Hi, I wonder if anyone can help?

A couple of years ago, in the flat I'm renting, the communal TV signal started going on the blink, and trying to get the management company to do anything about it was a lost cause.

A satellite dish was installed by a previous tenant (or the landlord), with two coax cable feeds coming into the flat.

I bought a Technomate Nano SE M2 Plus and paid for an extra "external" tuner (IMHO, misleading description, as it's essentially a daughter board on the main board), to allow me to record two channels at the same time.

I appreciate that the box uses a Linux distro, so I'm not sure which "software", but the factory-installed "software" has a nasty habit of crashing the box when you are fast forwarding and suddenly stop, as I often do when fast forwarding past the advert break (offhand, I can't remember if it is "stopped" with pause, stop or play).

When this happens, I end up having to power-cycle the box.

Recently, this didn't work, and the power LED on the front was exhibiting a slow flash (much like a PC's beeps if POST fails, I guess).

I ended up Googling and finding that the box needed to be flashed in its non-booting state, which I've accomplished.

Sadly, I didn't make a note of the settings when I originally got the, and no matter what I do now, if I try to record two channels at the same time, I get a "timer sanity error".


Details:
"Virtuoso Image Extream by Team ViX"
Image : 5.4.003 (Release)
Drivers : 2018-08-08
Kernel : 4.2.1
Gstreamer : 1.17.0.1
Python : 2.7.16
Installed : 2020-11-11
Last update: 2020-11-11



Tuner A: BCM7362 (internal) (DVB-S2)
Configuration mode : Advanced
Satellite : 28.2E Astra 2E/2F/2G
LNB : LNB 1
Priority : Auto
Type of LNB/device : Universal LNB
Voltage mode : Polarization
Increased voltage : No
Tone Mode : Band
DiSEqC mode : None
Force legacy signal stats: No


Tuner B: SP2238AVb (external) (DVB-S2)
Configuration mode : Advanced
Satellite : 28.2E Astra 2E/2F/2G
LNB : LNB 2
Priority : Auto
Type of LNB/device : Universal LNB
Voltage mode : Polarization
Increased voltage : No
Tone Mode : Band
DiSEqC mode : None
Force legacy signal stats: No


Preferred tuner : auto
Preferred tuner for recordings: auto



As I say, I didn't previously make a note of the settings, though I recall a similar hair-tearing exercise when originally trying to get (recording via) the second tuner working.

I've tried changing the Configuration mode of one of the tuners to "Equal to" the other, and "Loop through from" the other, rescanned for channels, all to no avail - the box insists on giving the timer sanity error.

[The Automatic rescanning was a bit confusing - it only gave an option to scan Tuner A, and although the TM-NANO-SE M2 Plus manual doesn't mention it, a TM-Nano-3T manual I found online says that "If tuner A and B are configured for the same satellite(s), only Tuner A will appear [in the prompt for which tuner to scan]"]


At the end of last week, I called Technomate and indicated the problem of trying to set a timer for another channel.

They said to change the tuner configuration so that Tuner A had Configuration Mode=Simple and Mode=Single, with Tuner B set to Configuration Mode=Equal to Tuner A (which didn't seem right to me, because the info text in the menu suggests that is where you have a single LNB).

They then asked me to record the live broadcasts of the two channels for which the timers were trying to be set, and they both recorded, so the implication was that it was an EPG issue.


I've got around to trying to set up timers for the week, and again I'm getting timer sanity errors (I've since changed the config back from Technomate's suggestion/recommendation to the config listed at the start of this post, and the problem persists).

At the time of posting, the lack of external light means I can't readily provide any more information about the LNB, but it appears to have a single feed horn.


My only experience of satellite receivers prior to this is my old man's for-the-masses Sky box.

Based on my (admittedly) limited knowledge, it appears to be the case that despite there being two working tuners (I can disable each of them independently, and still view channels, with the info bar reporting Tuner A or B as relevant), once a recording is started (or timed) for a particular transponder, it simply won't let me record any channel on any other transponder at the same time.

Can anyone offer any suggestions as to something I'm missing (a plugin required in order to record from 2 tuners?) or some configuration setting I've not yet performed?


Mark