Tvheadend

No reply, but I have found a partial answer here: https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/5764
That thread is a couple of years old, so I wonder if anything has changed regards tvheadend --> Smart TV since then?

TIA

Not sure I completely understand the question, so apologies if this is off target.

tvheadend accepts IPTV streams, and accepts SAT>IP input as well. So you don't have to have physical tuners in your tvheadend backend box.

Similarly, more recent builds have a SAT>IP server built in, so tvheadend can relay whatever signals it receives back out over IP (wired or wireless, doesn't matter - quality of wireless signal will be an issue for the client, not the server).

So, assuming your TV or receiver can understand that SAT>IP output (and that's where my ignorance shows, I don't know how it's packaged or what could receive it) then I think your answer is 'yes'. I believe that you have the full tvh functionality in the middle as well, so you could strip out audio tracks, transcode, whatever before relaying.

Someone who uses this stuff would be better responding, though

Thanks for coming back on this. What I am interested in is which of the tvheadend services will work with a modern wifi-enabled "Smart TV" and how well? The specifications available for such devices are wordy but thin on hard technical detail, and experience says it's pointless expecting enlightenment from the staff at retail outlets. And then there is the gap between seemingly compatible specs. and actual reliable operation.

I had hoped that there may have been a few folks about with a modern TV screen connected to their network who could speak from experience which features of tvheadend (e.g. streamed live services PVR) work and how well. Or do we still need a Rasp. Pi tucked behind the screen?

I don't think it'll do what you'd like - to get any real functionality, you need a piece of client software that can talk to tvheadend through its API. That's what mobile apps like tvhclient do, and that's what the Kodi addon does. Unless such an application exists for your television (which is highly unlikely), you can't control tvheadend at all from the TV.

I also don't recall tvh advertising itself through UPnP, but I may be wrong on that.

What you can do is use the SAT>IP stuff I mentioned above to relay any stream from the tvh backend to your TV. Assuming your television supports individual IPTV streams, then that would work AFAIK - allowing you to relay, say, DVB-S signals from tvheadend to a television that only has DVB-T tuners. I don't know how elegant it would be, though, as you're unlikely to have a channel guide versus simply adding each stream (although you could do clever things like pipe CCTV signals into tvh or other IP sources, and thus record them as well as just watching them). Again, that's where my knowledge falls of the edge, though, as I've not played with the SAT>IP stuff at all.

(The name seems to be a little misleading - it's seemingly more 'A/V signals to IP' than it is specifically 'satellite signals to IP', although satellite is the easiest use case in that it saves multiple coax connections to separate LNBs).

So, yes, a Pi or an Android stick connected to an HDMI port is the easiest way to get a more full-featured front end, whether that's Kodi, tvhclient, VLC or anything else.

Prof Yaffle wrote:

I don't think it'll do what you'd like - to get any real functionality, you need a piece of client software that can talk to tvheadend through its API. That's what mobile apps like tvhclient do, and that's what the Kodi addon does. Unless such an application exists for your television (which is highly unlikely), you can't control tvheadend at all from the TV.

I also don't recall tvh advertising itself through UPnP, but I may be wrong on that.

I think you are right here - and as far as I can tell most "smart TVs" only offer UPnP/DLNA for access to local streaming content. I'm using a Ubuntu server which already has miniDLNA already installed for sharing media files - adding the tvheadend PVR folder to the list of DLNA sources may suffice to give direct access to recorded stuff.

What you can do is use the SAT>IP stuff I mentioned above to relay any stream from the tvh backend to your TV. Assuming your television supports individual IPTV streams, then that would work AFAIK - allowing you to relay, say, DVB-S signals from tvheadend to a television that only has DVB-T tuners. I don't know how elegant it would be, though, as you're unlikely to have a channel guide versus simply adding each stream (although you could do clever things like pipe CCTV signals into tvh or other IP sources, and thus record them as well as just watching them). Again, that's where my knowledge falls of the edge, though, as I've not played with the SAT>IP stuff at all.

(The name seems to be a little misleading - it's seemingly more 'A/V signals to IP' than it is specifically 'satellite signals to IP', although satellite is the easiest use case in that it saves multiple coax connections to separate LNBs).

Have not really looked at the SAT>IP stuff - this is all very interesting for me as I worked as an engineer in the broadcast/TV hardware industry in the 1980s/90s when DVB technology was very much in its infancy.

So, yes, a Pi or an Android stick connected to an HDMI port is the easiest way to get a more full-featured front end, whether that's Kodi, tvhclient, VLC or anything else.

It looks that way - so maybe no need to buy a full-blown "smart TV" and then be frustrated by not being able to use the extra features?

Many Thanks for the advice.

JB

In the worst case, a smart TV ends up being an overblown monitor. You'd be better off choosing it on the display hardware and image quality and then plugging in a NUC or similar running Kodi, in my opinion.

If you just want access to your local media plus (broadly) web-based streaming, OpenElec will do perfectly. That will pick up your NAS media over an NFS or SMB share or even off the minidlna feed if you like (I'm not a great fan of the latter setup - UPnP doesn't provide the same 'rich media' experience of a fully-scraped, metadata-laden Kodi experience). It will also give you access via plugins to YouTube, iPlayer, TuneInRadio,Spotify and similar.

If you want a bit more, e.g. a browser, then Kodibuntu or a minimal Ubuntu installation with Kodi will give you that. You can also install Pipelight here for some Silverlight-based streaming services.

If you want Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and the works, though, then a well-spec'ed Android box might work, but a Windows platform with SSD is hard to beat. That can boot straight into Kodi for all your main needs, but then launch the DRM-specific applications or a Windows browser for the IPTV/over-the-top services.

At that point, I struggle to see what a Smart TV is actually for, if I'm honest. I have a Samsung on which I use precisely none of the built-in applications, and all it does is nag me about some random service that I never heard of or used being retired imminently. My Panasonic was better, but even then the interface was dismal. Playing music off my NAS over DLNA/UPnP is dire - I'm scrolling for a week to get through half the artists, for example, versus scrolling through a list by artist/year/album/genre, and that's before you leap to something like Yatse on a 'phone to do the controlling for you.

If there's a killer application you know you'll use, a Smart TV may be worthwhile; the dual-tuner DVB-S/DVB-T systems are useful for day-to-day watching; for anything else, I tend to rely on external computing power. It also has the benefit that I can upgrade as technology changes, plus I'm not limited to what the TV manufacturer thought was best for me (e.g. if I want to use H.264 in an mkv, I can, without the TV complaining that H.264 is only allowed in an MP4 container).

YMMV, of course. It ultimately depends on what you want.

I installed xupnpd on the same server as tvheadend. Adding: http://host:9981/playlist/channels.m3u to the Feeds as a "Generic" feed in the xupnpd web gui http://host:4044/ will publish a channel playlist on the xupnpd server. My Samsung Smart Hub recognizes the playlist plays the live channels.

For recordings you can add http://host:9981/playlist/recordings/m3u but I can not get fast forward/reverse to work there so I use the minidlna media server for the recorded programs instead.

Thanks - that's really helpful.

Mikael Karlsson wrote:

I installed xupnpd on the same server as tvheadend. Adding: http://host:9981/playlist/channels.m3u to the Feeds as a "Generic" feed in the xupnpd web gui http://host:4044/ will publish a channel playlist on the xupnpd server. My Samsung Smart Hub recognizes the playlist plays the live channels.

For recordings you can add http://host:9981/playlist/recordings/m3u but I can not get fast forward/reverse to work there so I use the minidlna media server for the recorded programs instead.

Hi Mikael. I've tried to accomplish the same as you but I get tvheadend channels with a terrible audio (lots of stuttering) on Samsung Smart Hub (ue5500). Have you made any additional config on xupnpd? Which server do you use for tvheadend and xupndp installed (I have a rpi2).

TIA

Hi,
since the stream comes from tvheadend, xupnpd only points out the url were to get it, I would primarily focus on tvheadend.
I am using the profile "pass", Pass-Through for my mpeg-ts stream in tvheadend in order not load the server (AMD5350/AM1 PC). You can check with top for instance to see if your server gets too much load when streaming. Do you know what type of media you are streaming (mpeg-ts?), what type of audio, and if your SmartHUB can handle it?

I have set the default mime type in xupnpd config to mpeg. I noticed that this setting may need some experimenting for different clients and stream types. I also noted that changing the config file xupnpd.lua does not always work since configuration also takes place the web GUI and this updates the config/common.lua file.

Hi,
I was already using pass profile. I changed default priority to high which seems to have worked out for dvb-t channels but not for iptv. Do you use iptv? I also tested default mime type mpeg and mp4 with no apparent effect.

Yes I use multicast IPTV and tvheaadend + oscam for decryption. If you are receiving mpeg-ts I think the type options to test is mpeg, mpeg2, ts and mp2t. You can also set a dlna_extras options to hint audio coding for instance but then I guess you will have to handcraft your playlist for xupnpd.
Have you checked that you are able to receive the IPTV stream without any transfer rate problems to your computer (or other PC using VLC for instance)?
If you do not need to decrypt channels and have no transcoding you may test to use the udpxy program with xupnpd instead of tvheadend (check out the xupnpd.org site). In this case I think you also have to set up your own playlist.