Tvheadend

Neil Carter wrote:

So can anyone instruct me about what must be done to use multiple tuners simultaneously? I assumed there would be something in the config that would require me to specify one tuner versus the other when programming the recorder, but I've found nothing.

I run 3 identical tuners on a Pi 2, but we use DVB-T, so I'm not sure if that's significant.

Anyway, to answer your question, I didn't have to do anything to get them working simultaneously.

Originally when I set my system up under version 3.4, I had to assign muxes to individual tuners, otherwise two simultaneous users accessing the same mux would consume 2 tuners instead of 1, but with version 4.0.8 that wasn't an issue.

There's certainly no need to specify a tuner when setting up a recording.

I wonder if the tuner you're using doesn't handle multiple instances?

This is more than likely due to you overloading the single usb bus on the Pi.

See my reply here: https://tvheadend.org/boards/4/topics/19979?r=19981#message-19981

Yep. I've had no problems with multiple DVB-T and DVB-T2 tuners - including 3 DVB-T2 tuners of the same type.

I wonder if this is a driver issue? I know some drivers aren't good at handling multiple instances.

I've also had some success with using MuMuDVB to create IPTV streams from DVB-T/T2 tuners (which are fixed to a specific channel and provide unicast or multicast streams of every service on that channel). You allocate each mumudvb instance to a specific /dev/dvb/adapter. This works if you want to receive all channels all the time on multiple TV Headend servers (allowing multiple TV Headend instances to access the same services via the same single tuner).

However you need a tuner per RF channel tuned (in DVB terms, a tuner per mux) for this approach (I have this set-up for UK Freeview HD with 3 x £10 DVB-T tuners for PSB1,2 and COM4, and 2 x £25 DVB-T2 tuners for PSB3 and COM7) The streams are being used by three separate TV Headend installs, as well as other platforms.

These IP streams can then be added as IPTV networks (if you use the M3U playlist provided by mumudvb you can use the Automatic IPTV option)

Stephen Neal wrote:

Yep. I've had no problems with multiple DVB-T and DVB-T2 tuners - including 3 DVB-T2 tuners of the same type.

I wonder if this is a driver issue? I know some drivers aren't good at handling multiple instances.

I've also had some success with using MuMuDVB to create IPTV streams from DVB-T/T2 tuners (which are fixed to a specific channel and provide unicast or multicast streams of every service on that channel). You allocate each mumudvb instance to a specific /dev/dvb/adapter. This works if you want to receive all channels all the time on multiple TV Headend servers (allowing multiple TV Headend instances to access the same services via the same single tuner).

However you need a tuner per RF channel tuned (in DVB terms, a tuner per mux) for this approach (I have this set-up for UK Freeview HD with 3 x £10 DVB-T tuners for PSB1,2 and COM4, and 2 x £25 DVB-T2 tuners for PSB3 and COM7) The streams are being used by three separate TV Headend installs, as well as other platforms.

These IP streams can then be added as IPTV networks (if you use the M3U playlist provided by mumudvb you can use the Automatic IPTV option)

What tuners are these? I'm going to assume the Si2168/57/ and those cheap RTL282U tuners.. I have a number of these and none of them work very well on the Pi/Pi2 (if using more than one). When I've tried streaming a complete mux over the network with one tuner it's fine throw a second into the mix and it's glitch city..

TV Headend (which isn't using them) reports them as :
Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) - reported in dmesg as "ITE 9135(9006) Generic"
and
Sony CXD2820R (DVB-T2)

They are a mix of August DVB-T202 (3xDVB-T) and a PCTV290e and an August DVB-T210v1 (aka Geniatech T220) for DVB-T2. (But have used 2 x DVB-T210v1s)

I'm probably not stressing them that hard as I'm using Unicast not Multicast currently, but I've had multiple clients on multiple streams and they've been fine. Running on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on a Celeron 2955U Chromebox. 3 x DVB-T tuners on a USB 3.0 hub into a shared USB 3.0 input, the two DVB-T2 tuners are going to separate USB 3.0 inputs. Using GigE for network connectivity.

Stephen Neal wrote:

TV Headend (which isn't using them) reports them as :
Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) - reported in dmesg as "ITE 9135(9006) Generic"
and
Sony CXD2820R (DVB-T2)

They are a mix of August DVB-T202 (3xDVB-T) and a PCTV290e and an August DVB-T210v1 (aka Geniatech T220) for DVB-T2. (But have used 2 x DVB-T210v1s)

I'm probably not stressing them that hard as I'm using Unicast not Multicast currently, but I've had multiple clients on multiple streams and they've been fine. Running on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on a Celeron 2955U Chromebox. 3 x DVB-T tuners on a USB 3.0 hub into a shared USB 3.0 input, the two DVB-T2 tuners are going to separate USB 3.0 inputs. Using GigE for network connectivity.

Ah, so your not actually using a Pi with all these tuners.. I have some of those Afatech AF9033 as well, great little tuners but don't work very well in low signal areas..

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Stephen Neal wrote:

TV Headend (which isn't using them) reports them as :
Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) - reported in dmesg as "ITE 9135(9006) Generic"
and
Sony CXD2820R (DVB-T2)

They are a mix of August DVB-T202 (3xDVB-T) and a PCTV290e and an August DVB-T210v1 (aka Geniatech T220) for DVB-T2. (But have used 2 x DVB-T210v1s)

I'm probably not stressing them that hard as I'm using Unicast not Multicast currently, but I've had multiple clients on multiple streams and they've been fine. Running on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on a Celeron 2955U Chromebox. 3 x DVB-T tuners on a USB 3.0 hub into a shared USB 3.0 input, the two DVB-T2 tuners are going to separate USB 3.0 inputs. Using GigE for network connectivity.

Ah, so your not actually using a Pi with all these tuners.. I have some of those Afatech AF9033 as well, great little tuners but don't work very well in low signal areas..

No - running 5 DVB-T/T2 muxes over a single USB 2.0 connection which is also carrying the network traffic struck me as a bit hopeful. I am running a second setup with an Si2168/57 DVB-T2 tuner on a Pi 2 with MuMuDVB serving the tuner, but that is a single tuner set-up.

Stephen Neal wrote:

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Stephen Neal wrote:

TV Headend (which isn't using them) reports them as :
Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) - reported in dmesg as "ITE 9135(9006) Generic"
and
Sony CXD2820R (DVB-T2)

They are a mix of August DVB-T202 (3xDVB-T) and a PCTV290e and an August DVB-T210v1 (aka Geniatech T220) for DVB-T2. (But have used 2 x DVB-T210v1s)

I'm probably not stressing them that hard as I'm using Unicast not Multicast currently, but I've had multiple clients on multiple streams and they've been fine. Running on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on a Celeron 2955U Chromebox. 3 x DVB-T tuners on a USB 3.0 hub into a shared USB 3.0 input, the two DVB-T2 tuners are going to separate USB 3.0 inputs. Using GigE for network connectivity.

Ah, so your not actually using a Pi with all these tuners.. I have some of those Afatech AF9033 as well, great little tuners but don't work very well in low signal areas..

No - running 5 DVB-T/T2 muxes over a single USB 2.0 connection which is also carrying the network traffic struck me as a bit hopeful. I am running a second setup with an Si2168/57 DVB-T2 tuner on a Pi 2 with MuMuDVB serving the tuner, but that is a single tuner set-up.

Haha, scratching my head for a moment thinking how the hell is he running 3 tuners on a Pi without any errors >.<

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Stephen Neal wrote:

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Stephen Neal wrote:

TV Headend (which isn't using them) reports them as :
Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) - reported in dmesg as "ITE 9135(9006) Generic"
and
Sony CXD2820R (DVB-T2)

They are a mix of August DVB-T202 (3xDVB-T) and a PCTV290e and an August DVB-T210v1 (aka Geniatech T220) for DVB-T2. (But have used 2 x DVB-T210v1s)

I'm probably not stressing them that hard as I'm using Unicast not Multicast currently, but I've had multiple clients on multiple streams and they've been fine. Running on Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS on a Celeron 2955U Chromebox. 3 x DVB-T tuners on a USB 3.0 hub into a shared USB 3.0 input, the two DVB-T2 tuners are going to separate USB 3.0 inputs. Using GigE for network connectivity.

Ah, so your not actually using a Pi with all these tuners.. I have some of those Afatech AF9033 as well, great little tuners but don't work very well in low signal areas..

No - running 5 DVB-T/T2 muxes over a single USB 2.0 connection which is also carrying the network traffic struck me as a bit hopeful. I am running a second setup with an Si2168/57 DVB-T2 tuner on a Pi 2 with MuMuDVB serving the tuner, but that is a single tuner set-up.

Haha, scratching my head for a moment thinking how the hell is he running 3 tuners on a Pi without any errors >.<

Yep - and it's 5 tuners! ( 2 x 24Mbs + 1 x 27Mbs + 2 x 40Mbs - so around 155Mbs of total received content - though I'm not streaming that much...)

Greetings:

Thanks for the replies!!

As stated earlier, it works perfectly sometimes. The system does make what I would assume is heavy use of the USB bus, as there are the two tuners as well as the USB thumb drive that it writes the output to. However, when it works, it has no issues whatsoever. It seems it's more of a timing issue in opening the two tuners to me.

Do you see any benefit of creating a second DVR profile, I think it would be identical to the 'default', and specifying the second profile for the second program when recording simultaneously?

Anyway, I've sent off an eMail to the Hauppauge people this morning asking them about the driver issue possibility. I'll see what they reply.

Thanks, again!!

Neil

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Haha, scratching my head for a moment thinking how the hell is he running 3 tuners on a Pi without any errors >.<

It is definitely possible. I run 3x Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) (ITE 9135 Generic) on a Pi 2 which is also acting as an NFS server. When I was running a Pi model B it struggled when accessing 3 muxes at once, but a Pi 2 works fine.

Hiro Protagonist wrote:

Mark Clarkstone wrote:

Haha, scratching my head for a moment thinking how the hell is he running 3 tuners on a Pi without any errors >.<

It is definitely possible. I run 3x Afatech AF9033 (DVB-T) (ITE 9135 Generic) on a Pi 2 which is also acting as an NFS server. When I was running a Pi model B it struggled when accessing 3 muxes at once, but a Pi 2 works fine.

Yeah with some sticks it is as long as they have hardware filtering (the AF9033 do) many of the newer ones do not.

Greetings:

kernellabs.com has assured me that the driver/firmware being used has no limitations with supporting multiple tuners.

I guess I'm back to my earlier question: would there be any benefit to creating a second DVR profile? It would be identical to the 'default' one. I could then select the second profile for the second program when recording simultaneous programs. I guess I can try this, but am not sure how the software would behave with this config.

Further thoughts??

Thanks!

Neil

Neil Carter wrote:

Greetings:

kernellabs.com has assured me that the driver/firmware being used has no limitations with supporting multiple tuners.

I guess I'm back to my earlier question: would there be any benefit to creating a second DVR profile? It would be identical to the 'default' one. I could then select the second profile for the second program when recording simultaneous programs. I guess I can try this, but am not sure how the software would behave with this config.

Tvheadend would only use the additional profile if you've set it for a recording otherwise it'll use the default. Also what output method (stream profile) are you using? Matroska or pass? If Matroska try using pass and try using "Do not keep" as the cache scheme.

Further thoughts??

Thanks!

Neil

Greetings:

I'm using pass with 'Do not keep' as the cache scheme already.

In the meantime, I did what I suggested and created a second DVR profile, and all that goes with that, and tested - same result. One start, one fail.

Thanks!

Neil