J G Miller wrote:

On Sunday, January 29th, 2012, at 18:36:17h +0000, Daniallo wrote:

got the TBS 6280

I note with interest that there is a Penguin on the packaging

I got the TBS 6981 for DVB-S2, it also relies on a binary blob, they
claimed this would be open-sourced "soon", meanwhile it worked fine with
the versions they claimed, but they were slow to update, so I forward
ported their driver to work on a newer kernel, they adopted my modified
version, but still didn't open source the binary blob, or move forward
as fast as the kernel itself does.

I ended up buying a TeVii S480 card instead.

On Sunday, January 29th, 2012, at 19:23:17h +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

I ended up buying a TeVii S480 card instead.

Level of support indicated at http://linuxtv.ORG/wiki/index.php/TeVii_S480

Thanks for the information. I note that the TeVii S480 does include

"DiSEqC 1.0/1.1/1.2 & USALS support"

On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:52:09 -0000, Terry Casey wrote:

My PVR has twin tuners - as do most/all others - but doesn't find every
channel twice, let alone 6 times!

Sounds like dodgy software to me. Have you thought of querying this
behaviour with the manufacturer

Dodgy, ha! Windows of course, the functionality of Media Center is great,
but things like this are so annoying. One forum I found whilst researching
this likened Windows' handling of tuners to turning base metals into gold.

I have toyed with MithTv on Ubuntu with some success, but the Pinnacle card
wasn't supported, unlike the TBS in there now, so I shal revisit this,
along with XBMC which looks promising.

On Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:11:49 +0000 (UTC), J G Miller wrote:

Well, there aren't many around, nearly went for the Blackgold Quad S2/T2
combo, but got the TBS 6280 from Amazon http://tinyurl.com/7e5zd2h.

Thanks for the information. I note with interest that there is a Penguin
on the packaging, although support is via a binary blob.

Seeing as I'm toying with Linux, could you define binary blob?

On Sunday, January 29th, 2012, at 20:07:56h +0000, Daniallo asked:

Seeing as I'm toying with Linux, could you define binary blob?

It sounds worse than it is, like some sort of diseas -- binary blob
that is.

All this means is that kernel support instead of arriving as it should
as lines of source code which can be compiled, linked and then loaded
as a properly constructed kernel module, it arrives as a pre-compiled
binary which may or may not have some C source code supplied with it
as a loader which has to be compiled and linked, usually simply via
a provided shell script.

The reason for it being deliverered as a binary blob is because the
manufacturer does not want the source code and how the device works
revealed for "intellectual property" reasons.

Incidentally, binary blobs is how nVidia and AMD (ATI) have provided
proprietary functional support for their respective graphics cards
since they started supporting GNU/Linux systems, so it is not something
new nor unusual; just not a "good" thing.

J G Miller wrote:

On Sunday, January 29th, 2012, at 19:23:17h +0000, Andy Burns wrote:

I ended up buying a TeVii S480 card instead.

Level of support indicated athttp://linuxtv.ORG/wiki/index.php/TeVii_S480

Yes, I should have said it is supported directly by kernel 3.x, I run it
inside a Xen virtual machine and it had an uptime from the late 3.1rc
versions until I decided to reboot to install 3.2 the other week.

Thanks for the information. I note that the TeVii S480 does include
"DiSEqC 1.0/1.1/1.2& USALS support"

I shall probably be adding a diseqc switch with another LNB or two to
get F1 from other satellites this year.