eyeTV netstream sat DVB-S2 tuner not found

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WMCEnthusiast

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eyeTV netstream sat DVB-S2 tuner not found

#1

Post by WMCEnthusiast » Wed Oct 24, 2018 1:55 pm

There I was thinking that I had found the perfect tuner to end all cabling headaches in the house, but so far it has only created annoyance.

So I know that this is a fairly old device, but how many new devices are there for our beloved WMC? Indeed there are very few network tuners that support WMC. I know the most popular one by far is the HDHomeRun lineup, but it is costly and there is no model that supports DVB-S. In fact, the eyeTV netstream sat might be the only such device available in that department. Of course I read all the reviews I could find prior to buying, which unfortunately were not many. However the consensus was that support for WMC is excellent.

Installation was straightforward. First thing I did after connecting it to my home network was try the EyeTV netstream Android App where Live TV was working out of the box. I can also access the web interface via the DHCP assigned IP. Supposedly the only requirement to make it work in WMC is the installation of a Windows service that interacts with the WMC Receiver Service. Since the EyeTV lineup was apparently bought out by Geniatech, I could not hunt down any working software download links from official sources. I did however find the Windows service installation pack mentioned earlier which runs from the local system account. In an Amazon review (sad that I have to resort to this for crucial tech info), a customer said it would only work in his WMC setup after configuring the WMC Receiver Service (ehRecvr.exe) to use the local system account as well as enabling "Allow service to interact with desktop", the latter of which I also enabled for the EyeTV service.

I did find a video tutorial that at least illustrates how it is designed to work under WMC (in German, but the visuals are pretty much self-explanatory if you are familiar with setting up WMC tuners): https://youtu.be/mz5m-2kH7_A?t=210

Alas, WMC still states there were no tuners found. I am at my wits' end here after several hours of trial and error. No anti-virus installed on the machine and I also tried disabling the firewall (even though there already was an exception for EyeTV automatically installed).

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#2

Post by holidayboy » Thu Oct 25, 2018 12:45 pm

Possibly a different issue.....

Have you tried not accepting playready during TV setup?

I'm sure somebody I know used to have an eyetv tuner and had issues with playready...

Rob.

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#3

Post by WMCEnthusiast » Thu Oct 25, 2018 8:24 pm

Hi Rob, thanks for the feedback!

As a matter of fact I always refuse PlayReady during setup because all I want are the FTA channels.

I have dug a little deeper and found a Diagnostic Tool which pretty much states what I already know - that everything is running as expected but no device is found. It appears the scan for devices is executed with either MS-UPnP and/or libupnp. At least this is where the process fails.

I have contacted Geniatech support already, but I don't have high hopes that they will support me with my discontinued product that I purchased used without a serial key. However as far as I understand it from reading the reviews and customer feedback, all you need the key for is to install the packaged software (EyeTV for Mac and Terratec HomeCinema for Windows). Since I intended to use it with WMC, I didn't think I would need anything else than the box and the WMC setup file.

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#4

Post by holidayboy » Fri Oct 26, 2018 5:30 am

Hi, was it "eyetv_netstream_setup_v.1.01.00.16 .exe" or similar that you installed?

Do you have the exaxt model number of the tuner? I'll reach out to see if the guy I know had a similar unit..

Does the tuner appear in device manager anywhere?

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#5

Post by WMCEnthusiast » Fri Oct 26, 2018 6:37 pm

I would very much appreciate that! My best bet at this point is to get some personal advice from somebody who has successfully installed the device, as I don't expect Geniatech support to be of much help.

The setup file you mentioned is exactly what I installed. I first used an older version (1.00.00.13) until I found out about the update. As far as my research has gone, version 1.01.00.16 is the latest release. Firmware is also the latest one (1.1.5 build 423), and the Hardware Version is 1.0.0.

I can't tell exactly what the model number is as there are several numbers at the bottom of the unit. I'll gladly provide photos if need be. Here are some stock ones:

Image

Image

It's definitely the model reviewed here:

Elgato EyeTV Netstream Sat Initial Setup

This review was one of the main reasons that I decided to get one. I've reached out to the blogger, but haven't gotten a response yet. Please note I also tried installing a supported version of Terratec HomeCinema (which was quite a task without a serial key), but still no hardware detected.

Nothing shows up in device manager which has been bugging me from the start. However since there is no mention of this in any review, I didn't make too much of it. At the same time I'm asking myself how it's supposed to work without Windows detecting a tuner. I picked up somewhere that the setup file is supposed to install a virtual tuner that interacts with WMC, but all I see it doing is installing a Windows service.

Thanks a lot for helping me get to the bottom of this! If I could only get feedback from someone who actually had the thing working as designed.

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#6

Post by holidayboy » Mon Oct 29, 2018 3:18 pm

Well, they can't remember exactly what the process was for setting up the eyetv box :(

He definitely installed the terratec software and then the windows media center installer.

He was never 100% happy with the setup and moved to dvblink tvserver in the end.

Just to recap.... is there a webpage for the device that lets you scan for channels etc?

I looked at the blog post you mentioned, does the tuner show up OK on the network etc?

Have you already tried setting a fixed IP address for the box etc?

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#7

Post by WMCEnthusiast » Mon Feb 04, 2019 6:14 pm

I totally forgot to reply after the agony I went through. This was ridiculously easy to solve after all.
Does the tuner show up OK on the network etc?
It didn't show up on the network, and that got me thinking. I knew from the diagnostics tool that UPnP discovery failed, so I looked into that. UPnP was enabled on my router, and other devices showed up flawlessly. I don't remember how long it took me, could be a couple hours or even days, until I had an epiphany. In my despair, I stared at my network setup, which is the router, the Gigabit switch and eyeTV netstream right next to them. Since I run out of ideas, I thought to myself what the heck, let's just hook the netstream up to the router directly instead of going through the switch. It is an unmanaged switch of course, so it was really a nonsensical idea from a technical perspective, but going against logic when it comes to IT had proven quite successful for me in the past. So I went for it, and to my complete amazement the netstream showed up on the network instantly. From there everything worked as intended by the manufacturer.

I was so startled that I had to research how in the world an unmanaged switch could block any kind of network traffic, and to my surprise there are quite a few people who have made the same discovery (although I couldn't find any such feedback for my particular model). The reactions in the forums are mostly those of disbelief because technically it doesn't make sense, but I know better.

WMC channel search was straightforward, but of course I wanted to utilize the device's capabilities to stream to other platforms as well. Since I had reset it to factory defaults I had lost all the channels stored on the device, and I had to contact a few eBay sellers to find out how you put channels on the device since on the browser interface there is no scan option. Turned out you have to use the PC/Mac software for that, and luckily the successor of Terratec HomeCinema which is called Total TV Player from Geniatech (the company that bought the EyeTV lineup from elgato) works fairly easy for that. Once you have scanned for channels you can push them to the device with the press of a button. It even reorganizes the channel list by itself quite nicely. So now I could also stream TV to every Android device in the house with the netstream App.

It all seemed to good to be true, and sure enough I can know understand why your acquaintance decided against the netstream in the end. First I noticed that every couple of days, I had to reboot the device because it lost the satellite signal. I imagine that this could be really annoying when scheduling recordings. A couple of weeks later I noticed that a reboot wouldn't solve the problem. WMC would always complain about PlayReady update not being successful (another term for 'no signal' as I have found out). So I did another factory reset, and also updated to the latest firmware, but none of that helped. As it turned out, I do have signal on some channels, just not anything above 11800Mhz. Couldn't find much info on that. The few people who have similar problems are undecided if their device is simply defective or if the signal is somehow "too strong" and therefore causes reception issues. I have 100% quality on all channels I receive (although a few are heavily pixelated), and 0% on those I don't receive. I ordered an attenuator that should be in the mail any day, but my hopes are very dim. My neighbors were so kind to let me check it with their dish and I got the same results.

So it seems like I have wasted my time and money on this thing. Are there any other network tuners for DVB-S2 compatible with WMC? I have stumbled across DVBLogic again and again over the years when I researched the topic. Apparently it can not only share network tuners Extender-style, but also send IPTV tuners to WMC? That would open up the gates for a whole new range of devices. I tried it today and all seemed to install correctly, but I get the PlayReady update error on the client (again, means no signal). I searched the topic and their wiki, but I couldn't find out what I might have to configure additionally. All channels work nicely on the back-end "server" which is simply my main HTPC with a simple PCI card TT-budget S2-3200.

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