TBS 6904 Plex

Jamauk · 8 Sep 2024 at 16:18

After leaving Sky I'm looking at Freesat options, I have a TBS 6904 4 channel tuner, I used this years ago with Plex and it worked well, however I'm now trying to get it setup again and I cannot find the power cable, it's either been binned or it's hidden in one of the many boxes of wires.

Who knows what connector is used on this card? I've not used it for years and I would like to start using it for TV instead of going down the Freesat route. One end to the cable uses the traditional Molex connector, the connector on this end I have no idea, if only I knew what happened to the old power cable.

freddie64 · 8 Sep 2024 at 16:40

Does it need the power cable?

Don't know nothing about these tuner cards but found this guide that does not mention connecting power cable.

https://www.tbsdtv.com/download/doc...-TV-Tuner-PCI-E-Card-Univesal-User-Guider.pdf

Also found this that may confirm the above (TBS6905 though).

https://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=10123

Jamauk · 8 Sep 2024 at 16:50

I remember from my previous setup, the Dell T20 it detected it but couldn't power it through PCIe alone.

Jamauk · 8 Sep 2024 at 17:57

I'm just wondering now if I can get it to detect channels without power. There isn't much information about it, it could have been a case at the time of me just plugging in the cable because it was there. It does seem strange that the card and 4 tuners are detected but it cannot tune into any channels. I'm looking to tune into the Astra 28.2 satellite, the next two drop downs I cannot remember what I used for, Diseqc and Ku-Linear. Information seems to be very limited.

I'm now wondering if it is the LNB settings, this would be the next most obvious failing point:

Armageus · 8 Sep 2024 at 18:04

You will need the power cable otherwise the card will be unable to power up the dish's LNB

Jamauk · 8 Sep 2024 at 18:09

Armageus said:
You will need the power cable otherwise the card will be unable to power up the dish's LNB

I've been looking for most of the day to find anything remotely like this...

Avalon · 9 Sep 2024 at 10:03

Pretty sure it was just a molex to ground and 12v, but i'll dig one out and check later if it helps.

Jamauk · 30 Sep 2024 at 16:04

A quick update to this, the TBS 6904 is now working on Plex. I'm not using it as a DVR, it is just so that TV can be watched in different areas of the house, and a bit of a fun project. Main TV watching is through Sky Stream, I already have 3 Sky Pucks, and this puts the redundant Sky dish back into action.

I'm still figuring it out and changing settings, so I don't expect it to be fully functional for a while, but here's a few pics:

Cables are a mess, I'll get it working before I tidy everything up!

Jamauk · 1 Oct 2024 at 14:40

An interesting point that I found out yesterday evening was the channel mapping, for instance MTV was actually ITV2, it seemed strange, but it soon made sense once I went through the settings.

I had to disable a few channels, ITV1 as an example had about 10 instances of ITV1, Plex will only allow you to only have one channel allocated to one channel, so it would only map 103 to one of the ITV1's for the other ITV1 channels it was mapping it to random other channels.

Avalon · 1 Oct 2024 at 15:01

That's because each will show regional programming, for example with news etc. BBC1 does the same, which is why during 'local' news, BBC just puts a title card up on iPlayer.

Armageus · 1 Oct 2024 at 15:09

There are also a few other options with TV Cards. Depending on what exactly you want, you have other options such as hosting Tv Cards under TVHeadend and then importing them via antennas into Plex, emulating the better supported HDHomerun.

(With TVHeadend you can also lock tuners onto certain mux/transponders e.g. if you have multiple tuners, to help reduce the delay switching between channels)

Tvheadend.org

Tvheadend is the leading TV streaming server for Linux

tvheadend.org

GitHub - jfarseneau/antennas: DVR emulator for Plex DVR to connect to Tvheadend.

DVR emulator for Plex DVR to connect to Tvheadend. - jfarseneau/antennas

github.com

GitHub - xteve-project/xTeVe: M3U Proxy for Plex DVR and Emby Live TV

M3U Proxy for Plex DVR and Emby Live TV. Contribute to xteve-project/xTeVe development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Jamauk · 1 Oct 2024 at 16:07

Avalon said:
That's because each will show regional programming, for example with news etc. BBC1 does the same, which is why during 'local' news, BBC just puts a title card up on iPlayer.

Makes a lot more sense. I thought it would do all this automatically based on when you put your postcode into Plex.

Armageus said:
There are also a few other options with TV Cards. Depending on what exactly you want, you have other options such as hosting Tv Cards under TVHeadend and then importing them via antennas into Plex, emulating the better supported HDHomerun.

(With TVHeadend you can also lock tuners onto certain mux/transponders e.g. if you have multiple tuners, to help reduce the delay switching between channels)

Tvheadend.org

Tvheadend is the leading TV streaming server for Linux

tvheadend.org

GitHub - jfarseneau/antennas: DVR emulator for Plex DVR to connect to Tvheadend.

DVR emulator for Plex DVR to connect to Tvheadend. - jfarseneau/antennas

github.com

GitHub - xteve-project/xTeVe: M3U Proxy for Plex DVR and Emby Live TV

M3U Proxy for Plex DVR and Emby Live TV. Contribute to xteve-project/xTeVe development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Thanks, that's some interesting reading. I'll probably leave it as is for now, seeing as it's only a simple project that's there if needed, but there are certainly some interesting things that could be used if I decide to do more with this at a future date. Changing of channels is only 2-3 seconds, so there's not much of a delay.