Tvheadend

Hi ullix tv,

sounds really nice. I have been thinking about such a system, but for Cable.
But I need a system with CI/CI+ because I have a pay tv bundle from KabelBW and wants to use it.

Do you already have any experience with a HD+ Card in your system?

Regards,
Datafreak

hallo ullix-tv

verstehe ich das richtig ? Mit deinem 8 channel SAT>IP LNB können 25 Empfangsgeräte zB Notebooks unabhängig voneinander verschiedene (oder auch zT gleiche) SAT-Programme empfangen ? Das wird dann wohl nur mit Giga-ethernet gehen.

Ich hab sowas für mein kleines Dorf mit DVB-T schon im einsatz (12 Programme unabhängig voneinander bei max 7 Empfänger-Notebooks gleichzeitig (DVB-T empfänger = raspberry pi mit tvheadend) und jetzt such ich sowas für DVB-S ( HD brauchen wir nicht), mir scheint deine Superlösung wäre das richtige ?
Besondere Ansprüche an den PC auf dem TVH läuft ?

gruss
kuk-tv

Datafreak -: no, I have never used a CI-something or HD+ card in my systems, and I don't need nor want them.

However, I am sure that the Inverto engieneers and others have thought hard about a descrambling feature for SAT>IP. A card won't be possible any more, as the converter is part of the LNB, and that thing is on the roof (and has no space for cards anyway). A PCI card with a CI adapter is no longer possible, as this won't work with laptops, and, most importantly, all the smartphones and tablets, which by the SAT>IP technology just became enabled as new clients, would be left out ! For the same reason a USB dongle won't be acceptable, let alone multiple dongles in perhaps a daisy chain.

I could imagine some kind of settop-box, which hosts the CI-cards, and where the LNB-ethernet is going in one end, and out comes the unscrambled ethernet signal on the other end. Or software on each computer/laptop/smartphone/tablet which does the unscrambling, like it is done for DVDs with e.g. libdvdcss. You'd buy an unscrambling key, perhaps tied to the serial number of the LNB, and configure the software with it. However, this seems complicated. I think most likely the firmware of the LNB can be modified to unscramble signals, again allowing configuration with a key which you'd need to purchase. This can easily allow insertion for hundreds of keys, making encryption thrive for TV signals

I am curious if anyone has more info on this topic?

But for the time being this SAT>IP LNB is the cheapest way for 8 channels - alternatives may be twice as expensive and far less convenient!

rü kuk: This SAT>IP LNB has 8 separate tuners, and so you can get 8 separate clients (TVs, desktop PCs, smartphones, tablets) to show at least one TV channel on each. Whether you can get more than 8 programs depends on the channels chosen, the firmware of the LNB, and the software in the clients.

Look e.g. at the Upcoming-recording picture of my original post: In the leftmost column you see 25 red dots in a white circle, which are the programs being recorded. Plus 5 white exclamation marks in a red circle, which are the ones that are waiting for a channel to become available.

Now look at picture Subscription: column Service shows the same frequency occuring in multiple lines, like 12187.5H in 3 lines. The last picture Stream summarizes this: You see all 8 tuners active and column "Subs #" shows from 2 to 4 ongoing recodings per tuner.

My interpretation - and maybe someone more versed in the technology can help here - is that when you are tuned to a certain frequency (i.e. one mux) , you can watch/record all programs of this mux, if the LNB and the recording software permits.

In the case of this LNB under tvheadend I believe you can see a maximum of "only" 4 channels per mux. Hence, overall you can watch simulateously at least 8 channels, but up to a max of 8x4=32 channels if you happen to chose 4 channels from each of the 8 muxes. In my case the 5 non-recording programs would have been on tuners that were already fully used.

I don't know if this would also have worked with 25 physically different clients, or whether a clients needs any knowledge of what the LNB is tuned to, and what is used by other clients. It might then also be a client software issue. Again, experts may help in clarifying this.

If you need to guarantee that 16 people can receive 16 different programs simultaneously, then the cheapest solution seems to be to use 2 separate dishes side-by-side with this 8-channel SAT>IP LNB in each (about 1000€ total).

@ ullix tv: thank you for the quick answer.

"Now look at picture Subscription: column Service shows the same frequency occuring in multiple lines, like 12187.5H in 3 lines. The last picture Stream summarizes this: You see all 8 tuners active and column "Subs #" shows from 2 to 4 ongoing recodings per tuner."

I find it interesting that these 3 records (all SD!) at 12187 only use 4197 Kbit/s together, if I compare it to my DBVT datastreams it would mean that there at this moment there is only very little movement in the pictures.
And it would mean that if I would use only SD programms a 100Mbit/s network might be enough or we just have to change some backbones to 1Gb/s.

"My interpretation - and maybe someone more versed in the technology can help here - is that when you are tuned to a certain frequency (i.e. one mux) , you can watch/record all programs of this mux, if the LNB and the recording software permits."

Yes, thats also what i hope and what I experienced with my DVBT system: http://ruekuk.jimdo.com

"In the case of this LNB under tvheadend I believe you can see a maximum of "only" 4 channels per mux."

Well this is not so good, I hope that you are wrong ;-) At http://www.satindex.de/sat/astra-free/ you can see that most SD-muxes have 6 or more channels...

"Hence, overall you can watch simulateously at least 8 channels, but up to a max of 8x4=32 channels if you happen to chose 4 channels from each of the 8 muxes."

yes, thats what I intend to do.

"I don't know if this would also have worked with 25 physically different clients"

I hope, because in my dvbt-network with 3 muxes it works with up to 7 clients (and this restriction is only because of poor raspberry, with a normal computer there should be 20 or 100 clients possible, I think.)

"If you need to guarantee that 16 people can receive 16 different programs simultaneously, then the cheapest solution seems to be to use 2 separate dishes side-by-side with this 8-channel SAT>IP LNB in each (about 1000€ total)."

No, the clients have to connect not to the tuners directly, but to the TVH-servers and there they will choose from 32 DVBS-programs and 12 DVBT-programs anyway with nearly any number of clients, I hope ;-)

Our network money-manager said yes to the project, so I will report whether my hopes are fullfilled, but it will take time because we first have to find somebody to install the dish and then.....

If you would not have shared your knowledge and your success with TVH, I would not have dared to start this project, so thank you very much !!!

"In the case of this LNB under tvheadend I believe you can see a maximum of "only" 4 channels per mux." 

Well this is not so good, I hope that you are wrong ;-) At http://www.satindex.de/sat/astra-free/ you can see that most SD-muxes have 6 or more channels...

Well, even if there were such a limit of 4 channels per tuner, you could always use an additional tuner to tune to the very same frequency as the first and get the remainder of channels.

However, I was indeed wrong in this assumption. I disabled all tuners but one, and then enabled a total of 7 services on 12187.5H and recorded those 7 channels. All were SD, all recording properly. Attempts to record 2 additional channels on a different mux failed - sure, the only available tuner was busy. see screenshots attached.

I still don't understand what the limits are, and whether they arise from the SAT technology, the specific LNB, or tvheadend. But now it seems that the limit is 8 muxes simultaneously, whatever the number of services (aka channels) is for each mux. Therefore, the total recordings could number well beyond 60 depending on your specific choice of muxes? Leaves me puzzled what the meaning of those 4 positions per tuner is and what their relevance is.

Yes, a Gigabit network is needed. In another experiment today I clicked recording on whatever I could get hold of, and got 250MBit/sec of traffic on the net. Fast-Ethernet is insufficient. Even the hard disks are getting a workout, in particular when using slow, "green" disks - it is a pretty random write access, when some 20+ channels want to write their goodies to the disk!

No, the clients have to connect not to the tuners directly, but to the TVH-servers and there they will choose from 32 DVBS-programs and 12 DVBT-programs anyway with nearly any number of clients, I hope ;-)

Hmmm, how many DVB-T tuners do you have? If 3 different people want to watch the same DVB-T channel live, don't you need 3 DVB-T tuner? I'd rather do an experiment before I'd assume that this is not the case?

"However, I was indeed wrong in this assumption. I disabled all tuners but one, and then enabled a total of 7 services on 12187.5H and recorded those 7 channels. All were SD, all recording properly."

GREAT !

"Hmmm, how many DVB-T tuners do you have?"

3

" If 3 different people want to watch the same DVB-T channel live, don't you need 3 DVB-T tuner?"

no, one would be enough

I can shed some light into the matter of decrypting pay tv channels.

There is currently no method in the SAT>IP specification that makes it possible to descramble pay tv channels. The only SAT>IP device I know of that has a CI slot is the Octous.NET from Digital Devices and that slot is totally out of spec. It is also not supported by tvheadend, but it can be used by other programs like the famous DVBViewer. It also has the restriction to decrypt only one channel at a time, MTD is not possible.

Having that said, there is a solution in tvheadend that works very well for me to descramble pay tv channels. All you need is tvheadend, oscam and a USB smartcard reader (I use a Omnikey 3121) and the knowledge to set this whole thing up ;-). And of course a valid pay tv subscription with a smartcard. With that setup it is possible to descramble multiple streams at once. You can also add more smartcard readers to decrypt channels from different providers. There is also a way to restrict tvheadend clients from watching pay tv via the built-in rights management system, so you can give clients with a valid subscription access to pay tv content and others cannot use these channels (but beware: this might be seen as some way of card sharing, even if you can prove that everyone has a valid contract).

SAT-IP-Servers/-LNBs are just a bunch of dumb tuners with a remuxer streaming requested PIDs of a bouquet. If the SAT-IP-Server/-LNB-hardware ist fast enough you get ALL services/stations on each tuner. If it is not fast enough you can request the complete transport stream of a bouquet, write in into a ringbuffer and each client can use a remuxer-thread on the ringbuffer. So you're only limited by the number of tuners (one bouquet/transponder per tuner) and network bandwidth. As SAT-IP-Servers/-LNBs just encapsulate the data-stream from the satellite into network packets any SAT-IP-client can decrypt Pay-TV if it is capable to request the necessary PIDs of the transport stream and route them through it's CI-Slot.

Bouquet = Transport Stream with multiple services
Service = TV-/Radio station, data service, ...

Usually one bouquet is wrapped into one transponder. You need one tuner per transponder.

1 Tuner -> 1 Transponder -> 1 Transport Stream -> 1 Bouquet -> Multiple Services (e.g. TV stations)

@rü kuk:
Just consider one or more SAT>IP-LNBs in multicast mode and a WLAN mesh network (Freifunk) using the multicast capability of B.A.T.M.A.N-adv to supply IPTV to all users ...

Ich habe nun den 8-channel SAT>IP LNB erhalten und in einer testumgebung ausprobiert und ich bin begeistert, es läuft alles so wie ich erhoffte.

Zuerst habe ich ohne tvh getestet:notebook mit dvbviewer und tablet mit elgato sat>ip(0,99euro), hat einwandfrei geklappt, jedoch muessen die geräte im gleichen netzwerk wie der LNB sein. Übrigens bezieht sich bei mir alles auf SD-Programme.

Nun mit TVH 3.9.1972~g9bb73c1~trusty(ich habe tvh auf einer vm mit ubuntu 14.04 server auf meinem win8.1 notebook aufgesetzt):
ich öffne TVH in win8.1 mittels http://192.168.0.91:9981/ TVH findet den LNB mit allen 8 tunern automatisch. Zuerst habe ich nur 1 tuner enabled.

Nun werden unter "configuration-dvbinputs-networks" 8 netzwerke dvbs#1 bis dvbs#8 angelegt (nicht unbedingt notwendig, erhöht aber bei services und muxes die übersichtlichkeit erheblich). Nun enable ich die 4 positions-"untertuner" und ordne jedem das network dvbs#1 zu, sonst belasse ich die voreinstellungen.

Nach einiger Zeit oder auch nach wiederholtem neustart von tvh (das ist wie bei ullix tv nicht genau verifizierbar) beginnt er alle transponder zu scannen, den fortschritt kann man beim reiter "muxes" beobachten: wenn der scan-status von "pending" überall in "idle" übergegangen ist, ist das scannen fertig.

Nun ist dummerweise (und das bedeutet erhebliche stumpfsinnige arbeit !) überall bei "muxes" das enabled-häkchen gesetzt (es wäre viel besser zu anfang es bei disenabled zu belassen), ich suche mir nun für jeden tuner einen transponder (=mux), den ich enabled belasse, bei allen anderen ca 120 (bei 8 tunern 960 !!) entferne ich das häkchen.
Nun zu anfang ist ja nur 1 tuner enabled und hier belasse ich testweise 2 muxes enabled, und die zugehörigen programme erscheinen in "services", die ich nun vielfältig durch klicken auf den spaltenkopf sortieren kann.
Gewünschte programme markiere ich und durch klicken auf "map all" erscheinen die programme in "configuration- channel/EPG". Mittels http://192.168.0.91:9981/playlist importiere die playlist in win8.1, hänge die endung .m3u dran und öffne sie dann in vlc, nun kann man in vlc schnell zwischen den progs zappen.

wenn ich zB nun RTL auf dem transponder mit der frequenz 12188H empfange, kann ich auf dem android-tablet mit der app TVHClient einen beliebigen sender vom gleichen transponder empfangen, wähle ich jedoch einen sender von dem anderen gemappten transponder, wird automatisch RTL auf dem notebook geschlossen und ich empfange nur auf dem tablet. So soll es sein !! ende des tests und für tuner#1 wird nun nur 1 mux enabled.

Also pro Tuner 1 mux enabled, dh insgesamt 8 muxes (bzw transponder), ergibt je nach gewählten transpondern bis ca 180 programme (wenn man die "Standbild-sender" ;-) einbezieht. Diese 180 Programme können nun von beliebig vielen (abhängig von der CPU auslastung des TVH servers!) notebooks/tablets unabhängig voneinander empfangen werden, so wie es bei meinem DVB-T-Server schon läuft.
Und das ist ja die geniale Haupteigenschaft von TVH für mich.

Ausserdem habe ich noch auf der 14.04-vm noch mediatomb installiert, damit können moderne smart-tvs mit DLNA-client (haben leider wohl die meisten noch nicht) direkt auf TVH zugreifen ohne vorsatzgerät, allerdings mit umschaltzeiten von gut 30 sec. Achtung bei DLNA muss alles im gleichen netz sein.
Auf TVH jedoch kann man auch hinter einem router mittels VLC oder TVHClient zugreifen.

Just some warning and a tip, this 8-ch tuner may be acting up a bit.

I noticed very long switching times between channels, both for radio and tv stations, in the order of 10 sec and even more.

Debug from tvh told me that it was first trying to tune tuner #1, and failed, and then tried tuner #2 and succeeded. I rebooted the IPLNB from its webinterface (http://&lt;ip-in-your-lan&gt;:8080/, PW=admin), and now it it is back to switching times between tv stations of <3 seconds.

With the tuner #1 still malfunctioning I tried to use vlc to watch tv (vlc http://&lt;ip-in-your-lan&gt;:8080/m3u), but vlc would hang, and show nothing. Apparently with that command it only tries tuner #1. Does anyone know how vlc could be directed to other tuners?

With vlc the tv channel switching times are only ~1.5 sec.

It is very helpful to use the webinterface of the IPLNB to see the status of the tuners: http://&lt;ip-in-your-lan&gt;:8080/festatus

ullix tv wrote:

I still don't understand what the limits are, and whether they arise from the SAT technology, the specific LNB, or tvheadend. But now it seems that the limit is 8 muxes simultaneously, whatever the number of services (aka channels) is for each mux. Therefore, the total recordings could number well beyond 60 depending on your specific choice of muxes? Leaves me puzzled what the meaning of those 4 positions per tuner is and what their relevance is.

The key point is how many DVB-S or any (C/T) tuners you have. Each tuner can tune to one frequency (thus multiplex - mux or in case DVB-S - transponder) - there is also H/V polarization switching (take it as different frequencies). You can receive all services from these tuned transponders / multiplexes (thus 8 multiplexes at max for this SAT>IP LNB). If there are some other limits, they are caused by other things (not so powerful hw, bugs in firmware, limited network bandwidth etc.). Tvheadend can receive the full multiplexes (muxes) and provide all services from them (but you need to deliver the full mux data to tvh).

The channel word is not right to describe this LNB, if you look to the specs there is "Reception of up to 8 DVB-S/S2 transponders".

Hi,

yesterday I received my Inverto iLNB. Everything works well, but after some hours Tvheadend and iLNB stopped working. I restarted Tvheadend and the iLNB disappeared. Even the WebUI of the iLNB doesn't work anymore. After turing off the iLNB and plugging it in again, it starts working.

What are the optimal settings for the iLNB in Tvheadend? Full PLAY command on? PILOT on?

For each tuner, I set the amount of "Subdevices" to 1 (you can receive only one Network with one LNB). This should be a preset for all Inverto iLNB's.

Thank you!

@Jaroslav: thanks, I'm finally getting it

Though "8 channel SAT>IP LNB with PoE Adapter" is the official description by Inverto, see here: http://www.inverto.tv/products/product.php?section=1&id=264&cat=66. Inconsistent use of words always makes it hard for newbies.

Still leaves the question on "positions" open. In my experimenting I found that only position #1 is working. All others might as well be left disabled (or even removed?), they don't provide anything extra, nor can they even replace position #1.

C K wrote:

Hi,

yesterday I received my Inverto iLNB. Everything works well, but after some hours Tvheadend and iLNB stopped working. I restarted Tvheadend and the iLNB disappeared. Even the WebUI of the iLNB doesn't work anymore. After turing off the iLNB and plugging it in again, it starts working.

I made this experience too; every now and then the IPLNB hangs, and tvheadend cannot access it, nor can you use the webinterface for a reboot. Only pulling the plug helps. Then you need to restart tvheadedn.

ullix tv wrote:

@Jaroslav: thanks, I'm finally getting it

Though "8 channel SAT>IP LNB with PoE Adapter" is the official description by Inverto, see here: http://www.inverto.tv/products/product.php?section=1&id=264&cat=66. Inconsistent use of words always makes it hard for newbies.

Still leaves the question on "positions" open. In my experimenting I found that only position #1 is working. All others might as well be left disabled (or even removed?), they don't provide anything extra, nor can they even replace position #1.

I think iLNB is the correct product name. Read the first Lines:

New! Inverto’s iLNB™ delivers satellite broadcast content to Smart TVs, Tablets, Smartphones and PCs connected to the home IP network The iLNB can receive up to eight different transponders of a satellite orbital position

Nevermind.

Maybe Tvheadend is too aggressive. I will give it try later and reduce the amount of tuners.

iLNB died again :-( I did a TCP portscan with

nmap 192.168.178.37 -p-

Starting Nmap 6.40 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2014-11-14 18:04 CET
Nmap scan report for IPLNB-030601.fritz.box (192.168.178.37)
Host is up (0.010s latency).
Not shown: 65530 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
22/tcp   open  ssh
80/tcp   open  http
88/tcp   open  kerberos-sec
554/tcp  open  rtsp
8080/tcp open  http-proxy

But no connection to ssh, 80 nor 8080 (don't know how to check the rest).

C K wrote:

What are the optimal settings for the iLNB in Tvheadend? Full PLAY command on? PILOT on?

with me it works like that:
Send full PLAY cmd: disenabled
Force pilot for DVB-S2: disenabled (but I only use DVB-S)
Everything works fine, except ARD-alpha and SR (Transponder 12266 MHz), with TVH and vlc these channels are stuttering after 30 sec, but I think its a problem of vlc ,because when i use kodi and TVH there is no stuttering also when i use dvbviewer directly to iLNB.
I gave a steady IP to the iLNB, because when it is unplugged it gets a new ip and that is disturbing.
@ ullix tv:
thank you for the nice links http:....../festatus etc.
With me all tuners and positions are enabled though it seems to works also when only one position is enabled e.g. #3.

question with positions: it think it should be like that: #1 is for lowband/vertical #2 for LB/H
#3 for HB/V and #4 for HB/H. but it is not like this, probably because thv handles them wrongly in the GUI (but only there !)
My iLNB works since tuesday morning, when we got the satellite dish on the roof with no problem.

question with positions: it think it should be like that: #1 is for lowband/vertical #2 for LB/H #3 for HB/V and #4 for HB/H. but it is not like this, probably because thv handles them wrongly in the GUI (but only there !)

Ahhmm, no. Every Network (with DVB-S) is a Satellite. You definately don't need to seperate LowVert/HighVert/LowHor/HighHor. You only have ONE position with an iLNB ;-)

Back to topic: You need to set "Force pilot for DVB-S2: enabled" for DVB-S2. Just tested.

Okay... no real improvements... Did somebody got contact to Inverto already?

In my iLNB settings I disabled "Smart Tune Modus". And in Tvh I set "Force teardown delay" to all Tuners and "Next tune delay in ms (0-2000)" to 2000.

Okay Boys and Girls, iLNB works here for ~10 hours atm.

I updated my Digital Device Octopus Net Rack Firmware (to which the iLNB is connected). In Tvheadend I unchecked Configuration > DVB Inputs > Networks > Network Discovery, Skip Initial Scan an Idle Scan Muxes. For each Tuner in Configuration > DVB Inputs > TV adapters I unchecked Initial Scan, Idle Scan and Send full PLAY cmd. For Configuration > Channel / EPG > EPG Grabber I set scan timeout to 5000 and unchecked Force initial EPG scan at startup.

Here are some Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/h3qRm#0

Indeed, the "positions" in the tvheadend TV Adapter SAT>IP configuration have nothing to do with the low/high vert/horiz settings of the classical LNBs. I am attaching a clip from the "SAT>IP Protocol Specification Version 1.2.1" (page 44) downloadable from here: http://www.satip.info/resources

And by testing I found that ONLY position #1 must be enabled - no further transponder / channel can be found on either one of the positions #2, #3, #4. Those positions #2, #3, #4 can also NOT be used in lieue of position #1!

Makes me wonder why the configuration of tvheadend for the TV Adapter is offering a default of 4 Satellite positions for each tuner? Shouldn't the default be 1, as the likelyhood of having 4 (IP-)LNBs in one single SAT>IP system seems to be rather small.

Or am I missing something else?

ullix tv wrote:

Makes me wonder why the configuration of tvheadend for the TV Adapter is offering a default of 4 Satellite positions for each tuner? Shouldn't the default be 1, as the likelyhood of having 4 (IP-)LNBs in one single SAT>IP system seems to be rather small.

Or am I missing something else?

I started with GSS.BOX and compatible. These devices are probably used by more people and they support up to 4 diseqc positions.. So, basically, it's my default, but you can change the satellite positions value, so everyone are happy..

I can add a hack to the code for this iLNB (using the strings in the XML description to identify it) to offer only one position by default... But.. Do we need it ? This device is a bit specific.

BTW: Waiting for someone who will want to use iLNB with rotor ;-))) Kidding, I don't plan to add this feature to tvh.

ullix tv wrote:

Makes me wonder why the configuration of tvheadend for the TV Adapter is offering a default of 4 Satellite positions for each tuner? Shouldn't the default be 1, as the likelyhood of having 4 (IP-)LNBs in one single SAT>IP system seems to be rather small.

I wrote this in the IRC days ago ;-)

But for other SAT>IP Devices this is very useful: One sat cable connected to a 2-sat multiswitch means, you have 2 positions.

Edit: anyone got a response from Inverto support?

Edit2: the iLNB works perfect now, just setup Tvheadend being less aggressive in scanning and grapping epg data with your iLNB.