The NetUP Dual DVB-S2-CI card features two independent satellite tuners in a single PCIe card. It is aimed at professional users but can also be used by enthusiasts. The card supports DVB-S and DVB-S2 along with various modulation schemes. It was found to have excellent tuner sensitivity and stability when used with Linux software. However, the card comes with no installation instructions and requires some Linux expertise to configure.

1. TEST REPORT Two Tuner HDTV Satellite PC Card
NetUP Dual DVB-S2-CI
Two Tuners
in HDTV
in one PC Card
A specialist company in the area of IPTV
is NetUP from Moscow, Russia. They offer
all kinds of products for the distribution
of IPTV signals including DVB Gateways,
Conditional Access Systems and even
Billing Systems for IPTV networks. Their
latest development is a professional high-
density satellite reception card, which is
mainly targeted at the professional market
in DVB-IP gateways, home theaters and
satellite Internet systems. Their card
not only comes equipped with two DVB-
S2 tuners, but also with two Common
Interface slots, and all this packed into
one single card fitting in a PCIe slot.
Since it’s a card aimed at the professional
market it’s running on Linux. Mainly this
card will be used in rack mounts. Usually, Even though this is a pro- Installation
fessional card, it is as well
these can house two cards. With a regular very attractive for the satel-
The card comes without
any software or installation
PC Card this would mean handling 2 lite watcher, who would like to instructions. On NetUP’s sup-
channels. But using this new two-tuner watch his local football team port page (http://www.netup.
grabbing the European cup in
card a single rack can manage 4 channels full-screen HD while at same
t v/e n-E N /dual _ d vb -s2- c i _
card.php) it’s stated that this
in one rack. time keeping an eye on what card has “drivers for Linux OS”.
happens in the latest episode My next step was to check the
of his favorite show. The sat- chipset used on board: it is
TELE-satelliteother languageswww.TELE-satellite.com/...
Download this report in
World from the Internet: ellite enthusiast hunting sat-
ellite feeds might even have
a Conexant CX23885. Armed
with this piece of information
Arabic ‫ﺍﻟﻌﺮﺑﻴﺔ‬ www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/ara/netup.pdf
more fun with this card, now
Indonesian Indonesia www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/bid/netup.pdf I checked if the card is sup-
Bulgarian Български www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/bul/netup.pdf that he can track two differ-
Czech Česky www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/ces/netup.pdf ported by video4linux (v4l for
German Deutsch www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/deu/netup.pdf ent DVB-S2 feeds at same short). To do this, I went to
English English www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/eng/netup.pdf
Spanish Español www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/esp/netup.pdf time. There are many ways
Farsi ‫ﻓﺎﺭﺳﻲ‬ www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/far/netup.pdf
French Français www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/fra/netup.pdf how this card can be of good
Hebrew ‫עברית‬ www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/heb/netup.pdf
Greek Ελληνικά www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/hel/netup.pdf use for the real enthusiast as
Croatian Hrvatski www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/hrv/netup.pdf
Italian Italiano www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/ita/netup.pdf well as for the real profes-
Hungarian Magyar www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/mag/netup.pdf sional. To be really happy with
Mandarin 中文 www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/man/netup.pdf
Dutch Nederlands www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/ned/netup.pdf the card, I recommend using
Polish Polski www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/pol/netup.pdf
Portuguese Português www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/por/netup.pdf a high-end PC, because the
Romanian Românesc www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/rom/netup.pdf
Russian Русский www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/rus/netup.pdf card does not include a dedi-
Swedish Svenska www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/sve/netup.pdf
Turkish Türkçe www.TELE-satellite.com/TELE-satellite-1003/tur/netup.pdf cated H.264/MPEG2 hardware
Available online starting from 29 January 2010 decoder.
24 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 02-03/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com

2. the main source for DVB-S(2) my spare PC, which runs on tion only one command was computer and checked again
cards, which is the LinuxTV Ubuntu 9.04. After power on needed: the status of the card detec-
Wiki at http://www.linuxtv. and logging in, I would have $ sudo apt-get install tion by using dmesg. Bingo!
org. After two mouse clicks expected the card to be auto- mercurial meld (Pic.2). The card was detected this
matically detected. But dmesg time with both of its tuners,
said: No (Pic.1). So it seems After this I entered the com- as can be seen in (Pic.3).
that the default version of mands suggested in LinuxTV
v4l bundled with Ubuntu 9.04 Wiki, which resulted in the Now, after the card was
is not able to use the card. required kernel modules and detected, all that was left to
Luckily, in the card’s page on programs to be built: do is to install a player that’s
LinuxTV Wiki there’s a hint on $ hg clone http://linuxtv. able to open a DVB device
how to make it work: you need org/hg/v4l-dvb/ and play the corresponding
to check the latest source from $ cd v4l-dvb stream. The easiest software
v4l repository. The repository $ make > /dev/null 2>&1 to use is Kaffeine, which can
is based on mercurial source $ sudo make install > be fastly installed by using
control system. Naturally, in /dev/null 2>&1 this command:
order to be able to check out $ sudo apt-get install
the source you need to install Time to check if everything kaffeine
it. Under my Ubuntu installa- is in order. I rebooted the Kaffeine depends heavily on
I found what I searched for:
the card is indeed supported!
http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/
index.php/NetUP_Dual_DVB_
S2_CI
Having finished these pre-
liminaries, I switched on
02-03/2010
NetUP Dual DVB-S2-CI
The best PC card we ever tested
www.TELE-satellite.com — 02-03/2010 — TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine 25

3. going to the “DVB” menu and into persepctive: it means
then to “Channels”. The inter- that the power of the useful
face for channel scanning is signal is twice the power of the
pretty intuitive and Kaffeine is noise, thus making the tuner
able to scan a whole satellite in the NetUP card one of the
by using the NIT information most sensitive available.
contained on some transpon-
ders. Doing this, after a couple In practice
of minutes the complete list of The lock time for the card
channels is displayed (Pic.5). is pretty good, averaging
4minutes and 47 seconds for
However, Kaffeine can not a full scan of HOTBIRD at 13E.
display two tuners and is This card even offers a hidden
therefore of not much use highlight: it can receive 16APSK
with this sophisticated card. DVB-S2 channels! This modu-
The solution is to use a more lation is used by some chan-
(Pic.1) The card is not recognized by Linux advanced piece of software, nels to hide themselves away
like for instance MythTV, VLC from regular viewers. Unfor-
or MPlayer. But before to tunately, my 90cm dish is too
switch to another DVB viewer small to get a decent signal at
I checked the quality/signal my location for HOTBIRD but
strength indicator in Kaffeine. I was still able to get at least
Though it is not really accurate some macroblocks from these
(it reports either 3% or 98%) transponders. If you are closer
I managed to correlate these to main beam of HOTBIRD try
two figures by using a satel- 11.334H, 11.373H and 11.432V
lite signal meter and was able for such transmissions, which
to determine that the SNR for trade off error correction for
Anixe HD is 6 dB. To put this quality (Pic.6).
(Pic.2) Mercurial gets installed
(Pic.3) The NetUP card is successfully detected
some KDE libraries and it will with the welcome screen in
install more packages than (Pic.4).
expected. But one is miss-
ing, which I selected manu- Watching TV
ally: libxine1-ffmpeg This is In the Kaffeine menue I
needed for software decod- clicked on “Digital TV” which
ing of H.264. After the instal- resulted in an interface resem-
lation is done (which takes a bling ProgDVB under Windows
couple of minutes) I went to (albeit with less features). The
the “Application” menu and to next step is to scan for all the
“Sound and Video”. I clicked receivable channels. This can
on “Kaffeine” and was greeted be done by pressing “C” or
26 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 02-03/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com

4. The NetUP two tuner card Linux and needs some soft- Expert Opinion
is highly interesting for the ware background for the one
serious satellite enthusiast who installs it, but after this
+
Two independent tuners on same board.
and is a must for the profes- hurdle is overcome perfor-
Very stable performance due to Linux.
sional user of satellite signals mance of the NetUP card is as
Exceptional good tuner sensitivity.
in DVB-S2. It’s tuner sensi- perfect as a satellite PC card Dual standard DVB-S and DVB-S2.
tivy is exceptional. It requires can be. Alexandru Porosanu
- TELE-satellite
Test Center
Card comes with no software support from man- Romania
ufacturer.
No hardware acceleration for MPEG2 or H.264.
TECHNICAL
DATA
Manufacturer NetUP, Olof Palme Str. 1, Sect. 7, Moscow, Russia
Phone +7 495 510 1025 (ext 0) - general questions
+7 495 510 1025 (ext 1) - technical support
Fax +7 499 143 5521
Email info@netup.tv
Website www.netup.tv
Model NetUP Dual DVB-S2-CI
Function Two Tuners DVB-S2 PCIe card
Frequency Range 950 - 2150 MHz
Systems DVB-S, DVB-S2
(Pic.4) Welcome screen of Kaffeine, a DVB viewer program Transmission Modes MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (software)
Demodulator DVB-S QPSK
Demodulator DVB-S2 QPSK, 8PSK, 16APSK, 32APSK
DiSEqC up to 2.0
CI Slots 2 for any professional CA modules
(PowerCAM Pro, Aston Pro Solutions, etc.)
Connectors 2xF
Software Linux
Technical Information
(Pic.5) After a couple of minutes the menu shows all channels
received
General Overview
* 4 Layer PCB
* 2 x CI slots
* Long PCI-E board
Components Overview
* 1 x STM STV 0900B – Dual demodulator that can handle DVB-S
QPSK, DVB-S2 QPSK, 8PSK, 16APSK (all the standards currently
used for broadcast in Digital Television, both in Europe and USA);
also employs a lower voltage requirement (3.3V)
* 1 x STM LNBH24 – Dual LNB supply and control; compatible with
DiSEqC 2.0 feedback signal specification by employing a 22 KHz tone
detection; supports unfiltered DiSEqC signal output
* 2 x SCM Microsystems’ CIMaX SP2L – CI interface driver
(Pic.6) A unique feature of the NetUP card is its ability to receive * 1 x Conexant - PCI Express Broadcast Audio/Video Decoder, sup-
16APSK, which is used by some broadcasters, porting two MPEG transport streams
like Italia 1 HD from Italy on HOTBIRD 13E
28 TELE-satellite — Global Digital TV Magazine — 02-03/2010 — www.TELE-satellite.com