Friday, January 22, 2010

Terratec Cinergy HTC USB XS HD driver problem

I upgraded my driver for the tv tuner stick to 5.09.0813.00 a while ago, and since then the reception on DVB-C has been really poor. Before, DVBViewer would find 50 TV channels, and after it would find somewhere between 3 and 9.

I have used countless hours trouble shooting, trying new cables, shielding, tuner software, until I finally tried to downgrade the driver to the one that came on the CD.
So a good advice if you have a Cinergy USB stick: Do not use the driver mentioned above

Use 5.8.630.0 instead. It works like a charm.

Monday, January 4, 2010

USB-tuner added

I have now added an USB tuner to watch and record cable tv (DVB-C). The hardware I am using is the Terratec Cinergy HTC USB XS HD which is a Analogue, DVB-T and DVB-C tuner.

The software I am using is DvbViewer. Which is pretty easy to use, and also comes with a server part, so multiple front-ends can be connected if I need that later on. It has a web interface that is very easy to use so I am able to schedule recordings easily even when I am away from home.

Another nice thing about DvbViewer is that it works great with the BroadCom Crystal HD chip (BCM70012). In order for it to show up in the configuration though, you need to bump the merit of the filter using e.g. the Direct Show Filter Manager.

Furthermore, there are some nice plugins that offer much of the functionality that the scrapers in XBMC do. So at the moment I am using DvbViewer to watch both live tv, recorded tv as well as movies.

For music I am using twonky as upnp server and foobar2000 and an iPod touch as renderers, and another iPod touch or my iPhone as controllers.

I do however have a slight problem with watching live HD TV (DR HD). The audio is delayed slightly (0.5 ~ 1 second). When watching recorded HD TV there is no problem, so it does not seem to be a problem with being able to process the video. Besides, the CPU load is only around 30%.