowledge.
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