I haven't kept up with the latest generation of cards but have read a few things about some now finally having hardware blindscan. If anyone could summarize which cards (if any) have hardware blindscan and any opinions welcome. Thanks.
Blindscan PC DVB card status
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only pc based s2 blindscan ive confirmed is with the newer dvbworld products. it has some bugs and dvbworld is mia in fixing them. prof revolution was rumoured to have blindscan capabilities but internal conflict split that company. i think the prof revolution brand website is actually a tenow venture now(i may be wrong) and they havent done much with blindscan but still list is as a vapourware feature on their site. stephen left the prof brand and is now developing the advancetune brand. by the specs it is an updated version of the prof revolution series(newer revision demod) but hardware isnt available yet. blindscan is also listed as a feature and im eager to test some hardware.
crackt out,.
crackt out,.
Rick's Satellite shows the Prof 8000 having a PTG Engine 1.7 Blind Scan Interface. I have no experience with it, so no idea whether it works or not. However, I do plan on getting one of these soon.
Prof8000
Does anyone know if the Prof Revolution 7301/8000 cards support 64bit Windows 7?
:EDIT:
For some reason, I couldn't find any drivers last night for Win7 64bit, but a quick search this morning just returned some better results. Looks likes Prof has Win7 64bit drivers for both the Prof 7301 and Prof 8000.
Prof8000
Does anyone know if the Prof Revolution 7301/8000 cards support 64bit Windows 7?
:EDIT:
For some reason, I couldn't find any drivers last night for Win7 64bit, but a quick search this morning just returned some better results. Looks likes Prof has Win7 64bit drivers for both the Prof 7301 and Prof 8000.
ptg engine 1.7 blindscan interface only exists on the prof website. my 7301 and 7500 dont blindscan (trust me). id recommend waiting to purchase until the advancetune units come out. check out prof-tuners.com and read the news. if you weight the info on that site the same as the info on proftuners.com then it would pay to wait. if you really need blindscan capabilities now then id recommend the opensat s9 reciever or the dvbworld products although the dvbworld win7 64 bit driver will be an issue for you cuz it doesnt work.
crackt out,.
Dang! I will have to check out the new units. Are the new Advancetune units supposed to have blindscan capability? The opensat s9 is a STB, right? I don't really want a STB as I am trying to integrate everything into my home theater PC. PCI or PCIe is my preferred reciever format. Do you know if any Hauppauge units support blindscan and/or work with Win7 64bit?
not sure about the hauppauges but i havent heard anything. i think one model had dvbs blindscan but not s2. the opensat is a stb and your point is noted. that leaves the dvbworld card but like i said it doesnt work with the in7 64 bit driver(proof is in the thread titled "dvbworld needs a software update"). stephen was the one who started the prof revolution brand. for whatever reason the relationship he had with his oem tanked. they split and we now have the 2 brands. prof revolution and advancetune. right now neither has blindscan and the advancetune products arent available. last time i spoke to advancetune tho they said they should be available soon. it also appears that advancetune is going to release a blindscan driver for the prof revolution series but i bet itll be crippled. doesnt make much sense to support your competitors hardware. only time will sort this out.
crackt out,.
crackt out,.
I'll try to clarify a few points. The current Prof line (7301, 7500, 8000) is capable of hardware blindscanning. I got this running on Linux this past January and it works as well or better than my Pansat 9200HD DVB-S2 Plus STB, which likely uses the same demodulator. However while the Prof demod chip appears to have a number of dedicated modes for blindscanning, many of these seem to have bugs or severe usability constraints. I just happened to get one working.
Shortly thereafter Prof tried to write blindscanning software on their own that would work on Windows. Allegedly they abandoned this effort, claiming the hardware is not capable of blindscanning. This is of course silly, although they may have gone down the wrong rat hole as they did not have access to my work.
About the same time there was a split in the company, and as mentioned above, AdvanceTech is now teasing us with their plans for new PC tuners with an updated version of the demodulator part. Whether this would provide better performance or improved blindscanning, I have no way of knowing. If the new chip actually works in some of the blindscanning modes that are faulty in the earlier chip version, that could be very, very nice.
I'm sitting tight waiting to see what happens. I haven't released my Linux blindscanning code for a number of reasons. The major one has been my lack of free time. In addition the current demod driver has a plethora of bugs that I have fixed, but have not exhaustively tested. It works great for my needs, but I cannot currently support any problems that might turn up. I also have little regard for the DVB implementation in Linux and somewhat hacked in my own approach to add a bunch of other useful FTA features. I would either need to complete this or strip it down to work with the standard Linux DVB interfaces in order to release my code. On top of this, I'm reluctant to invest a lot of time into old technology should the new AdvanceTech tuners work a lot better and require a rather different coding approach. Until the path forward becomes clear, I'm sitting tight.
Shortly thereafter Prof tried to write blindscanning software on their own that would work on Windows. Allegedly they abandoned this effort, claiming the hardware is not capable of blindscanning. This is of course silly, although they may have gone down the wrong rat hole as they did not have access to my work.
About the same time there was a split in the company, and as mentioned above, AdvanceTech is now teasing us with their plans for new PC tuners with an updated version of the demodulator part. Whether this would provide better performance or improved blindscanning, I have no way of knowing. If the new chip actually works in some of the blindscanning modes that are faulty in the earlier chip version, that could be very, very nice.
I'm sitting tight waiting to see what happens. I haven't released my Linux blindscanning code for a number of reasons. The major one has been my lack of free time. In addition the current demod driver has a plethora of bugs that I have fixed, but have not exhaustively tested. It works great for my needs, but I cannot currently support any problems that might turn up. I also have little regard for the DVB implementation in Linux and somewhat hacked in my own approach to add a bunch of other useful FTA features. I would either need to complete this or strip it down to work with the standard Linux DVB interfaces in order to release my code. On top of this, I'm reluctant to invest a lot of time into old technology should the new AdvanceTech tuners work a lot better and require a rather different coding approach. Until the path forward becomes clear, I'm sitting tight.
Linux API is under constant change which makes it difficult to write apps for, its a real hassle. Its hard to write an API where different users will have different needs and requirements. Opensrc has always been bad at this because using the same hardware in different manors is almost encouraged. Microsoft tries to restrict you into using the hardware in the manor it was originally designed for, but still fails, ie BDA not supporting Diseqc, which is absolutely incredible it doesnt.
the linux api is really nice in some ways to work with, in other ways its incredibly restrictive and makes adding new previously unsupported functionality difficult. You cant just add a function to your device ko and have it accessible by your app, you need to also add it to the dvb-core which now makes your dvb-core different then everyone else's and incompatible.
I like how the dvb spec handles different pids and their content, it would be nice to see something like that implimented where there was just a single read() and write() function, each has a single argument, a char * buffer, and the contents of that buffer determine what you want the hardware todo through descriptor tags. adding new functionality would just mean adding a new descriptor tag to the switch/case: statement.
its not as user friendly to the eye but would make expansion alot easier.
the linux api is really nice in some ways to work with, in other ways its incredibly restrictive and makes adding new previously unsupported functionality difficult. You cant just add a function to your device ko and have it accessible by your app, you need to also add it to the dvb-core which now makes your dvb-core different then everyone else's and incompatible.
I like how the dvb spec handles different pids and their content, it would be nice to see something like that implimented where there was just a single read() and write() function, each has a single argument, a char * buffer, and the contents of that buffer determine what you want the hardware todo through descriptor tags. adding new functionality would just mean adding a new descriptor tag to the switch/case: statement.
its not as user friendly to the eye but would make expansion alot easier.
Some news from TBS: TBS 6921 release date
Also I can confirm blindscan abilities of Prof Revolution cards series under Windows. We have success with Prof 8000 and limited success with Prof 7301 now. This tool isn't ready yet, but works and tests continue.
Also I can confirm blindscan abilities of Prof Revolution cards series under Windows. We have success with Prof 8000 and limited success with Prof 7301 now. This tool isn't ready yet, but works and tests continue.
Wondering if the landscape has changed here? It seems that BlindScan for the TBS cards exists now, but may be just as buggy as the DVB World. Is there a good DVB-S/DVB-S2 solution with blind scan available now?
I've seen no changes in terms of what is available. In terms of what is possible, that's another matter. Lately I've been back writing improved Linux drivers for the Prof 7301, 7500 and 8000 units and can report the speed, accuracy and reliability of hardware blindscan on those tuners is better than anything else I've seen, even in STBs. My list of potential improvements is even longer than what I have implemented to date. Regardless of whether I ever release the code, there is no technical reason why the vendors could not do the same.
Hi pendragon,
Please send me a PM with your email address. I need contact with you. Thanks.
The blindscan and spectrum analyzer tools for Prof 7301, Prof 8000 and two other dvb cards I mentioned previously has been released. Maybe someone didn't know yet, there is a thread in Rick Caylor's forum:
New Windows Blind Scan Software
Original discussion is in another thread:
Ïîääåðæêà BlindScan â DVB-ñîôòå - Ñòðàíèöà 9 - Viaccess for Free Forums (in russian, use google or another translation).
Prof 7500 still doesn't supported because of problem of card freezing at attempt to send I2C commands to demod chip. Hope we will solve this problem further.
New Windows Blind Scan Software
Original discussion is in another thread:
Ïîääåðæêà BlindScan â DVB-ñîôòå - Ñòðàíèöà 9 - Viaccess for Free Forums (in russian, use google or another translation).
Prof 7500 still doesn't supported because of problem of card freezing at attempt to send I2C commands to demod chip. Hope we will solve this problem further.
Very impressive piece of software this is what I've been looking for, for a long time, thanks so much.
I've only had 10 minutes with it so far, once you figure out all the options in the BLScan.ini file it's powerful, fast and accurate, at least it was on the one satellite I tried AMC21.
The CrazyScan part of the software also works great, a useful spectrum analyzer which should be handy for feed hunting.
It looks like I'm going have to replace my damaged prof7301 (diseq damaged by lightening) with a new one, I've been holding of waiting for a decent blindscan solution and this appears to be it. I hope the Prof/AdvanceTune people send you a substantial donation.
I've only had 10 minutes with it so far, once you figure out all the options in the BLScan.ini file it's powerful, fast and accurate, at least it was on the one satellite I tried AMC21.
The CrazyScan part of the software also works great, a useful spectrum analyzer which should be handy for feed hunting.
It looks like I'm going have to replace my damaged prof7301 (diseq damaged by lightening) with a new one, I've been holding of waiting for a decent blindscan solution and this appears to be it. I hope the Prof/AdvanceTune people send you a substantial donation.
For those of us who don't have time to wade through a stilted automatic translation of the original website, could someone post some screenshots of the software package in action?
Also, how is the sensitivity on the cards that it works with? As far as I know, the Prof 7500 is supposed to be pretty good, but I've never heard anything about the rest of them.
Also, how is the sensitivity on the cards that it works with? As far as I know, the Prof 7500 is supposed to be pretty good, but I've never heard anything about the rest of them.
On the link above to the thread at Ricks site the is a good write up that can be downloaded as a text file by Starman, there are some screenshots on page 2 of the thread.
BLscan.exe runs as a DOS box controlled be BLScan.ini, the results are saved to a text file and an ini file for different viewing software, the write up by Starman explains how to set it up, I know it sounds cumbersome but once you get it set up as suggested it's fairly straight forward.
CrazyScan has a GUI and is fairly straight forward, I don't have any switches and notice some people were having problems with some set ups
I have the Prof7301 I imagine it's much the same as the 7500 as far as sensitivity goes, one of the best in my limited experience.
BLscan.exe runs as a DOS box controlled be BLScan.ini, the results are saved to a text file and an ini file for different viewing software, the write up by Starman explains how to set it up, I know it sounds cumbersome but once you get it set up as suggested it's fairly straight forward.
CrazyScan has a GUI and is fairly straight forward, I don't have any switches and notice some people were having problems with some set ups
I have the Prof7301 I imagine it's much the same as the 7500 as far as sensitivity goes, one of the best in my limited experience.
The sensitivities and performance of the Prof 7301, 7500 and 8000 tuners should essentially be the same because they all use the same tuner and demod chips in the same NIM package. There may be slight differences because of shielding and possibly the noise generated by your computer and power supply. The indicated blindscan tool does not currently work with the Prof 7500 tuners, but there is no reason it cannot in the future. My 7301, 7500 and 8000 all blindscan the same under Linux.
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