Tvheadend

Hi Jeremy,

From your post I am not exactly sure what is running and what is not

A) You need to install the dvbhdhomerun-driver which can be found here ( but from your post I guess you might have done this allready):
https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/dvbhdhomerun/

B) for encryption, I use OSCAM with a seperate card-reader.
How is this with the Prime ? Is the card in the device ? Shouldnt the device decode by itselfs then ?

Alex.

PS/EDIT ( I didnt read you post well the first time, I now think it is specificaly the decrpytion of the prime that give you trouble

A) I compiled the kernel with the drivers listed from the sourceforge website and in the web GUI, it lists the tuners as /dev/dvb/adapter0 and /dev/dvb/adapter1.

B) The unit is already provisioned with CableCard installed and activated. I've tested it using Windows Media Center and all subscribed channels come thru without any issues. After I select "Add DVB Network by Location" and I see a bunch of options for the United States but I have no clue what I am doing here or what to select. I did not see an option for OSCAM anywhere so I am clueless at the moment

Jeremy Keeney wrote:

B) The unit is already provisioned with CableCard installed and activated. I've tested it using Windows Media Center and all subscribed channels come thru without any issues. After I select "Add DVB Network by Location" and I see a bunch of options for the United States but I have no clue what I am doing here or what to select.

Basically , you need to select the relevant option for your cablecompany and region. However, not all companies might be listed.
Maybe you can try by doing a smart guess or try to google for the comcast info in your region.
You can alo try to add some manually: Your cableprovider should probably also have some info about the muxes, and you might me able to use some informationdialog on your "regular" receiver to look up some of the used frequencies to get you started.

Ok, not a clear solution from my side as you can see, but I hope it helps you to start searching...

I did not see an option for OSCAM anywhere so I am clueless at the moment

OSCAM is a seperate decoding-program; you can use it if you have no option to add the decoder card to recevier. But, indeed, as you escribe it you would not need anyting like that.

When it comes to selecting the County I live in and the presets, I only have about 9 or so to choose from. Is there supposed to be more than that or since I am using a custom built package for use on a UNraid server, maybe I don't have the full list.

Other than that, have you heard of a way to grab the muxes and frequencies off the HDHomerun WebGUI or utility program?

There are only a handful of options to choose from in that "Map DVB by Location" section that come preloaded with tvheadend. The good news is that you can add custom. The bad news is that its a little involved to do so.

First, for you need to drop into the command line and have hdhomerun perform a scan on one of its three tuners. Since they are all hooked up to the same cablecard it really makes no difference which tuner you scan. Anyway.. to do this in linux:

To get your hdhomerun device id

$>hdhomerun_config discover

To get do a scan:

$>hdhomerun_config <deviceid> scan 0 scan.txt

After a few minutes you will have a file that will look like:

SCANNING: 861000000 (us-irc:135, us-cable:135)
LOCK: none (ss=69 snq=0 seq=0)
SCANNING: 859750000 (us-hrc:135)
LOCK: none (ss=70 snq=0 seq=0)
SCANNING: 855000000 (us-irc:134, us-cable:134)
LOCK: none (ss=78 snq=0 seq=0)
SCANNING: 853750000 (us-hrc:134)
LOCK: qam256 (ss=71 snq=81 seq=100)
TSID: 0x81B8
PROGRAM 1: 449 TEAM 10 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 3: 440 TEAM 01 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 5: 441 TEAM 02 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 7: 442 TEAM 03 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 9: 443 TEAM 04 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 11: 444 TEAM 05 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 13: 445 TEAM 06 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 15: 446 TEAM 07 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 17: 447 TEAM 08 (encrypted)
PROGRAM 19: 448 TEAM 09 (encrypted)

The file you need to build will look like:

A 873750000 qam256
A 879750000 qam256
... and on and on until you get all your frequencies

Now... move this file to /usr/local/share/tvheadend/data/dvb-scan/atsc and name it something like us-IL-Chicago. Restart tvheadend, and you will now have your custom frequency list show up in the "map DVB by location" button.

After you scan is complete you are still going to have to manually add your Channel names in the "Services" tab BEFORE you "Map DVB services to Channel" otherwise only the services with names will make it over to your channels tab. This can be tedious, but you can rely on your scan.txt file and the "Multiplex" and the URL in the "Play" column within the services tab to determine which service line is which channel. The trick with the URL in the "Play" column is to recognize that the last 4 characters of the URL is the "PROGRAM" from the scan.txt... but in hexidecimal. So you will need to convert from hex to decimal which you can do with any number of online converters.

Thanks John, I will give this a shot when I get home.

I ended up just using a .strm generator off of the XBMC forums that I loaded into the TV Guide Add-On that kind of accomplished what I ultimately wanted but it is slow as crap but worked.

Now, if I do the described method above, will it work with Comcast even all their channels are digital and there are no more ClearQAM channels left since last month (Hopefully I got my terminology right) on HDHomerun Prime and not the older models or dual?

I had used that little program too. I had to boot up a windows 7 virtual machine to get it to run, but it was fun to play around with. Unfortunately I couldn't get the TV Guide add-on to work, nor could I get the psuedoTV to recognize the mapped channels, so I ended up just using the outputted strm files as a new video source file in XBMC.

As for the above method, I have managed to get tvheadend to map the channels using the method, but so far I have only managed to get the local channels to work. As I understand it, Comcast is transmitting everything in digital, but it's the CCI Protection that governs whether or not tvheadend can serve the channel that has been mapped. The odd thing is that my local channels come with a 0 value for CCI Protection, which means they are copy-freely, AND my non-local channels (like AMC) are also transmitted from comcast as 0 for CCI Protection; however, tvheadend throws an error "No Descrambler" as if they were copy-once or higher.

I haven't been able to solve this problem yet and I've gone so far as messing with the tvheadend 3.2 source and recompiling. I am able to use both XBMC's built in HDHomeRun functionality (which is not great) as well as the HDHomeRun:// protocol (which is what those other scripts produce) and I have been able to watch all of my subscribed channels, so it only stands to reason that tvheadend should be able to get those channels as well. Clearly something is missing.

I ran into that same issue as well, only channels 2-30ish would play using the .strm files but things like Comedy Central and AMC would not play thru VLC or XBMC for the same exact reason. At this moment, I would settle for SilconDust compiling a closed-source XBMC add-on that would work like the Windows QuickTV program.

My problem is the opposite. I can get EVERYTHING with the .strm files using the hdhomerun:// protocol. I can also get EVERYTHING using hdhomerun_config_gui. It's only tvheadend that limits me to local channels. I have no idea why the limit exists though.

My situation is like John Nevill's. I have been able to view all the non-premium channels I've tried using:

1. hdhomerun_config streaming to VLC as described here: http://www.silicondust.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12653
2. MythTV running in a Mythbuntu VM, following the directions here: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Silicondust_HDHomeRun_Prime

So the problem isn't related to Linux or DRM. From #1 above, it sounds like it has to do with the way dvbhdhomerun maps the Prime's capabilities on to the Linux dvb driver interface, which is how Tvheadend accesses it. Neither hdhomerun_config/VLC nor MythTV are using dvbhdhomerun.

I've been looking at the Tvheadend code base with the idea of adding an HDHomerun "driver" that bypasses the DVB code altogether and goes directly against libhdhomerun. Unfortunately, I haven't found a well-defined interface for adding a new "source" akin to DVB or IPTV to Tvheadend. But I'm new to Tvheadend, so perhaps one of the developers could comment on whether what I've described is feasible, and if so, how one might approach it.

Thanks!

Jim,

I've got a thread over on the Descrambling forum to address the issue of tvheadend getting incorrect mappings from dvbhdhomerun. Villy Thompsen, who is the developer on dvbhdhomerun is looking into it. Hopefully he can come up with a fix to help map everything correctly for the non-clearqam channels.

https://www.lonelycoder.com/redmine/boards/13/topics/6064

I am also getting this error in XBMC after manually adding channels. No fun.