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www.TELE-satellite.com —
12-01/2012 —
TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
quickly and not necessarily
because of the popularity of
this Linux distribution with
its good support.
Once Linux has been in-
stalled, the Kernel, the cen-
tral component of any Unix
operating system, must be
recompiled so that it can
then recognize the NetUP
card. Since the components
on the card are still quite
new, current Linux distribu-
tions with v2.6 won’t recog-
nize it.
NetUP provides some help
as can be seen in Figure 1.
However this newly installed
Ubuntu Linux won’t take
you all the way to the end
since, for example, GIT has
not yet been installed. Be-
cause of this we went ahead
as described in Figure 2.
Once you have accessed
“make menuconfig”, three
options need to be activat-
ed. These are described on
the NetUP website although
in our tests there were only
slight differences. Figures
3, 4 and 5 show exactly
what needs to be changed.
The line “export CONCUR-
RENCY_LEVEL=3”
works
better with a multi-core
processor in which two CPU
cores are used for compila-
tion. The rule is: “CONCUR-
RENCY_LEVEL=X where X
is the number of the CPU
cores used +1
After a restart GRUB
should allow a boot up in
the newly compiled Kernel.
If any errors should occur,
you should first try to com-
pile and install an official
Kernel. This should make
it easier to diagnose any
future problems. In many
cases it’s the nVidia graph-
ics card that is the prob-
lem. If this happens, you
should first try to reinstall
up-to-date nVidia drivers
and then try to recompile
the Kernel. After the first
restart, it would be a good
idea to have a look in /dev/
dvb and check to see if both
adapter0 and adapter1 are
available.
As a second test you
should start “dmseg” in a
shell and check to see if the
NetUP card was success-
fully initialized and that its
firmware is running. If you
don’t have any patience,
you can start “w_scan -f t -c
XX” where XX is the country
code, for example, DE for
Germany. With the “-ft” op-
tion you can start a DVB-T
scan. The “-fc” option starts
a DVB-C scan. When both of
the scans have found chan-
nels, you can breath easy;
the most difficult hurdles
are behind you.
Since with Ubuntu’s Soft-
ware Manager its easy to
select and install “Kaffeine”,
the first tests with this TV
software have been com-
pleted. This doesn’t need
any special explanation:
you should set up the tran-
sponder list in such a way
that it contains predefined
transponders from your
region. You can enter, for
example, the following into
a shell: “nano .kde/share/
apps/kaffeine/scanfile.dvb“
Since this data is already
predefined, there’s usu-
ally nothing that needs to
be changed. If the desired
transponder group is never-
theless still not there, it can
easily be added since the
structure of the data is for
the most part self-explana-
tory.
The last step involves
starting Kaffeine and set-
ting up the recognized DVB
adapters. Four devices
should have been found:
Adapter0/Frontend0 (DVB-
T),
Adapter0/Frontend1
(DVB-C)
Adapter1/Fron-
tend0 (DVB-T) and Adapt-
er1/Frontend1
(DVB-C).
Keep in mind that Apapter0
corresponds to the “F” con-
nector next to the CI slot!
Otherwise you might be
Download this report in
German
www.TELE-satellite.com/
TELE-satellite-1201/
deu
/netup.pdf
wondering why no channels
were found…
Once a scan has been
completed, the channels
that were found have to
be carried over. Now you
can comfortably watch TV
with Kaffeine. This software
comes with all of the typical
functions you’d expect such
as time shifting or record-
ing.
If you want to get into it
a little deeper, simply install
VDR. This ultimate TV soft-
ware - VDR stands for Video
Disc Recorder - gives you
everything your heart could
possibly desire in the form
of plug-ins. Experienced
Linux users can construct
themselves a multimedia
center that would be far
better than anything else
available on the market!
And this is exactly where
the NetUP card shines: in
the smallest possible space
it provides two independ-
ent DVB-T/C adapters and
two CI slots. In this way a
multimedia center with liv-
ing room compatible boxes
can be created: small size
and low energy usage are
critical features here.
The installation and con-
figuration of VDR will not be
described here; there are
far too many features and
it would burst out the sides
of this test report. Those
who are interested should
find out more about yaVDR.
This involves a completed
distribution in which VDR is
already preinstalled with all
the important plug-ins and,
as a bonus, also includes
XBMC. Naturally the Kernel
most also be recompiled
here.
The NetUP Dual DVB-T/C-
CI is specifically meant for
professional applications;
it has enhanced the IPTV
product palette of this man-
ufacturer. In the 10-11/2011
issue of TELE-satellite the
NetUP DVB-IP Gateway 4x
was tested and in the 02-
03/2011 issue the NetUp
sister card Dual DVB-S2-CI
was introduced.
These two PCI-e cards,
the NetUP Dual DVB-T/C-CI
and the NetUP Dual DVB-
S2-CI were designed to be
installed into IPTV servers.
With that in mind, two of
these cards can be installed
in a standard 1U rack.