Tvheadend

I'm using a PCTV 461e DVB-S2 stick with the development version of TVHeadend, but under Linux on a Raspberry Pi. It works well, but only after a cold start. If I stop TVheadend or reboot the server I have to switch off the 12v supply, unplug the USB, switch on 12v then reconnect USB before restarting TVheadend. Without this procedure it 'sort of' works but error rates are very high and some muxes will not tune. Maybe the BSD drivers handle warm starts better...

Thanks for the reply, it's useful to know that it should work, at least on an RPi...

How did you get it working? Using LibreELEC?

I run Arch Linux on the Pi and manually compile the latest TVHeadend version.

Did you need to install any additional drivers such as dvb-fe-tda10071.fw ?

BTW where can I get a Arch Linux image for the Pi?

I don't see one listed on the Pi web site.

The stick needs a firmware file 'dvb-demod-m88ds3103.fw' which I got from the OpenELEC site.

Basic instructions for installing Arch on RPi3 are at https://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv8/broadcom/raspberry-pi-3. However I wouldn't recommend Arch unless you are very familiar with administering a Linux system from the command-line; much of the configuration work which happens 'automatically' in other distributions has to be done manually.

The instructions seem a little complicated... isn't there an image I can download and copy to a MicroSDHC card using Win32DiskImager?

Not that I'm aware of. And the installation just gets you the absolute bare minimum, everything else has to be installed and configured on top.

I'm sure there are easier ways to watch TV The stick should work with any Linux distribution.

Arch Linux is now installed on my Rasperry Pi, but not sure how to build tvheadend...

I tried to install tvheadend using pacman to it wasn't found.

You'll have to build it.

There are two packages in AUR; 'tvheadend-git' for the latest development snapshot or 'tvheadend' for an old version of the stable branch. These are source packages so you also need to install the development environment.

I've built it now, whether correctly or not remains to be seen.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to install and run it. Not being well versed in Arch Linux, I'm not entirely how to do that.

Any hints?

Sorry for being such a pain...

I presume you've built the package so now have a file called something like tvheadend-4.3.xxxx-1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz. In which case, as root, do pacman -U tvheadend-4.3.xxxx-1-armv7h.pkg.tar.xz. If you've chosen the git package you can repeat the build and install process whenever you wish to keep up-to-date.

To start the application, do, as root, systemctl start tvheadend. To make it automatically start at boot, do systemctl enable tvheadend. Pacman should have created a user 'hts' which will run the application and own the config and video files.

I didn't know I needed to build a package, so started again trying to follow instructions here:-

https://kodi.wiki/view/HOW-TO:Install_Tvheadend_on_Arch_Linux

Neither of these worked:-

wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/tv/tvheadend/tvheadend.tar.gz

wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/tv/tvheadend-git/tvheadend-git.tar.gz

That page is out of date. From memory:

1. Log in as a non-root user (can't build packages as root).

2. Download https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/tvheadend-git.tar.gz (for the development version).

3. Unpack the tarball and cd to the directory containing the PKGBUILD file.

4. Run makepkg. Fix any errors (eg missing libraries) until it builds cleanly.

5. Install the package as above.

Managed to get it built, after quite a while but it only found about 100 channels.

I later tried LibreELEC which was a breeze to install in comparison. That found 1700.

But an interesting exercise in getting something built on Arch Linux. Thanks for your help.