I finally got ProgDVB ver. 5.12 to work with the Starbox II after 2 days of effort. The problem is the program is very erratic and unpredictable, crashes or causes a BSOD a lot and I get a different result each time I install it. If I change any options in the program it will usually crash then won't start again so it has to be uninstalled and reinstalled to get it to run again. The default settings work without any changes, do not try to set the type of box to Twinhan or anything or you will get the blue screen of death and have to reinstall, leave it set to BDA compatible card. Then don't open any options that you don't have such as C.I. since that will also make it freeze. Also, it seems to be sensitive to the computer and type of USB 2.0 card you are using. I got different results on 3 different computers. I never could get the Starbox II to work using a Belkin USB 2.0 card with an NEC chip but it will work with a generic card using a Via chip.
USB 2.0 seems to have a lot of problems and controller chip and drivers have not been perfected. I still get an error message saying I am trying to use a fast device on a slow port when I plug in the Starbox II and it always wants to reinstall the software each time but I just click cancel and it will go on and run. It's still a bit jerky and the picture freezes and sound cuts in and out but mostly it works except when I switch antennas it will make the Starbox freeze.
It helps if you increase the buffer sizes in ProgDVB and turn off the Windows firewall and any antivirus software you have running and so on. In the program itself it sometimes won't find all the satellite transponders unless I check the box for S2 but then won't play them unless S2 is unchecked and sometimes puts in the channel names 15 times in a row and it sometimes loses the sound when the program is minimized and the only way to get it back was to reinstall.
Prog claims all the problems are due to the Starbox II being unstable but
I also tried ProgDVB ver. 5.12 with a Broadlogic VBox 2030 PCI card and still have most of the same problems except issues with USB 2.0. It does play a bit better and isn't jerky or have the sound cut out like it does when using the Twinhan Starbox over USB but all the other problems still remain.

The secret to getting the Starbox II to work properly is finding a USB 2.0 card that really works for USB 2.0! I tried 2 Belkin cards, a F5U220 PCI card and a F5U222 PCMCIA card but neither one would work correctly. I also tried a Via VT6202 and a VT 6212 card that are supposed to be USB 2.0 but they wouldn't work correctly either. All four cards give me that error in Windows saying the device I plugged in is a fast device that I am trying to run on a slow speed port! The Belkin F5U222 card works so poorly that it wouldn't even allow scanning a satellite to find any transponders!
So far, out of 6 different PCs that I tried only one works without the "fast device that is trying to run on a slow speed port" error and that one is using the built-in USB ports on an Intel P-4 D875PBZ maim board that was originally intended for use in a server but works fine as a normal PC running Windows XP except for the lack of a sound card.
Of course I still get the error message when I try to start ProgDVB that says an "Unhandled exception has occurred..." and the one saying "Device Not Started (Twinhan DVB)" but when ProgDVB finally starts it runs good.

Well, none of us has all USB2 controller concepts at hand, to play around with.

But I've already found several chipset related issues.

As far as I know, the only USB2 controller chips being really universally compatible are those made by NEC.
VIAs don't work on all mainboard chipsets.
ALI, Opti, whatever else, often cause a pain in the back more or less...

Frequently, onboard or even mainboard chipset integrated controlelrs behave better.

But normally all host controllers come with two ports each, that can only have the same speed at a time. So, a slow device on one port out of a pair will also slow down the other on the same host controller.

Additionally, like on the ICH4, it's possible, just one USB2 root hub is available for six ports, allowing only one port pair to go for maximum speed, at a time.

>As far as I know, the only USB2 controller chips being really universally >compatible are those made by NEC...
Well, the NEC D720101 chip on the Belkin F5U220 USB 2.0 PCI card certainly WON'T work for USB 2.0. I don't know what kind of NEC chip is in the Belkin F5U222 PC card but it won't work either. It looks like I am going to have to upgrade my mainboards to get USB 2.0 ports that really work.

This is very strange.

I had a cheap Skymaster PCI USB HUB 4 + 1Port over here, using NEC D720101GJ.
Tested it with several different mainboard chipsets and a real lot of USB2 devices, with Win98SE + nusb, Win2kSP4 and Knoppix, without any trouble at all.

Just got obsolete due to a slot saver card, that also uses exactly the same NEC chip version, and got tested with several mainboard types as well.

So, two of those working perfectly.

Mainboard chipsets were i440BX, i845G, SiS710, VIA KT133 and some others I don't remember right now

The Belkin USB 2.0 card works for some things like flash drives but is useless for something complicated like the Starbox. Perhaps the drivers are defective. They are using drivers from Orange Micro. Maybe there are better drivers available, where did you get the drives for your card?

When I try to find drivers for the NEC chip all I come up with is this kind of message for WinXP: Due to licensing agreements, USB 2.0 drivers are not available for download.
I found some for the Via card but it still doesn't work any better with them than it did before. How do those fools expect anyone to get their USB cards working without drivers?

For Win98SE, I am using an inofficial native USB2 support patch from nandlstadt.com, that works well with a great amount of controllers and many other devices. It's highly recommended, to first try that patch, before going for any driver disk or Windows Update.
As I had another working w9x driver for the LAN component of the SlotSaver, and for Firewire there is a native support MS fix for '98SE, there was no need for using the driver disk.

For Win2000 SP4 I have used the original driver disk for the Skymaster card.
Now, for the SlotSaver, it's original 2k driver was also necessary, due to the other components on it, FireWire and Gbit LAN.

Both cards have been tested pretty hard, like with really heavy copying to / from four big USB2 HDDs, hundreds of GB, networking, scanning, ADSL.
All this intentionally done at the same time.
And also tested well with my USB2 MSI digivox mini II DVB-T stick, on the P4 1700MHz i845G machine.
On Linux I also played around a lot, including DVB timeshift, internet and massive file copying at the same time.

Did some tests on several other cards with different chips, nothing compares, except of perhaps a VIA on a VIA mainboard, if you can force that one to behave...

I like to really know what my toys are good for...

But does anyone have drivers that work for Windows XP SP2?

Perhaps you should first of all give it a try with a Knoppix LiveCD.
Just to make sure, it's not a hardware problem.

Cannot help for XP, as I don't have it.

I found another USB 2.0 controller card, model ICUSB25 by Stratitec that also uses the NEC D720101 chip. On the packaging and on the card itself it says Certified High Speed USB! I tried it in my PC and Windows XP found it and installed the drivers automatically but it still doesn't work any better than the Belkin card and I still get the message about how the high speed device is on a slow speed port. The Stratitec card came with USB 2.0 drivers on a CD so I installed them and it still doesn't work properly! I can only conclude that the NEC chip will not work correctly for USB 2.0.

Well, I suppose you have made sure to not share that controller with any other USB device attached, to test.

So there's not a lot of other possible causes left, than Windows itself, I'm afraid.
If I were you, i would try a fresh install on a spare HDD, to find out.

Once more, I assure you, both my NEC USB2 controllers were and are performing very well on all of my machines, under Win98SE (with unofficial update nusb), Win2kSP4 and any modern Linux.