DTV server, RRi DTV 'Hat' not seen?

Indeed, but there is something to be said for Dickens when you are ssh'ed into it on a slow broadband connection ;-)

Looks like they have gone up a bit since I got mine - Amazon have the 2 tuner one at £99 now (ISTR I paid about £70 for mine)

There are number of ways of doing it - they supply software that will do the basics and record onto anything the machine running the software can write to.

I went for a plex server running on my NAS. It stores to a network visible share, so recordings can be played back on anything that can see the share and interpret it as a file system. It can also be used by plex client on anything running that, and lastly can also be seen by anything with DLNA compatible playback, since my NAS also shares anything in the folder that way as well.

(this gets round the usual problems created by TVs that can record to a attached USB drive - i.e. only that TV can playback the recording since its DRM locked to the platform that made it, and also it not available on the network)

Recordings can then be scheduled from any reasonably recent plex client, or from any web browser talking to the plex server. (the client has not part in the recording process other than creating the request for it to happen - the server then talks to the streaming tuner and does the rest itself)

I think for live TV and DVD capabilities you need the paid for version. They do a variety of monthly "plex pass" rental models, but I just went for the perpetual one off license.

It downloads a full EPG appropriate for your TV region. You can make recordings based on channel and program, but it also presents a aggregated view of everything bundles together by category (e.g. shows, films[1], news etc), and "starting soon" etc. So if you want to record a program and you know the name, you just search the EPG for it, and say record (either this program or the whole series), and it will then create schedules for all the recordings over multiple channels if you want. It manages the tuners as required (and will highlight if scheduling conflicts mean you don't have enough tuners). There are some "advanced" options on the record selection to specify if you want all showings or just new transmissions, whether to limit to particular channels, if you add some padding time to the end of recordings, and also whether to automatically edit out the adverts (its a "beta" feature that works ok in some cases but not all).

All in all it seems ok. It has the occasional quirk.

Plex is good but it could be a whole lot better. Unfortunately it relies on transcoding on the fly at the server, rather than each client transcoding, if that's what it needs, at the point of display. Even with a fairly fast PC as the server, I find that streaming an HD recording (1920x1080, H264-encoded TS, as recorded off-air by NextPVR or TVHeadend) to a Plex client in a Roku box imposes a severe CPU load on the PC. Playing the same file in VLC on that server PC imposes much less load - hardly noticeable on the Windows Performance graph. Streaming two such files - or even two SD recordings (720x576, MPEG TS) is a dead loss, with stuttering and continuous CPU fan.

A better solution would probably be to use a Raspberry Pi as a client, sucking the file that has been shared by Samba from the server. VLC will display an HD recording without stuttering. I imagine it will do an SD recording as well, if I bought an MPEG licence so it didn't have to do everything in software. In other words, have the client capable of playing any reasonable format, rather than requiring it to be massaged by the server into a single format that the client can play.

Noted. ;-)

Ok, thanks. So that is a bit more than say a RPi3B+DTV Hat + uSD, but only a bit (30 + 20 + 10).

Ok.

Could that be a Synology?

I think that answers my previous question John. ;-)

Ah, I wasn't aware of that limitation (so thanks for the heads up). If I record something on my Toppy and transfer it to and with my WHS (remotely), anything on the LAN that can see the file can play it (I think I rename .rec to .avi or somesuch).

I think I follow that. I've not really ever got involved in any media serving as there wasn't really a need (Mrs and daughter do their own thing media wise).

Ok. I don't mind paying a reasonable amount once for something I use a lot.

Sounds a bit like our NowTV boxes?

The best I do on the Toppy is 'Series search' but that seems to work ok.

Ok.

Ok.

Doesn't most IT kit?

Yeah, that does sound cool. ;-)

So it's that sort of solution or sticking a couple of DTV cards and a big drive in a PC?

Cheers, T i m

I run the sever on my NAS which has a Celeron N3150/N3160 1.6 GHz quad-core processor (so reasonably powerful for a NAS, but not a patch on an average PC). Can't say I have ever noticed a particularly high CPU load on that.

I just tried streaming a HD recording to a web browser, and it did transcode, but did not seem to use any significant additional CPU on the NAS (I got a burst of 30% load for a second or so at the start of playback, then it settled down to in to the 2% to 5% range). Streaming another copy to my phone (that was shown in the status as "direct play", did not add to the load.

What have you got your server transcoder options set to? (I have my quality setting at "Prefer higher quality recordings", and the number of simultaneous encodes set to unlimited).

I wonder why you are seeing a much higher load...?

You don't have to use plex client for playback if you have another way of getting at the file, either at the file system level or via DLNA. So for a PC, then use VLC (and if watching recorded stuff on a PC I usually do since the ability to skip forward is quicker and more flexible). On my TV I normally use the plex client, but I could equally use the TVs native video playback application, and play from DLNA. I think my DVD player can also play from a SMB/CIFS share as well.

If you add in a case and a PSU, then you are probably on par.

Mine is a QNAP TS-453A, but there is a synology version of the server.

Yup, I used to use toppy for recordings, and had a modified Linksys NSL2 (aka "slug") hooked up to it via USB that then made the toppy file system available via FTP to the network. So you could start a copy going, and shortly after start playback in VLC while the copy carried on in the background (transfer speed was only about twice real time).

Hence when going "modern" with HD and all that, I wanted a similar level of functionality. I had not found any of the native capabilities of the TVs etc to be up to much.

sorry typo - "the client has *no* part in the recording..."

IIRC it was £4/month, or £32/year, or £95/"lifetime" (although how the work out you have croaked and left it to the kids is not explained ;-)

Could be - not seen on to be able to compare.

Yup same kind of idea, with a bit more flexibility...

Indeed.

I had a couple of versions where music playback on the TV client was slightly broken (it played ok, but did not keep track of the elapsed track time correctly - so did not know when to cue up the next track). The current combo seems to be working, so I am leaving it mostly alone!

I also get a problem sometimes where it seems to lose a schedule for recording if I make it on the TV, but it remembers it fine if done from the web browser (and that includes if I use the TV's web browser).

Yup, that would work as well. There are a number of ways of going about it. I decided I liked the idea of having a network accessible tuner that everything could see (obviously the PC in the DTV card situation could act as one, as would your PI setup).

Wondering if it could be an issue with my Pi3B+, I dug out a 3B and transferred everything over to it and booted it, but then I noticed the yellow lightening flash in the top right hand corner that I understand indicates it's beng underpowered?

I swapped out the 2.1A PSU for a 2.4 one, and tried different cables (I normally used a dedicated power cable with an on off switch) but no improvement. I then transferred the lot back to the B+ but the flash was still there?

So I've just re-imaged the card and re-installed everything and It's not appeared since?

I'm guessing this could be an incompatibility between the OS configuration between the B and the B+?

Still no sign of the TV module and The Pi Hut have referred my no-working report to the Forums!

Maybe they thought I was asking for technical support rather than reporting what could be a DOA?

That said, if it looks like there is no support for the DTV Hat in any of the Raspian notes then ... ?

Cheers, T i m

Update:

I posted a question on the RPi forum and Dougie kindly came back with:

"Install tvheadend and kodi, kodi-bin & kodi-pvr-hts

Add

dtoverlay=rpi-tv gpu_mem=128

into /boot/config.txt and reboot."

I did that on the Pi3B and the tuner was seen in tvheadend straight away (well, it did after I remembered to transfer the Tuner hat over to the 3B ).

Then I did a fresh install of Raspbian on the 3B+, installed tvheadend and just added the code into the file (eg I didn't install the kodi stuff) and again, it worked first time. ;-)

So, anyone able explain what that code did and why it wouldn't have been in the walk through?

Is it possible that others wouldn't need it?

On a more practical level, it does seem to work streaming TV over our LAN but it doesn't seem to be able to do so smoothly. If you start a show running and then pause it for a while (using the tvheadend built in player) and then release it, it then seems to run smoothly for a while before hesitating again (suggesting a bandwidth issue somewhere)?

FWIW, on the Pi it suggests it's running at about 30% CPU when streaming to a remote PC and my Mac Mini / XP here is showing about the same when playing same (network activity is quite light). I can easily stream video off my RPi NAS next to the PiTV fwiw.

I'll do some more experiments ...

Thanks to all who offered help etc.

Cheers, T i m

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's now working but I still need to:

Check out the hesitation issue when streaming a TV program.

Find out how well things like the recording work.

Work out to good the EPG is.

Check what other software I might need to make it more refined.

Check out alternative solutions to replace the Toppys, as / when they become US.

Cheers, T i m

A SoC doesn't generally provide plug-n-play functionality, so the kernel is can't detect peripherals instead it's build with a text file to describe what peripherals a given board should have, the config.txt is a way to add stuff at runtime that wasn't included at compile time.

Presumably the developer forgot he'd had to do it!

If you enable advanced view in tvheadend, there are different grabbers available under Configuration/Channels/EPP Grabber modules, I use "over-the-air UK freeview" (and "over-the-air UK freesat", but not relevant for the Pi) rather than the default "over-the-air EIT DVB grabber"

Thanks for that Andy, I'll give it a go in a while.

For the remote viewing (LAN) of this sort of thing, are there more efficient (but equally easy) ways than the using the tvheadend viewer do you know please?

Cheers, T i m

VLC, two methods both launch a .m3u playlist from the tvheadend web interface

or you can use kodi on another PC or Pi as a front-end to tvheadend on the Pi

Sounds a bit like config.sys on DOS from the 80's. ;-)

I don't (specifically) attempt lots of solutions that involve Linux (even though they could be a perfectly good a cheap solution) because of how easily something unforeseen can catch out someone like me (and many here in this case etc).

I mention Linux because with Windows the bigger userbase means that most things are fixed before ordinary people get to them (even though they might be less easy for a person *to* fix).

So when I skimmed the walkthrough for this TV card I thought it looked very straightforward (like only 3-4 CLI steps) but how wrong was I. And without someo9ne else coming up with what appears to be the solution, I'd never have sorted it myself, not only because I'm not a coder but because of how much time I can afford / justify to playing with this sort of thing.

But on the other hand I know how limited (and often un repairable) std commercial appliances are and how it remind me just how 'neat' a solution the Toppy is for my skills / needs.

eg, It was functional enough OOTB but with tried and tested taps, could be made even better. ;-)

Every time I limp though some slow / clumsy EPG I'm reminded again of how good the Toppy is.

Cheers, T i m

Thanks again Andy, I'll give that all a look this evening.

I guess part of this is learning what you need and how it all could / should plug together.

FWIW, I'm doing it all wired and should all be Gb (apart from the RPi).

Cheers, T i m

Yes, for years I used mythTV, initially with tuners in the PC in the lounge, that was a bit noisy, so then I split it into tuners in a backend hidden away upstairs, with a silent frontend downstairs

myth development is not the fastest and it started to feel quite old-hat, so I swapped to tvheadend (and other stuff) on the server upstairs with a combination of kodi boxes (on Pi and Udoo x86) or VLC on laptops, it's much more of a "just works" setup ... though keeping netflix working in kodi on linux can be 'interesting'

Whenever I've tried such things they often feel very clunky to me, in a user / swish sorta way. Like the Apple UI that is supposed to make things easier for most people but feels more complicated / backward to me.

My WHS is in the lounge (behind the TV) and is virtually silent, to the point where I can't hear if it's on, even with nothing else going on. ;-)

I like that idea ... as long as there are no downsides (like network bandwidth etc).

My sort of solution. ;-)

I bet it can. ;-(

So do you know the Toppys Andy? What split (front / backend) solution would give the two of us the sort of features we both enjoy with our Topfields and be equally 'Mrs friendly'? Ironically she watches 'her' TV via a video capture card in her PC fed from a Topfield (using headphones if I'm in) and I watch the main TV via my Topfield and that seems to work pretty well.

I think we can record 2 (3?) channels simultaneously whilst watching / playing another? So would that would mean a potential of a streaming tuner that could allow use of 6/8 channels simultaneously?

Two quad tuner cards in a PC?

Cheers, T i m

I tried MythTV before I settled on TVHeadend. I found Myth's UI to be very amateurish and really over-complicated. There were forms where fields were too small to contain values, with no way of scrolling which parts of the field were visible. The concept of creating multiple virtual tuners per physical tuner, to allow simultaneous recordings from the same mux, seems OTT. NextPVR (on Windows) and TVHeadend (on Ubuntu and Raspian) doesn't have that extra layer of complexity.

But Myth does have a decent EPG, as a grid with time horizontally and channel vertically. TVH has a list of events, sorted first by time and then by channel, but that's alphabetically by channel name, not by LCN - logical channel number :-( That EPG takes a little bit of getting used to, having to find programmes by channel and/or programme title, but i've got used to it now. The only thing you can't see is when programmes on different channels (and maybe different multiplexes) overlap.

I could set Kodi as the front end for TVH, but that has one of those horrible Tellytubby "ten-foot interfaces" which is designed for people to see from across the room rather than sat right in front of their PC. i do all my scheduling from my PC, even if I sometimes use Plex to view programmes on the big TV via a Roku box; mostly I watch programmes on my PC because then I can use VLC which can play at 1.3, 1.5 or even 2x normal speed.

TVH seems to be behaving itself fairly well, though occasionally I've found that an auto-rec (record whole series, including future episodes that are not yet in the EPG) fails to match future episodes, even though it did to begin with. I set up Public Eye and The Gentle Touch as autorecs and for a while they worked found, and even found episodes that were not in the EPG to begin with, but then both stopped, and deleting/re-adding the autorec hasn't helped, so I have to set all those individually by hand every few days as more episodes appear in the EPG.

Incidentally, if anyone can work out the ending of last night's Public Eye (Slip Home in the Dark, about a woman who was receiving blackmailing phone calls) then you're better than me. I think the caller was someone the husband had been in jail with, but why was the wife so ready to pay up and why did she give the impression that she knew what the guilty secret was that the blackmailer threatened to reveal. OK, she'd lost a baby, which is a traumatic and harrowing experience, but not one that anyone could blackmail you about, surely.

I had a quick look at this just now and I can't seem to see the options you reference Andy (even in Advanced View)?

I see Configuration>Channels or Configuration>EPG Grabber but neither give me any such options?

What have I missed? ;-(

Cheers, T i m

maybe it's expert view, rather than advanced