Windows 7 x64, SkyStar2 and DVBViewer

[Zazza]

Greetings,

I know that the problem is not strictly related to DVBViewer but I hope that someone else with the same configuration could help me.

So, I've tried to follow a similar topic in the German section of the forum but, apparently, with no luck.

 

Keeping it short: direct installing SkyStar 4.5.0 WDM drivers will cause a BSOD with a call on Skynet_amd64.sys file.

 

To have WDM drivers (4.5.0) installed "correctly" I did:

 

1) completely uninstall any previous drivers version (repeating the process until Skystar2 is seen as an unknown device in the device manager)

2) install 4.3.3 WDM beta driver

3) update with 4.5.0 WDM driver

 

Unfortunately, even with WDM 4.5.0 drivers installed, the tuner is not detected neither by DVBViewer nor by Windows Media Center.

 

With BDA drivers, tuner is detected but signal strength is always around 20% making it impossibile to tune any channel.

 

Any guess?

Thank you very much for your time.

[Springveldt]

Thanks for the warning, I've not been brave enough to put Windows7 x64 on my main PC.

DVBViewer 4.1 is running fine on Windows7 x86 on my HTPC but it running as a client.

As you've said it it obviously a Technisat driver issue, I guess I'll wait on them releasing a Windows7 driver before upgrading.

[Kungen]

Yeah, same problem here, except I'm using the Technisat Airstar 2 card. I'm running on 64-bit Windows 7 RC. Got the same BSOD when I installed the 4.5.0 drivers.

Will try to install those older 4.3.3 drivers and upgrade and see what happens.

[Kungen]

2) install 4.3.3 WDM beta driver

 

...

 

With BDA drivers, tuner is detected but signal strength is always around 20% making it impossibile to tune any channel.

 

Where are the 4.3.3 drivers and the BDA drivers? On Technisat's web page there are only the 4.5.0a drivers available.

[Zazza]

Here you are:

 

http://www.dvbskystar.com/down_drivers.html

 

I'd really like to hear other people's feedback...

[Milly]

Here you are:

 

http://www.dvbskystar.com/down_drivers.html

 

I'd really like to hear other people's feedback...

 

I've got the SSHD2 running in W7 RC1 no problems thus far with DVBViewer, Mediacenter however is another matter...

The signal has been present once then dissappeared apparently going into tuner menu then back works but as soon as you go to DVB-T channel from DVB-S the signal disappears again!

Overall i'd say W7 is already an improvment on Vista S3 sleep works for a start!

[pjank]

With BDA drivers, tuner is detected but signal strength is always around 20% making it impossibile to tune any channel.

 

About those BDA drivers - I've noticed sth else...

Everything works great as long as I'm using channels from the lower band (frequency below the LOF switch setting, which defaults to 11700 MHz). Anything above that limit is completely unavailable :-(

 

I've made some tests with "TransEdit" application, using these settings: LOF1=9750, LOF2=10600, LOFSW=11700.

"Analyze" or "Scan Selected" on freqs below 11700 work just fine, above that I get nothing at all ("Analyze" shows quality=0%, no data rate; "Scanner" shows yellow "PAT" for a few seconds, then turns red and that's it).

Now, what's really interesting... I've tried to "push the limit" with a higher LOF SW value. I've managed to go up to about 12Ghz and this way successfully tuning a little higher frequencies. But still - anything above that SW frequency was unavailable. That makes me think the problem is with this driver unable to send the 22kHz signal into my converter (Universal LNB, no DiSEqC). Am I right? Is this a bug in the latest (4.5.0) BDA drivers from Technisat? I haven't tried other versions yet.

[pjank]

After doing some more tests with those 4.5.0 BDA drivers...

1. Having just the same symptoms on Vista 64bit, so it's not really Win7 specific.

2. It's not exactly like only the transponders above 11.7GHz (LOF2) are missing.

After careful examination, in my case (Hotbird 13E) it was the few below 10796, few between 11526 and 11604 and... all above 11681.

If anybody has any clue why this would happen, please answer. Perhaps there's some setting in the drivers that I've missed?

I even thought about trying to implement a testing BDA application myself, but that might be a big waste of time. Is this driver just still broken or what?

 

It sure would be nice to make this card finally work with BDA, as it's definitely the future architecture and more and more application use it.

 

Anyway... for now... I've FINALLY managed to install the "old" network drivers on my Win7 64bit machine.

Those step-by-step "voodoo" ;-) instructions floating around the net (one even at the top of this thread) - although helpful - didn't really work for me.

So here's another one:

1. In Device Manager uninstall whatever drivers for the Skystar you might have tried so far.
   Right click the "Technisat DVB...", "uninstall" (including driver software)... then "scan for new devices"... and again - until there's just the "Unknown" network device left)
   I don't think disabling the device or disabling network etc. is necessary.
   
2. Reboot, on bootup press F8 and select "Disable driver signature checking"
   
3. In Device Manager, manually install the drivers from v4.3.3 package (skynet.inf, skynet_amd64.sys is all we need)
   Check if the device is "working" (no yellow exclamation point icon)... if not - perhaps you forgot the previous step?
   
4. Still in Device Manager, again (no reboot necessary), install/update the drivers from v4.5.0 package (this time they're signed)
   If you get a bluescreen now... make sure you read step no.3 more careful ;-)
   
5. You may reboot now, no need for disabling driver signature checking any more.
   
6. To make apps like DVBViewer find our new device we still need few more files installed (why in the world didn't Technisat include this in the driver!?). You may run the setup from v4.5.0 driver package or just some way extract those two files: skydll.dll and Sky2PCAVSrc.ax (they're usually in "TechniSat DVB\bin" but I don't think that matters where you put them) and run "regsvr32 Sky2PCAVSrc.ax".
   
7. You may now start DVBViewer, TransEdit or whatever and rescan the devices. SkyStar2 should be there now :-)
   

[pjank]

After doing some more tests with those 4.5.0 BDA drivers...

(...)

After careful examination, in my case (Hotbird 13E) it was the few below 10796, few between 11526 and 11604 and... all above 11681.

If anybody has any clue why this would happen, please answer. Perhaps there's some setting in the drivers that I've missed?

(...)

 

Still no answer? Anyone, please! Not even a confirmation of such a behaviour from other people?

Is everybody just using the old network-adapter type drivers now and don't care about switching to BDA?

 

I'm just curious... could this be a bug in technisat drivers, just the BDA architecture itself, maybe a bad implementation or perhaps just something wrong with my system. Why can't I tune those frequencies?

[tomas.jurksas]

I'm usig Win7 x64 7600 RTM, DVBViewer 4.2.1, Technisat SkyStar HD2 and drivers from www.technisat.com. Where is no problems at all.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Griga
Unnecessary quoting removed

[Griga]

I'm usig Win7 x64 7600 RTM, DVBViewer 4.2.1, Technisat SkyStar HD2

Please note: The SkyStar2 and the SkyStar HD2 are completely different. Other hardware, other drivers. The HD2 is a relabeled Twinhan / Azurewave.

 

So posting something about the HD2 is not related to this topic.

[NORMY]

Hi, I have a SkyStar HD PCI Card. Just installed the final enterprise release of Windows 7 and all drivers picked up except the SkyStar card, which shows as a 'Multimedia Device'.

 

You chaps seem to have not had much difficulty getting the device installed in your exsperience so could you please advise what driver you're using to get Windows 7 to recognise the device?

 

Many thanks.

[WildBit]

As stated the Skystar HD (2) uses BDA drivers and not the standard skyster 2 drivers. The card is in fact a twinhan clone

 

 

Hi, I have a SkyStar HD PCI Card. Just installed the final enterprise release of Windows 7 and all drivers picked up except the SkyStar card, which shows as a 'Multimedia Device'.

 

You chaps seem to have not had much difficulty getting the device installed in your exsperience so could you please advise what driver you're using to get Windows 7 to recognise the device?

 

Many thanks.

[Tjod]

There are SkyStar HD = TechnoTrend and SkyStar HD2 = Twinhan and SkyStar 2 = Technisat they are all completely different Hardware. If you speak about SkyStar each letter and number is imported e.g. TechniSat SkyStar1 (CI) work with DVBViewer TechniSat SkyStar1 not.

[Griga]

In order to confuse everybody completely, TechniSat has introduced a new SkyStar S2 PCI lately, that is based on the classical SkyStar2 design (at least the network driver interface), but is capable of DVB-S2. So let me summarize:

 

- SkyStar2: DVB-S only. DVBViewer supports the network (WDM) and BDA-driver.

- SkyStar HD: DVB-S/S2. A relabeld TechnoTrend 3200. BDA driver only.

- SkyStar HD2: DVB-S/S2: A relabeled Twinhan/AzureWave AD-SP400. BDA driver only.

- SkyStar S2: DVB-S/S2: Dunno if already fully supported by DVBViewer Pro 4.2.1, Lars will know...

[Andrey123456]

I saw SkyStar S2: DVB-S/S2 card at my friend working with "trial" DVBV 3.9.2 It worked only with latest wdm driver from technisat website. With BDA driver diseq (simple 4x1) didn't work.

 

Does it mean that the card will work also with my original DVBV 4.2.1 ?

What about full support of this card in the future? When?

 

The card has nice tuner and price is acceptable.

[Andrey123456]

I got this card and tested in my computer. It works with latest DVBV, but before it started to to work it made a lot of mess in my system. I didn't do long time stability test yet.

 

Sequence to operate it if following:

 

- install wdm driver

- install card software (from cd or whatever)

- apply fixed IP to new technisat network adapter (i.e. 192.168.200.2 mask 255.255.255.0)

- be sure that there is no conflict with your existing network adapter (i.e realtek ip auto, supposed to be in range 192.168.0.100 - 192.168.0.110 mask 255.255.255.0)

 

if your network adapter will become crazy, uninstall it from device manager and install back. Update diver of course/

 

- install DVBV

-select Technisat card in hardware section

- watch tv if there is no other bugs

 

My impression - not the best DVB card, but it costs almost half of mt TT-S2-3200. Even if it has some bugs, it is worth the money it costs.

Edited September 6, 2009 by Andrey123456

[Andrey123456]

Next step - improve stability

 

- remove from startup folder (start->all programs-> startup) Server4PC program.

- restart computer.

- set DVBV optoins hardware and tv radio tabs according exampes.

 

Stability test was 210 channel switchings without any error. DVBV is still running without any problem

Edited September 6, 2009 by Andrey123456

[kaiser.wilhelm2]

For information: Technisat will release the DVB-PC TV Stars software 4.5.1 for the SkyStar 2, SkyStar USB, SkyStar USB2, SkyStar S2, AirStar 2, AirStar USB, CableStar 2 within the next few days.

 

The new package works with Windows 7 and now contains DVBViewer TE2.

[Zazza]

4.5.1 driver is out now. However, I've tried the WDM and the BDA drivers: they install fine but I can't tune anything with this set. Signal is always "out of lock"... Seems an old problem.

Edited September 23, 2009 by Zazza

[kaiser.wilhelm2]

Can you provide more details? We tested this on Windows XP, XP x64, Vista x86 and x64, Windows 7 RTM x86 and x64 and everything works just fine with all FlexCop IIB products...