Tvheadend

Hello Real Name,

I have an HDHR3-4DC so i would like to use it like you described above. Please can you explain the stuff a bit more, or can you give some screenshots? I am new to tvheadend.

thanks

I am new to TVheadend as well the 3.9 changes to IPTV make this a multi step process...

Not going to take time to do full screen shots or go through the whole process in case this changes again.

The part specific to getting the HD HR transcoded stream is as follows, the rest should be mostly TVheadend basics.

In TVheadend by default you should already have a IPTV network, so leave that alone.

1. Go to Configuration->DVB Inputs->Muxes

2. Add Select IPTV as the network

3.
Enabled: Checked
URL: http://[HDHR_IP]:5004/auto/v[channel found from looking at the linup.html]?transcode=mobile
Interface: eth0 (assuming a linux system)

That is about it for linking the channel on the HDHR, the rest you still have to do such as setting up the channel in the Guide and linking it to this Muxes

Alternatively you can follow guides to compile the normal driver for linux but it doesn't support hardware trans-coding as far as I know. The plus side to doing it that way is that I believe it will automatically link the channels for you.

Just a clarification here, the HDHomeRun drivers for the PLUS (now EXTEND) do support transcoding. On the HDTC's configuration page, change the default transcode profile to anything other than 'none'. Use matroska for a container.

I have an HDHR-CC (3 channel). I have found OpenElec(4.9x)+RPi+tvheadend3.9+iptv (which I built from scratch)
works quite well. I had been trying to use the DVB drivers but ran into a myriad of issues,
mostly ending up "no input received"(I have an working/valid MPG2 license) before finding the
dlna/dms interface and iptv. I added a couple of muxes/channels/services manually
and the results are pretty good so far. It seems as if the RPi is not overtaxed with
this setup so I assume its either not decoding the stream or the hardware decoder
is offloading it.
I know the HDHR emits MPEG2-TS, (does that also apply to dlna/dms streams?)
a lot of the terminology/accronyms around
digital media/broadcasting appear unfathomable without a load of research.

Does the previous reply relating to HDHomeRun PLUS/EXTEND apply to the HDHR-CC (3 tuner)?.
Does the HDTC'c configuration page refer to the HDHR-webpage or Tvheadends?
I came across a page within tvheadend mentioning "matroska" but have no idea
how transcoding is setup (nor what matroska may be). Do I simply change the profile and
use the matroska container as described.
What does that achieve? an H264 output stream from tvheadend?. Would that
infer an MPG2 decoder somewhere? and if so is that x86 specific?. (ie: Does the same setup apply
to an arm (specifically RPi platform).

Is there a way of adding all channels (services, muxes...) from the hdhomeruns playlist/channellist
into tvheadend's configuration? or can tvheadend be configured to "scan" and add everything it finds?.
If thats a work in progress I'd be happy to build/test a variant. Can I drop an m3u(etc) file
into the directory tree manually?.
If I missed something with the original HDHR DVB driver setup and "no input received"
I'd appreciate feedback.

Great project, thanks for the IPTV/HdhomeRun implementation.

The HDTC'c configuration page is the one on the device it self, for the ADVANCED new modes with DNLA / trans-coding features you have view the lineup and on the trans-coding editions you can set a default trans-code.. however not all linux driver setups will support the trans-coding and will just end up withe the default encoding.

Most broadcasts are sent in MPEG2 codec and a TS container.

I find the IPTV setup a little nicer... since in each channel URL you can tell the HDHR to transcode the channel at a different rate.

On units with transcoding the output will be h.264 video in a TS container.

There is little over head for TVHEADEND to simply save those streams in a MKV (matroska) container instead..

There is a lot of overhead however if you have TVHEADEND do the transcoding... if you have a tuner that only outputs the native feed MPEG2 reducing the resolution or changing to h.264 on the fly in software takes a fair amount of CPU.

Regardless if the HDHR drivers do pickup the transcode I think building toward the new PURE IP interfaces would ultimately be more flexible and require much less from the end user driver wise.

Ah, there's an antenna-only HDHomeRun[HDHR-TC] that mentions transcode.
But, the CableCard variant does not. So the Prime is MPEG2-TS
only [Prime is 3* ATSC QAM256 CableCard tuners].

My observations seem to suggest that using IPTV on basic
channels is about 50% of an RPi. Whereas using the DVB drivers,
it was running 99% with "no input received".

So tvheadend can be configured to transcode from
MPEG-TS to MKV with some overhead. I have geexbox/xbmc/tvheadend
running on an A20-stick so maybe I'll try it there.
[I suspected the RPi may be short of horsepower, before the
banana-pi appeared].

The only thing stopping me viewing channels from the HDHR are
either I'm not entitled to that channel or its copy protected
[that seems fair enough].

That leaves me with the last question.
Can the (iptv) channel/mux/service list be automatically populated.
Or can I drop in a playlist file defining things somewhere.

Thanks

Real Name wrote:

Since the normal HDHomerun tuner drivers seem to be a pain and don't support transcoding I thought I would post and say I was able to add my ATSC channels with trans-coding via the new IPTV options.

You can get the URL for the channel on the HDhomerun... Found at http://[deviceIP]/lineup.html
right click and copy the channel number link and you should get something like http://[deviceIP]:5004/auto/v2.1 you can use this and the DEFAULT trans-code rate will be used that you have set on the device OR you can tack on ?transcode=mobile to the end to set the transcode rate for the specific link.

You can then use this to add a Muxes to the IPTV network or in my case I created a new IPTV Network call HDHomeRun and away you go, you link the guide data and you have a Hardware trans-coded channel with less disk space use and little to no CPU.

I set my recordings to mkv containers and then they play on almost anything.

If just a little time was taken to write a module to parse http://[hthomerunip]/lineup.xml tvheadend could probably have full native support for channel scanning on the newer HDhomerun devices (ones with DLNA support) without the need for lower level drivers.

I just wanted to thank you for this tidbit of information. I was having problems with tvheadend and my HDHomerun Extend. Main issues being that some channels would tune occasionally without audio and often they would take several seconds to tune. Setting up my sources as IPTV with the information you provided fixed both issues. In my opinion, this is the way to do it if you have HDHomerun tuners that are capable.