Tiviar Alpha Plus Combo STB

greasepalm

Menu-setup-storage-settings-initialize devices-select your hdd and initialize it then ext3-ext4 and that should be it ready.

Payton

greasepalm wrote: »

Menu-setup-storage-settings-initialize devices-select your hdd and initialize it then ext3-ext4 and that should be it ready.

After I press Menu-setup there is no Storage option

The high horse brigade

Payton wrote: »

After I press Menu-setup there is no Storage option

It's in system on the next page

Trevord

NewClareman wrote: »

You don’t need to disable the second tuner.
Use the loop through cable supplied with the box

Then go into Service searching => Tuner Configuration => Tuner B => Configuration mode: Loop through to , Connected to: Tuner A.

This gives a little more flexibility as it increases the number of channels available with one cable.

Setting this up for my parents who only have a single sat feed at the moment.

Just checking that I have this right.

1. Connect the single cable feed to Tuner 1 LNB in
2. Connect the loop cable between Tuner 1 LNB Out and Tuner 2
3. In tuner configuration menu set Tuner A to Simple (Single)
4. In tuner configuration menu set Tuner B to loop through to Tuner A

swoofer

correct.

phil49

Hi There, Thanks for all the advice in this thread.I have got my box and all the channels set up the way I want it.I have now moved on to get my external drive with hundreds of movies connected,just a few questions
1 Do I just plug in my external drive and
2 click on plugins
3 Click on movie browser (Screen changes to a transparency but nothing seems to happen.I can hear the drive running but it stops after a while)
Any help would be appreciated

greasepalm

I wonder if its in a different format?I presume you may want to leave this plugged into box and not removing it.External hdd may need to be mounted to be seen and once mounted to ext 3 - ext 4

DONT FORMAT AS THAT WILL ERASE IT.

phil49

My drives are formatted as NTFS which I view through an Android box,I thought it would be more convenient to view them through this box.So does this mean no external drives can be used unless they are formatted as ext 3 or 4
BTW does anybody have the id for Dublin for the weather extension as the website (for city id) isn't working

peking97

The last day or two I cannot connect with FileZilla.
This is the response I get from the box:-

Response: ÿýÿýÿûÿû

Was able to connect OK last week.
I've restarted the box a couple of times to no avail.
Any ideas?

The high horse brigade

peking97 wrote: »

The last day or two I cannot connect with FileZilla.
This is the response I get from the box:-

Response: ÿýÿýÿûÿû

Was able to connect OK last week.
I've restarted the box a couple of times to no avail.
Any ideas?

Has the router given the box a different IP

peking97

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Has the router given the box a different IP

No. Still the same. I've it set to a static IP in the router.

whoami1

whoami1 wrote: »

For the past few days, I have come down in the morning and found that the box is not in standby but instead is fully powered up, but the TV is not on. Initially I thought that I'd left it running while using my media player on another HDMI input, but last night I definitely turned both TV and Tiviar 'off' (standby really). This morning, the same thing happened again.

I connected via SSH, hoping to find the system log, but the dmesg command isn't installed. However, there is one clue: the timeshift directory showed files going back to at least 3:30 this morning, so I believe that whatever is happening to turn on the box occurs at or before this time.

Any clues anyone?

I couldn't figure out what was going on, so I did a re-image, and things are back to normal now.

peking97

The high horse brigade wrote: »

Has the router given the box a different IP

I've since discovered that I can SSH into the box no problem but FTP not successful, I just get those weird characters as a response. Doesn't matter I suppose as long as I can communicate with it!

greasepalm

Anytime i cant connect to boxes with filezilla client i recheck correct ip of box and might be one digit out.One time i had to remove filezilla client as it would not connect and 100% ip was correct and other pc beside me logged in straight away.

andy1249

greasepalm wrote: »

Anytime i cant connect to boxes with filezilla client i recheck correct ip of box and might be one digit out.One time i had to remove filezilla client as it would not connect and 100% ip was correct and other pc beside me logged in straight away.

With networking enabled on the box you can simply drag and drop to and from the box from any PC.
You dont need filezilla.

peking97

I have two E2 boxes in different rooms. One a Tiviar Alpha+ and the other is the Edision OS Mega. Each box has two Sat feeds from an octo LNB and they each have Saorview feeds also. What I would like is to be able to view recordings made on one box to be viewable on the other and vice versa. Should be possible NO?

greasepalm

Yes you can have samba enabled on all boxes and mount all hdd on boxes.
menu-setup-network-mounts-network browser--scan for boxes on network,select box and open and scroll down for hdd and choose cifs save and exit out.

greasepalm

andy1249 wrote: »

With networking enabled on the box you can simply drag and drop to and from the box from any PC.
You dont need filezilla.

Never used a pc for files as boxes and nas drives only.

NewClareman

greasepalm wrote: »

Never used a pc for files as boxes and nas drives only.

The op was referring to tasks such as putting picons on the box. It is far easier to work directly within windows rather than using a tool such as FileZilla. Posters keep saying it’s necessary to use it, despite having been corrected many times.

greasepalm

I dont use or need picons on boxes but i see many do.

peking97

greasepalm wrote: »

Yes you can have samba enabled on all boxes and mount all hdd on boxes.
menu-setup-network-mounts-network browser--scan for boxes on network,select box and open and scroll down for hdd and choose cifs save and exit out.

I've done all that but still can't see the contents of HDD of box1 on box2 or vice versa?

greasepalm

If samba is enabled and hdd is mounted correctly press the list button on remote and choose location of box 1 as it should then open your files and scroll to movies and OK should see your listings.

Payton

NewClareman wrote: »

The op was referring to tasks such as putting picons on the box. It is far easier to work directly within windows rather than using a tool such as FileZilla. Posters keep saying it’s necessary to use it, despite having been corrected many times.

How do you do it through windows rather that Filezilla?

phil49

Does this receiver only work with external drives formatted in EXT 3 or 4.I cannot see anything on my drive formatted as NTFS.Anybody got the MYMetrix code for Dublin

The high horse brigade

phil49 wrote: »

Does this receiver only work with external drives formatted in EXT 3 or 4.I cannot see anything on my drive formatted as NTFS.Anybody got the MYMetrix code for Dublin

Yes, you need to format as ext3 or 4

http://weather.mynonpublic.com/locationid.html

peking97

greasepalm wrote: »

If samba is enabled and hdd is mounted correctly press the list button on remote and choose location of box 1 as it should then open your files and scroll to movies and OK should see your listings.

Thanks for the info. A bit of perseverance here and all working OK now.

NewClareman

phil49 wrote: »

Does this receiver only work with external drives formatted in EXT 3 or 4.I cannot see anything on my drive formatted as NTFS.Anybody got the MYMetrix code for Dublin

It also works with FAT32, allowing you to easily share media between windows and the Tiviar.

M007

I’m interested in leaving VM and switching to FTA. This box looks pretty good from looking at some of the threads here. My problem is I wouldn’t no where to start with flashing and updating systems. Haven’t a clue.

Is there anywhere you can buy the box with the latest software etc?

Where can you buy it online or bricks& mortar?

Would I be out of my dept on this trying to do it myself ?

greasepalm

Newer different makes of boxes can be got from wos and they will flash image of your choice,some boxes get replaced never too be seen again when stock is sold out.

Forgot to add user has to adjust or add settings for their area as its not a universal setting.

M007

Thanks for that. If I get one of those boxes from WoS do I need a separate box for Irish/Saorview channels?

greasepalm wrote: »

Newer different makes of boxes can be got from wos and they will flash image of your choice,some boxes get replaced never too be seen again when stock is sold out.

Forgot to add user has to adjust or add settings for their area as its not a universal setting.

Gerry Wicklow

M007 wrote: »

Thanks for that. If I get one of those boxes from WoS do I need a separate box for Irish/Saorview channels?

No the whole idea of these is that they combine Saorview terrestrial channels and satellite channels in one box, one (or more) channel list.

greasepalm

Look at the tuners sat is dvb/s and saorview is dvb/t/t2 i believe.

whoami1

This is all very odd - half my Saorview channels are unavailable as of this evening. They were all working fine yesterday. I'm not too up on the technical part of this, but I can state that I'm getting no signal on the 2RN Mux 2, i.e. RTE1, Virgin Media 3, etc. are all gone.

I've done a couple of rescans, but no joy so far.

Can anyone advise?

The high horse brigade

whoami1 wrote: »

This is all very odd - half my Saorview channels are unavailable as of this evening. They were all working fine yesterday. I'm not too up on the technical part of this, but I can state that I'm getting no signal on the 2RN Mux 2, i.e. RTE1, Virgin Media 3, etc. are all gone.

I've done a couple of rescans, but no joy so far.

Can anyone advise?

It's very possible and quite common to have good enough signal on one mux but not enough for the other

whoami1

The high horse brigade wrote: »

It's very possible and quite common to have good enough signal on one mux but not enough for the other

Thanks for the quick reply. The SNR is now alternating between 0 and 45%, which is not enough to get a clear picture. The odd thing is that it has been a perfect picture from the moment I installed the aerial in the attic back in August/September.

Does it indicate failing hardware, do you think?

whoami1

whoami1 wrote: »

Thanks for the quick reply. The SNR is now alternating between 0 and 45%, which is not enough to get a clear picture. The odd thing is that it has been a perfect picture from the moment I installed the aerial in the attic back in August/September.

Does it indicate failing hardware, do you think?

...aaaaannndddd we're back! I pressed the Menu button, chose 'Setup', then 'Service searching'. In 'Tuner configuration', I changed the Region setting in Tuner C from Dublin to Republic of Ireland all regions. I then ran a rescan and I now have a SNR of 99% again.

Update: the SNR is dropping every now and again to 45%, then goes back up again to 99%.

greasepalm

What stations are not working and from where?

sligojoek

Did your aerial get hit by anything in the attic? It might need to go a degree or 2 either way.

Johnboy1951

sligojoek wrote: »

Did your aerial get hit by anything in the attic? It might need to go a degree or 2 either way.

such as, a bird got in and is moving it

sligojoek

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

such as, a bird got in and is moving it

Or rats chewing through the cables.

It happened me a couple of times. Before I got a permanent set up I'd an aerial sitting on the insulation . While rooting for something I inadvertently moved it and only discovered it that evening when the stepladder was hung back up in the shed. .

whoami1

greasepalm wrote: »

What stations are not working and from where?

I noticed no signal, which I managed to improve to a sometimes degraded signal on everything on 2RN Mux 2: RTE One, RTE One +1,RTE News Now, RTE Junior, Saorview Information and Virgin Media 3. Initially, I was tuning to Three Rock, but it got better when I used the generic 'Republic of Ireland' setting as noted above.

sligojoek wrote: »

Did your aerial get hit by anything in the attic? It might need to go a degree or 2 either way.

No, I haven't been up there for a couple of weeks. The aerial is mounted on one of the upright beams, so it's out of the way. If anything falls on it, it'll be the roof and if that happens, I'll have more on my mind than poor signal!

sligojoek wrote: »

Or rats chewing through the cables.

Ah heeyor, leave irrou'


I haven't checked again this morning

GSRNBP

M007 wrote: »

I’m interested in leaving VM and switching to FTA. This box looks pretty good from looking at some of the threads here. My problem is I wouldn’t no where to start with flashing and updating systems. Haven’t a clue.

Is there anywhere you can buy the box with the latest software etc?

Where can you buy it online or bricks& mortar?

Would I be out of my dept on this trying to do it myself ?

Are you tech-savvy at all? I had zero experience with STBs but I'm ok with computers (like I can use putty to ssh but I don't claim to be a pro); I followed The High Horse Brigade's instructions and was so close to getting it running, but not quite there. I had to do a bit more tinkering, but eventually got it and it's all working perfectly - wouldn't look back.

MileHighGuy

Just thought I'd write a quick report of my attempts to stream the TA+ situated at the rear of the house, into other rooms around the house.
I had originally thought I would be buying two of the TA+ eventually, once I got the initial one configured, but it's so versatile, I don't think I'll need a second box after all.

The TA+ is wired to the main router via an access point, which is connected to another access point in my main sitting room. Various other PCs scattered around the house will be connected via wifi.

clients I have have tried:
open webif via browser - great tool, and will do in a bind, but not a great user experience. It certainly feels like you are watching TV on a computer. An absolute cinch to set up though, and very fast and responsive. Edit bouquets, set timers, lot's of configuration options. Live pause/timeshifting was spotty to the extent that it was not usable. EPG is utilitarian, but as it matches the TA+ backend, all channels populated the guide.

Nvidia Shield: Dream Player. Fast, easy set up (this will be a pattern!) I wasn't mad about the homescreen with bouquet lists running down the LHS and the ability to go to a quite a nice implementation of an EPG. Capable of setting recordings and auto timers. No pause/Timeshift, although you could record the current program being watched, and access it from recordings folder to as a workaround. This was a clubhouse favourite for a week or so.

NVidia Shield: Live Channels, Android TV native Live TV hub. Ability to set up multiple sources, blazing fast response, a great implementation of an EPG, again, no timeshift and recordings frequently failed, due to a weak signal issue, which did not make sense as the entire thing is ethernet connected. A dealbreaker there then.

Nvidia Shield Plex. I had heard so much about Plex, but had never really dipped my toes in the water, so decided to give it a crack. Absolutely stunning front end, very impressive for this that have a good media collection. By installing the HDHR Plugin on TA+, Plex was able to see it as a supported tuner to add Live TV. You need to pay a premium (PlexPass - maybe try out their month option to see how you like it)to unlock the ability to timeshift and record. Plex has a funny way to create the EPG, it uses a selection of providers and you marry up the channels it receives from the tuner to this preselected list. The result is no one single providers list will contain all of the free channels the TA+ outputs. Not to mention the process is tiresome. As the Plex also seems to fetch channels through their own proprietry connection, the zapping time between channels is 5/6 seconds. Which feels like an eternity. The upside, is again, the way the content is served through their frontend, there is the option of a traditional EPG, but it curates, movies, sports and shows, into what's upcoming, just started etc, and fetched accompanying artwork for the show too. This is by far the best looking of the lot, but the poor response time zapping and the decision you need to make about losing channels made it unsatisfying in the end. Good for show, but would get frustrating in day to day usage. Timeshifting and recording were good, and used a local drive attached to the Shield rather than the TA+ box which confuses things a bit.

Lastly, I fired up old reliable Kodi to see what it could do. I installed the Enigma2 PVR add on, configuration is simple, input the open webif ip address. Kodi has it's own PVR settings which allow independent editing of the TA+ backend bouquets which are imported into Kodi. This allows me to set up bespoke versions depending on who will be watching the TV - handy for kids rooms. The EPG looks great, imports all of the channels with ease, a proper "watching TV" experience on a PC or Shield. Zapping is instantaneous, recordings are made on the backend box, and organised and accessible via kodi. Timeshifting is included for no extra cost, so you can pause rewind etc (this can also be disabled of course) This solution ticked all of the boxes for me, simple to set up, fast, full EPG, recording and timeshifting have been flawless, to the extent that I doubt I will require a second TA+ for the main sitting room. I have implemented this on two WIFI only PC's and it works just as well. I'll see if I can add a few screenshots tomorrow to illustrate some of the points made above.

Once again, this box is insanely versatile, give it two more tuners and it would be perfect I think.

robbKer

MileHighGuy wrote: »

Just thought I'd write a quick report of my attempts to stream the TA+ situated at the rear of the house, into other rooms around the house.
I had originally thought I would be buying two of the TA+ eventually, once I got the initial one configured, but it's so versatile, I don't think I'll need a second box after all.

The TA+ is wired to the main router via an access point, which is connected to another access point in my main sitting room. Various other PCs scattered around the house will be connected via wifi.

clients I have have tried:
open webif via browser - great tool, and will do in a bind, but not a great user experience. It certainly feels like you are watching TV on a computer. An absolute cinch to set up though, and very fast and responsive. Edit bouquets, set timers, lot's of configuration options. Live pause/timeshifting was spotty to the extent that it was not usable. EPG is utilitarian, but as it matches the TA+ backend, all channels populated the guide.

Nvidia Shield: Dream Player. Fast, easy set up (this will be a pattern!) I wasn't mad about the homescreen with bouquet lists running down the LHS and the ability to go to a quite a nice implementation of an EPG. Capable of setting recordings and auto timers. No pause/Timeshift, although you could record the current program being watched, and access it from recordings folder to as a workaround. This was a clubhouse favourite for a week or so.

NVidia Shield: Live Channels, Android TV native Live TV hub. Ability to set up multiple sources, blazing fast response, a great implementation of an EPG, again, no timeshift and recordings frequently failed, due to a weak signal issue, which did not make sense as the entire thing is ethernet connected. A dealbreaker there then.

Nvidia Shield Plex. I had heard so much about Plex, but had never really dipped my toes in the water, so decided to give it a crack. Absolutely stunning front end, very impressive for this that have a good media collection. By installing the HDHR Plugin on TA+, Plex was able to see it as a supported tuner to add Live TV. You need to pay a premium (PlexPass - maybe try out their month option to see how you like it)to unlock the ability to timeshift and record. Plex has a funny way to create the EPG, it uses a selection of providers and you marry up the channels it receives from the tuner to this preselected list. The result is no one single providers list will contain all of the free channels the TA+ outputs. Not to mention the process is tiresome. As the Plex also seems to fetch channels through their own proprietry connection, the zapping time between channels is 5/6 seconds. Which feels like an eternity. The upside, is again, the way the content is served through their frontend, there is the option of a traditional EPG, but it curates, movies, sports and shows, into what's upcoming, just started etc, and fetched accompanying artwork for the show too. This is by far the best looking of the lot, but the poor response time zapping and the decision you need to make about losing channels made it unsatisfying in the end. Good for show, but would get frustrating in day to day usage. Timeshifting and recording were good, and used a local drive attached to the Shield rather than the TA+ box which confuses things a bit.

Lastly, I fired up old reliable Kodi to see what it could do. I installed the Enigma2 PVR add on, configuration is simple, input the open webif ip address. Kodi has it's own PVR settings which allow independent editing of the TA+ backend bouquets which are imported into Kodi. This allows me to set up bespoke versions depending on who will be watching the TV - handy for kids rooms. The EPG looks great, imports all of the channels with ease, a proper "watching TV" experience on a PC or Shield. Zapping is instantaneous, recordings are made on the backend box, and organised and accessible via kodi. Timeshifting is included for no extra cost, so you can pause rewind etc (this can also be disabled of course) This solution ticked all of the boxes for me, simple to set up, fast, full EPG, recording and timeshifting have been flawless, to the extent that I doubt I will require a second TA+ for the main sitting room. I have implemented this on two WIFI only PC's and it works just as well. I'll see if I can add a few screenshots tomorrow to illustrate some of the points made above.

Once again, this box is insanely versatile, give it two more tuners and it would be perfect I think.

Subsequent to your post above I sat down tonight with kodi and set it up with the enigma2 vu iota client. Very impressive and relatively easy to setup. Streaming works very well in comparison to the other options. Only issue I’ve found is getting the picons to load. Only some channels are loading picons for some strange reason. Otherwise fab. Thanks!

sligojoek

Hi lads.

Just a query for someone who might be in the know.

I got a pair of Sony bluetooth headphones for xmas and have been using them with the phone ever since. With the headphones I also got a bluetooth dongle. I just set it up on the laptop and all is good.

What I'm wondering is, Would this dongle work with the TA+? The documentation seems to be alll Windows orientated with no mention of Mac. As the TA+ is Linux based I'm guessing, No.

Would it be possible to get such a dongle to work with the box?

Johnboy1951

sligojoek wrote: »

Hi lads.

Just a query for someone who might be in the know.

I got a pair of Sony bluetooth headphones for xmas and have been using them with the phone ever since. With the headphones I also got a bluetooth dongle. I just set it up on the laptop and all is good.

What I'm wondering is, Would this dongle work with the TA+? The documentation seems to be alll Windows orientated with no mention of Mac. As the TA+ is Linux based I'm guessing, No.

Would it be possible to get such a dongle to work with the box?

It would, I expect, depend on the software available in whatever image is used.

Most BT dongles work in Linux ..... if you get a chance maybe try it out in a Linux PC, or using a Linux Live session from CD/DVD or USB.

sligojoek

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

It would, I expect, depend on the software available in whatever image is used.

Most BT dongles work in Linux ..... if you get a chance maybe try it out in a Linux PC, or using a Linux Live session from CD/DVD or USB.

Thanks JB. That's great to know. I'll have a look online tomorrow evening. I'll leave this dongle in the laptop for now as it's set up and working fine.

On the Linux thing, I know nothing about it. I've a 10 yr old laptop in the living room that I only use for internet , photos and interacting with the box. I might look into converting it over.

Johnboy1951

sligojoek wrote: »

Thanks JB. That's great to know. I'll have a look online tomorrow evening. I'll leave this dongle in the laptop for now as it's set up and working fine.

On the Linux thing, I know nothing about it. I've a 10 yr old laptop in the living room that I only use for internet , photos and interacting with the box. I might look into converting it over.

It does take time for drivers for new hardware to become available in Linux if the manufacturer does not provide Linux drivers from the outset.
Sometimes it might not happen at all.

The usual way to find out if support is available, is to get full hardware details of the product (whether wifi dongle; pci-e network card, or any of a multitude of pieces of hardware) and check on line for reports of the device working in Linux or not.
In some cases there are lists of working devices, but honestly I doubt they can be kept up to date these days due to the number of pieces of slightly different hardware released.
Going by name and version number is not guaranteed either, as manufacturers have been known to change chips in devices while maintaining the same Model Name and Version Number for two different hardware configurations.

So really there is no simple answer to your original question.

tinner777

hi, have the box connected to my router via ethernet. My home server is connected on the same wireless network. Trying to mount server hard drive. Network neighbourhood starts to scan, blue circle spins, then it hangs. No response using remote or box buttons, have to restart box. I'm trying to scan the home server so I can watch those files through the box. I used to use servio but the lip sync has gone crazy with the latest update.

greasepalm

On network browser on openvix it takes a few minutes to start finding my boxes and they have samba enabled so can be seen,then expand box and mount hdd save and exit out.Sometimes rebooting box and router makes it run faster.