Trying to connect TV-tuner

Hi,
First a few thing:

What?:
I'm trying to connect an Anysee E7TC USB DVB-C USB TV tuner to my Windows MediaCenter 7.

Why?:
I currently have it connected locally on the machine but the reception is real bad and sometimes breaks. Due to the location of the MediaCenter (attic) I cannot get a cable there without the giving up good reception. And yes, I have tried using signal enhancers. The MediaCenter is actually a big server with lots of disk in them so I don't want that in my living room under/near the TV.

Problem:
A goes fine until I want to USE the the Anysee TC7 on the MC7-pc. The client sees the USB-server on the network, detects the TV-tuner connected to it. When I rightclick and select USE on the TV-tuner, the light on the TV-tuner blinks momentarily, as a sign of connecting. Then the VirtualHere client refreshes (to search the network again, sort of vague) for whatever reason and the connection to the TV-tuner is gone. I can do this over and over again everytime the same result.

Hardware/Software:
USB-server: RaspBerry Pi v2 - with the lastest Raspbian Wheezy (2013-09-10) on it. VirtualHere Server starts automatically and the device gets a DHCP-reservation.
MC7-pc: HP ML350 G4 with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with MediaCenter enabled and big disks. I'm using the x64 client on this machine.
Everything is connected thru giga-bit network.
TV-tuner: Anysee E7TC-CI, has an own power supply.

To be complete; all other USB-devices I have work in this set-up, eg USB-drives, floppy-disk, Keyboards, headsets.

I know a TV-tuner is probally the most brutal thing to connect via an USB-server, but I sure wish there is a way to get this to work.

Kind regards,

#2

forgot some info:
VirtualHere USB-server version: 1.5.1
VirtualHere USB-Client version: 1.6.3

And the MC7-pc has a fixed IP-address.

#3

Yeah im pretty sure the tv tuners uses isochronous so its probably not going to work for the time being, its pretty frustrating i know...

I was afraid of the Isochronous-thing popping up. The TV-tuner definitely uses this. But also most USB Webcams use it and, if I have read correctly, people get them to work. I was hoping that my TV-tuner would also work.

Almost all USB-over-IP devices do not support Isochronous-devices. For this reason I went for VirtualHere. Being PC-based (eg a Rasp Pi) it sounded really promissing to me and thus bougth a Rasp Pi. I think my only option is an AnywhereUSB device but those are mighty expensive and hard to get as a consumer. Its like at least 4 times the cost of a Rasp Pi with your software licensed on it.

As to be on the more positive side of thing; Are you going to work on supporting Isochronous-devices?

#5

VirtualHere does support Isochronous. But its very flakey on most devices. The anywhere usb doesnt support isochronous e.g http://www.digi.com/products/usb/anywhereusb#specs see bottom of page (Device types).

Isochronous is very time sensitive and doesnt seem to work on the pi at all *via userspace*. It used to, my (isochronous) USB speakers were working at one point with the pi via virtualhere but dont seem to work anymore, im not sure if its a regression in the kernel or a bug in my code. I recently bought a hardware protocol analyzer and its on my todo list to figure out why the speakers are not working if its me or the kernel...

The Pi works if a kernel driver is written specifically for the webcam as this doesnt use the built in generic driver userspace driver.

Oke, thanks for pointing out that the AnyhereUSB devices do not support Isochronous devices. I missed that one. Almost ordered one in the past... :-)

The tv-tuner has only Windows drivers shipped with it. If you Google on "Anysee TC7 Debian" you only get XBMC stuff. Nothing for the real Debian itself. Out of luck there. I do not know what the priority of this Isochronous-issues is on your to-do list, meanwhile my search will continue for a USB-over-IP devices that specifically says it does support Isochronous.

Thanks for all explanations.
I will update this thread if I find a device that does work if you want me to.

Im pretty sure the pi wont work with the tvcard because the USB bus is shared with the network card. You really need a board that has a dedicated network bus and a dedicated usb bus. Im thinking of getting one of the newer quadcore arm boards like this one http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G1…

as i think that would probably be much better performance for all usb transfers. VirtualHere is quite heavily multithreaded and the more cores the better!