Tvheadend

No, you're not asking too much - I used to do this with a Pi1 with no problems, a Pi2 can manage easily.

You don't say where you are - does your country use MPEG-2? If so you'll need a [cheap] license to enable the hardware codec. MP4 is enabled by default.

If you're outside the US, that might be why yours works. MPEG2 takes a lot more processing power to decode. I think it might be a software problem, too. WinTV for Windows decodes the stream and plays it within the same software, while TVHeadend decodes and then sends it through the LAN to the client, using 127.0.0.1 to route it back, causing massive lag.

Are you using a USB tuner or something made specifically for the Pi? The USB bus is pretty slow, I think it's only 1.1 and all of the ports, plus the Ethernet port are sharing a single lane, by the time you connect a keyboard and mouse, there's not much left for anything else.

Derek Paige wrote:

MPEG2 takes a lot more processing power to decode.

If you install an MPEG2 license, it will be decoded by the GPU, and will have no more CPU impact than MP4.

TVHeadend decodes and then sends it through the LAN to the client, using 127.0.0.1 to route it back, causing massive lag.

Sending packets to 127.0.0.1 does not route traffic via the LAN on any OS I know of.

Are you using a USB tuner or something made specifically for the Pi? The USB bus is pretty slow, I think it's only 1.1 and all of the ports, plus the Ethernet port are sharing a single lane, by the time you connect a keyboard and mouse, there's not much left for anything else.

Rubbish. I have 3 USB Tuners, plus 2 USB HDD. The Pi USB is 2.0 not 1.1. I can simultaneously record 3 HD programs, and play video on multiple clients without saturating the bus, and with the CPU running at < 20%.

Also adding a keyboard and/or mouse is hardly going to overtax the most puny USB system.

I too use the raspberry pi 2 for live tv.
In fact I have 3 of them setup in my house with no problems what so ever.
I'm in the UK, I had to buy the mpeg2 licence and after that everything worked perfect.
What's os are you using on your pi. I use openelec but osmc is just as good.

I run Raspbian Jessie Lite on a headless server Running TVHeadend, Squid, get_iplayer, openvpn and acting as an NFS server.

I was running all this on a Pi model B, but ran into problems recording more than 2 programs at once with TVheadend. I've not had that problem since switching to the Pi 2. I did have some stability issues with TVheadend, but that went away once I compiled from source.

I run osmc on the client Pis.

Hi

Has anyone written a simple guide to setting this up on a Raspberry Pi ?
Have been looking for days.

I normally run OSMC on a Pi B+

Frederic Pierre wrote:

Hi

Has anyone written a simple guide to setting this up on a Raspberry Pi ?

There's really very little pi-specific to setting up TVH.

0) I assume you have a working Pi to start out with.
1) Obtain tuner[s] - the type will depend on your country & OTA delivery in your location. Tuners with hardware PID filters will perform better than those without.
2) Install tuner[s] - you may need a powered hub depending on your setup. Make sure you have up to date firmware for tuners ['dmesg | grep firmware' is your friend]
3) Install TVH - I strongly recommend compiling from source if you have a Pi2 or 3 - its easy.
./configure
make
make install
4) Setup TVH - this is probably the hardest bit, but it's the same process as on any other platform. http://address.of.pi:9981

5) If you're using a Pi as a client, and the TV system uses mpeg-2 in your location, the client will need an mpeg-2 license, you don't need this on a standalone server, and if your location uses mp4 you're good to go.