Tvheadend

h1. FAQ

h2. General

h3. How do I interact with Tvheadend?

Tvheadend is controlled via a web user interface that runs on an internal HTTP server within Tvheadend. By default the HTTP server listens to port 9981. So if you have installed Tvheadend on your machine you can access the user interface by pointing your browser to http://localhost:9981.

h3. Help! I can’t login to the web user interface.

If you build Tvheadend from source and just execute it, it won’t let anyone in. The rationale behind this is that I (Andreas) think it is bad to have services running with wide open administrative access.

If you start Tvheadend with the ‘-C’ argument. A default user with no user-name or password will be created. Make sure that you later edit this via the Configuration / Access control tab in the web ui.

If you installed the Tvheadend debian package you should have been asked for a superuser username + password during the install. This super user account can not be modified from within Tvheadend itself. If you want to change it, you need to reconfigure the Debian package. To do that, execute the following line in a command prompt:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure hts-tvheadend

h3. Why does HTSP use TCP? I thought it was bad to use TCP for realtime sensitive traffic?

‘HTSP’ – (Home Tv Streaming Protocol), the protocol used for streaming TV, sending meta information updates and RPC between Tvheadend and a HTSP client uses a transmission scheduler with multiple queues on the Tvheadend side. This means that Tvheadend can measure the available bandwidth between itself and the media player and when congestion happens it’s even capable of dropping less important data (such as B-frames). HTSP has been tested over WAN links and DSL connections with no video or audio artefacts.

h2. Streaming

h3. Pausing live TV does not work at all or works badly!

Right, Tvheadend does not support timeshifting right now. So this is expected behaviour.

h2. Electronic Program Guide (EPG)

h3. Where does Tvheadend scan for XMLTV grabbers?

For [[Tvheadend-30]|3.0] it will search here:

* /bin

* /usr/bin

* /usr/local/bin

* /usr/bin/perlbin/vendor

* All directories specified in the $PATH environment variable

For git master it requires that you have tv_find_grabbers installed. This may change.

h2. Video recorder (DVR / PVR)

h3. Sometime it's called "DVR":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_video_recorder and sometimes PVR, why?

It's really the same thing I just seem to never be able to decide which one of the abbreviations to use. Sorry for the confusion.

h3. I try to transcode the video with FFmpeg but it fails for HD content.

The problem is this:

* Matroska (.mkv files) does not include a DTS (Decoding Time Stamp) for each frame (or packet)

* ffmpeg needs a DTS for each packet when remultiplexing video. If a DTS is not available it will try to make one up which it fails to do when the video content is h264. (ie HD video)

h3. I think I found a bug

First, try to check in the Bug tracker that no one has already reported (or even fixed) the bug. If nothing seems appropriate there, contact the development via the methods described below.

My question is not answered here

Check the Forums if someone has already asked the same thing, if not, post about it.

There is also the option to contact us on IRC, visit #hts on irc.freenode.net