Tvheadend

Looks like the service hasn't started, login to the box & check the daemon logs. I personally don't use OpenELEC (or LibreELEC) so I can't tell you where to look, on Debian it's /var/log/daemon.log. Sadly because Tvheadend is an "unofficial" add-on in OpenELEC (I think it was official once), you may not get support from OpenELEC and may simply get told to "use VDR".

Actually, I'm surprised it's not been removed from the unofficial add-ons yet as it hasn't been updated since May 2016 - this may also explain the issues you're seeing. CvH who used to build it for OpenELEC moved over to LibreELEC, as did many others.

There's plenty of info online as to why OpenELEC was forked to create LibreELEC. If you ask me, it's all a sad state of affairs, but I understand why it happened.

Hi.

Thanks for the reply. As I intend to use the Pi as a backend and access recordings, set recording schedules etc through another windows machine I'm not really bothered which platform I use. Essentially I want an platform I can easily install a PVR on and leave running in the background. What would you suggest as far as that goes?

Mark

Mark Hunter wrote:

Hi.

Thanks for the reply. As I intend to use the Pi as a backend and access recordings, set recording schedules etc through another windows machine I'm not really bothered which platform I use. Essentially I want an platform I can easily install a PVR on and leave running in the background. What would you suggest as far as that goes?

Mark

If you're just using it as a backend, OpenELEC may be overkill. I personally use a minimal Raspbian install & build my own deb package (it's not hard). So all I have running on it is Tvheadend.

Do you have a guide for doing that? My experience is very limited!

Cheers.

I use https://github.com/debian-pi/raspbian-ua-netinst

But you may find it easier just to use the Raspbian lite image. Once you've got the base sorted be sure to..

# Update the system..
sudo apt update;sudo apt upgrade
# Use latest kernel..
apt install rpi-update; sudo rpi-update
# Reboot to start using new kernel..
reboot

After you've flashed the image & your box is up & running. Plug in your device(s) and check..

dmesg

To make sure it initialises the tuner, you should see something like this in dmesg.

si2168 21-0064: Silicon Labs Si2168 successfully attached
si2157 22-0060: Silicon Labs Si2147/2148/2157/2158 successfully attached

Make sure you have the latest firmware (it won't actually be used until you attempt to tune).

# Switch to root.
sudo -s
# cd to firmware dir.
cd /lib/firmware
# Download firmware to /lib/firmware.
wget http://palosaari.fi/linux/v4l-dvb/firmware/Si2168/Si2168-B40/4.0.25/dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw
# Escape root.
exit

To install & build Tvheadend follow my guide here: https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/10622?r=21384#message-21384

As in the post, make sure you don't build ffmpeg or you'll be waiting forever, it's pointless on the Pi anyway. If you get an error about dvb scan tables failing to download pass --disable-dvbscan to the build script, so..

AUTOBUILD_CONFIGURE_EXTRA=--enable-hdhomerun_client\ --disable-ffmpeg_static\ --disable-dvbscan ./Autobuild.sh

The choice of stable or unstable is yours. Go for stable if you want well, extremely stable, or unstable (which is actually pretty stable but can bug out under certain conditions) if you want newer features.

Just keep an eye out on https://github.com/tvheadend/tvheadend for commits to the branch and ..

cd /path/to/source
git pull

.. Any changes.

---

If you want to mount a usb drive for recordings, see http://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/05/how-to-mount-a-usb-flash-disk-on-the-raspberry-pi/.

Just don't chown the main directory as the pi user, instead (as root) make recording/timeshift buffer dirs & chown it as the hts user, example..

sudo -s
cd /path/to/drive
mkdir /path/to/drive/tvheadend/dvr /path/to/drive/tvheadend/buffer -p
chown hts:hts /path/to/drive/tvheadend/ -R
exit

You must replace /path/to/drive with the actual path that you've chosen.

You can then just point tvheadend to those dirs in your recording profile & timeshift config.

---

Hopefully this crash course should get you started, I may have missed something - I've wrote this on 2 hours sleep, If I have, sorry!

Thanks so much for that - especially given your lack of sleep! You've been a hundred times more help than someone on another forum. I need to wait until my new larger micro sd card comes tomorrow before I can try it, but I'll post with my results.

Thanks once again - go and get some sleep!

Mark