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HDHomerun Prime - where to start?

Added by Keith Mickunas over 12 years ago

I have HDHomerun Prime with cablecard, three tuners, and am using Verizon FiOS in DFW. I have connected to it via WMC and it works fine. I have set up strm files on my linux box and can access those via XBMC just fine, for all three tuners. I'm trying to use TVHeadend on Ubuntu 11.10, I have the software installed, I can see it via the web interface, and I have installed the linux versions of HDHomerun's software, as well as dvbhdhomerun-utils. I have a few problems, to say the least.

First, I see only two tuners. in /dev I have the following hdhomerun devices:
hdhomerun_control hdhomerun_data0 hdhomerun_data1
and in /dev/dvb I have:
adapter0 adapter1

I have modified /etc/dvbhdhomerun so it has my three tuners listed and set tuner_type=ATSC but this has changed nothing that I can see. I have restarted the various services multiple times and rebooted, but still only have two devices. Is there something I have to do to see all three tuners or is there a shortcoming in dvbhdhomerun-utils? The hdhomerun gui shows three tuners, so I know they are accessible somehow.

Second problem is, what now? I go into the TV Adapters and select one of the HDHomeRun ATSC devices, and then what? I clicked on Add DVB Network by location... and I see US stuff, but nothing seems obvious to me. I'm not in one of the few locations listed, so do I choose one of the Cable options? Is this step necessary? I got no idea where to go from here and so TVHeadend doesn't show me any channels or anything.


Replies (10)

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Dan Mezyn over 12 years ago

I have the same issues and could use the help as well.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Keith Mickunas over 12 years ago

I just can't get anywhere with this software. I select Add DVB Network by location, select one of the items and it dumps a bunch of information to the screen about frequencies. Later on, after some random time without any activity in the system log, Map DVB services to channels will be available, but when I click it, it starts scanning channels, and I recognize the names of local channels, but it keeps saying the demux0 device is busy and so it does nothing with it. It's less than useless. I can't find anything that tells me the order of what I should run in this to configure it, nor do I know which of the many options to choose. I don't know what the Multiplexes or Services tabs are for. I don't know if I should uninstall and reinstall at this point because the wrong thing. There is just nothing here to help.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Alex . over 12 years ago

Hi,

I use the HDHomerun dual tuner for DVB-C, and it works for me once the initital setup is completed.

Indeed it might take some time before all the muxes are scanned. This is indicated by "muxes waiting inititial scan": As long as there are muxes waiting to be scanned, the system will be busy.

The Muxes are the various frequencies on your cable network, each containing a few tv stations.
The services are the individual stations that the system detects in the various muxes.

Selecting the "DVB-network" by location can help, but information varies from network to network.
Also, initial scans might take some time. Better is ( in my experience) to check your local provider for the exact frequencies, and add some muxes manually at first, scan those, make sure you can watch some channels, and then add more.

So, my advice: start with a few muxes first of which you know (from you local provider overview) that they should work, and add them manually with the exact right parameters (which also vary from provider to provider).

Alex.

Keith Mickunas wrote:

I just can't get anywhere with this software. I select Add DVB Network by location, select one of the items and it dumps a bunch of information to the screen about frequencies. Later on, after some random time without any activity in the system log, Map DVB services to channels will be available, but when I click it, it starts scanning channels, and I recognize the names of local channels, but it keeps saying the demux0 device is busy and so it does nothing with it. It's less than useless. I can't find anything that tells me the order of what I should run in this to configure it, nor do I know which of the many options to choose. I don't know what the Multiplexes or Services tabs are for. I don't know if I should uninstall and reinstall at this point because the wrong thing. There is just nothing here to help.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Keith Mickunas over 12 years ago

Like I said, it did the scan, but based on the logging the demux0 device is always busy, so it can't do anything with it. It spends a bunch of time going through channels but claims it can't get a signal from any one of the channels I subscribe too. And as I can see those from .strm files, I know they work and can be viewed in linux that way.

I also noticed it was trying to run some other app, something related to scheduling I guess. It never returns anything. I went to the command line and ran that app and it said something about running it with --configure, which then prompted me for a username and password. From the looks of it I have to register with some web site for that app to work to get scheduling, but since I still don't see a TV channel listing in TVheadend I don't see much point to that.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Joe Wohlscheid over 12 years ago

Ok,

edit just re-read the first post and noticed that you're on FIOS. None of what I typed would apply.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Dan Mezyn over 12 years ago

I was able to scan for muxes but could not get them to map to services. If I created a channel using one or more of the muxes I was still unable to connect to the stream. In the mean time I've switched to mythbox, but I haven't had luck getting that to work with the PVR branch of openelec. From my searches it appears that no one else uses our setup.

When I got the muxes to scan I had turned on the verbose logs, it took over a day to scan but eventually I had several hundred.
But when I restarted it said it was still pending a scan and never progressed.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Keith Mickunas over 12 years ago

I'm running MythTV now and that found my Prime without any trouble. I found some instructions on configuring it and it went fine, except it won't fetch half the channel icons, but obviously that's some other issue.

For the frontend I'm still trying to finalize that. I have built the version of XBMC with the cmyth add-on that's discussed in the XBMC PVR forum. It connects to Myth just fine and plays live TV and recordings, but it is having issues with setting recordings. Even nicer, I'm running this XBMC install on a separate machine, both running Ubuntu 11.10.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Dan Mezyn over 12 years ago

I'm running open elec. While I have mythbox running successfully the mythtv PVR does not work. Their focus is on getting TVHeadend to work, but it doesn't play with the prime. I'm so close to having my system do everything I want, but I'm stuck here.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by member remember over 12 years ago

Looking for help as well. Much like Dan Mezyn my goal is to run xbmc (not openelec) and view live streams. I have tvheadend installed and running on a QNAP but am unfortunately able to see the tuners.

RE: HDHomerun Prime - where to start? - Added by Nick Rout over 12 years ago

Perhaps reading the documentation for dvbhdhomerun would help. Googling "dvbhdhomerun prime" brings up this page which says http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/dvbhdhomerun/ this "HDHomeRun Prime works too, but only with 2 tuners with the current code base." That would explain why you can only see two tuners.

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