Tvheadend

The good news is ATSC EPG (PSIP) is supported by Tvheadend!

The bad news is: It's only available on development branch 4.1 and unfortunately openelec only has stable 4.0 (for now).

Oh well... hopefully it'll be in production soon.

What about Internet-based? Every time I find something for TVH, it's incompatible w/something else in my environment or country.

Hi, I'm new to tvheadend. I live in North America and I'm trying to get this working for OTA channels. I've got it running so that I can play the channels, but I don't see any EPG. Am I to understand from this forum post that it is NOT possible to get an EPG for ATSC channels in North America? I can see on the downloads page that v4.1 is available now (I'm running 4.0.9 because I'm using a Docker for my UnRAID server). So in theory if I install 4.1 I would get a EPG? Also, the instruction for configuring tvheadend are pretty good, but there doesn't seem to be any instructions for configuring the EPG (http://docs.tvheadend.org/webui/epg/). Is that because there is no configuration required? Thanks.

4.1.xxxx should automatically pull in PSIP epg data

I will once again post this link for those that might wish to go this route:

Some hints for getting free-to-air satellite channels into the Electronic Program Guide in Kodi or XBMC (or another frontend) - https://freetoairamerica.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/some-hints-for-getting-free-to-air-satellite-channels-into-the-electronic-program-guide-in-kodi-or-xbmc-or-another-frontend/

The title is a bit deceptive because it actually deals with how to get the guide data into TVHeadEnd so it can then be displayed in Kodi. Also it was written for free-to-air satellite users in the USA and Canada, but the method also works for over-the-air listings for those countries.

It's not PSIP but it does work in 4.0.x versions of TVHeadEnd and earlier (and probably in later versions also) and it's free.

Thanks Mark Hunting, I'm polling the UnRAID Docker author to see what the upgrade plan is.

@K Shea, I actually found this guide after I posted my question and I've been following it (thanks, it's great). I think I'm getting close, but so far it hasn't worked for me. I have the XML file of my channels from zap2it. I'm stuck at the step with the tv-grab-file. First, since I'm running TVheadend from a docker I don't actually have access to the Linux command line so I'm doing this work from a Windows computer (but I can still create folders and move files around, etc. but I'm not sure about editing permissions).

The link you provided to the tv-grab-file doesn't seem to link to any actual file so I copied the code into a file that I named "tv_grab_file.xmltv". I then edited the "cat" line as you suggested, but at this point I'm not 100% sure that I gave it the correct path (so this could be my problem). I placed both of these files in the folder "...\TVheadend\.xmltv". I know you suggested putting the tv-grab-file in the usr/bin folder but since I don't have that access to that folder I couldn't and it didn't seem to me like that really mattered (am I wrong?). From there I configured tvheadend to use the XMLTV module for the EPG Grabber but so far it doesn't seem to respond (nothing happens). Any ideas? Thanks.

Koop Koop wrote:

@K Shea, I actually found this guide after I posted my question and I've been following it (thanks, it's great). I think I'm getting close, but so far it hasn't worked for me. I have the XML file of my channels from zap2it. I'm stuck at the step with the tv-grab-file. First, since I'm running TVheadend from a docker I don't actually have access to the Linux command line so I'm doing this work from a Windows computer (but I can still create folders and move files around, etc. but I'm not sure about editing permissions).

The link you provided to the tv-grab-file doesn't seem to link to any actual file so I copied the code into a file that I named "tv_grab_file.xmltv".

That was the article I followed when setting mine up so I can only tell you it worked for me. To get the actual file you go to https://github.com/Rigolo/tv-grab-file/blob/master/tv_grab_file and click on "raw" to get the raw code, or just go direct to https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rigolo/tv-grab-file/master/tv_grab_file and then go to your browser's File menu and use the "Save page as" function to save it to your machine. Or, if you have ssh access to your backend, you can do this:

cd /usr/bin
sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Rigolo/tv-grab-file/master/tv_grab_file
(enter your password for sudo, then wait for the file to download, when it is finished...)
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/tv_grab_file

You do NOT add the .xmltv extension to this file, it is a bash script and doesn't need an extension.

I then edited the "cat" line as you suggested, but at this point I'm not 100% sure that I gave it the correct path (so this could be my problem). I placed both of these files in the folder "...\TVheadend\.xmltv". I know you suggested putting the tv-grab-file in the usr/bin folder but since I don't have that access to that folder I couldn't and it didn't seem to me like that really mattered (am I wrong?).

Yes. It HAS to be in the /usr/bin folder or TVHeadEnd can't find it. I'm not sure how you can set up a backend without root access but remember that executing commands with sudo (as shown above) is the same as executing them as root, and that's the recommended way to "be root" for specific commands (and the only way in some distros such as Ubuntu).

From there I configured tvheadend to use the XMLTV module for the EPG Grabber but so far it doesn't seem to respond (nothing happens). Any ideas? Thanks.

I'm not even sure what you meant by this last part, you should just be picking tv_grab_file as the internal grabber as shown in that article. But note that unless you edit the path for your listings file (and you'll need to bring up your text editor using sudo to do that, such as "sudo nano /usr/bin/tv_grab_file"), you'll need to put your listings file in the /home/hts/.xmltv directory and make sure the file itself is named tv_grab_file.xmltv - note it is the LISTINGS file that has the .xmltv extension, not the script. And also that listings file (the one produced by zap2xml) must be world readable, or at least readable by the hts user (that applies no matter where it's located). And also, note that you have to specify a time for the internal grabber to run every morning, as explained in the article.

Now, you mentioned the "UnRAID Docker" as the device you are using, and I can see a couple of potential issues with that. A big one is if you don't have ssh access, in that case you are going to have problems running anything from the command line unless they provide some alternative way to do it. The other is that it may not have the bash shell installed, and in that case the tv-grab-file script will not run (if you have ssh access type
which bash
at a command prompt, if it returns a path such as /bin/bash you are good to go). If not see the article for a link to an alternative version of the script that MIGHT work, but you will have to cut and paste it into a file named /usr/bin/tv_grab_file, which must be made executable. Basically if you don't have bash or ssh access then you had probably better resign yourself to the fact that you're going to have to learn a little about the version of Linux supplied with your device just to make things work. I don't know if there are help forums for your device but if so the two questions you may wish to ask are, "How do I ssh into my device", and "Which shell(s) do I have available (bash, ash, ???)" if you don't know the answer to those already. I am NOT a Linux expert by any stretch of the imagination, so I can only go so far in helping you with this.

I will also add that if you have not installed Midnight Commander (a dual pane file manager) you may want to do so. The reason is that you can highlight a file and then go to the "Advanced chown" function (under the file menu) and it will show you the current permissions and ownership of the file, and allow you to change them (with the caveat that you may need to invoke midnight commander with sudo to change permissions or ownership, but if you do that then BE CAREFUL because you can easily destroy your filesystem or remove a critical file by doing the wrong thing). Midnight commander can be particularly useful on systems that try to keep you away from the command prompt, since it lets you view the filesystem, move and copy files, etc.

@K Shea
Thanks, I may come back to this but first I'm going to try v4.1. I just installed it (docker on UnRAID) and the EPG works! However, for some reason I can't play any videos. I'm going to search the forums for help in that area. Thanks again.