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How to set up EPG on TVHeadend

FlexMcMurphy

Hello,

I installed minisatip onto an Amiko Alien2. The Alien2 functions as a Sat>IP device streaming its triple tuners to Tvheadend running on a Pi. And from there to a TVH client in Kodi on the same Pi running osmc.

I'm having trouble getting an epg working. There seems to be lots of approaches but documentation is sporadic and confusing.

In my TVH I have enabled the Over the air - EIT: DVB Grabber and I think this is what is giving me the epg for Saorview although it is 3 days only. I am trying to get the XMLTV Grabber to work using this guide but I don't think I have installed the xmltv package correctly on my pi running osmc. There is no xmltv folder in /home/osmc/.hts/tvheadend unless I am meant to make that myself?

Has anyone got an epg working, preferably 7 days, on an Irish centered use case with Saorview channels and free to air satellite channels? With a PKT hyperion image on the Alien2 I can use crossepg and get 7 days terrestrial and satellite and it was alot less hassle!

Any help much appreciated.

Flex

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Johnboy1951

hopefully JohnBoy won't mind me saying that he is the Guru of Satip

Yes of course I mind ...... I just bumble around in the dark until I see a little light!

FlexMcMurphy

Kenny Powers wrote: »

Looking at doing this myself, how did you get on after? Can I ask what image you used?

I third OpenATV 6.4 with no joy can pick up the tuners etc but everything keeps crashing.

I haven't spent any time on this since last May! I got pretty obsessed with it for a month or two but never really got a satisfactory crystal clear stable TV picture from it.. was always getting a little or a lot of picture breakup. That said I think the setup Johnboy has gives a very stable picture.

A lot of what I did is in this thread so good to have a read through it. Basically I put OpenATV 6.3 on an Amiko Alien 2 then telnet in to the box and install minisatip like this:
# opkg update
# opkg install minisatip

OpenATV is an enigma2 image that runs on top of a small Linux OS. For best performance I would stop the enigma2 application like this:
-- To stop
# init 4
-- To restart enigma2
# init 3

-- To start minisatip run this command from the telnet command prompt
minisatip --satip-xml http://127.0.0.1:8554 -R /usr/share/minisatip/html

-- There is a minisatip Web Interface from a browser on a computer on the same network as your engima2 box (Alien2/ZGemma whichever you have)
http://ip-of-your-enigma2-box:8080/

All minisatip does is convert the signal from your satellite dish into an ip stream that can be fed for instance into TVHeadend which is a server that can distribute the ip signal to clients such as Kodi players attached to other TV screens or computers.

So next thing I did was to install TVHeadend on a Raspberry Pi running OSMC which is a Kodi installation that can run on a Pi. Go to OSMC AppStore and install TvHeadend from there.

There are lots of guides. I followed this guide and this very good guide to set up TVHeadend.

TVHeadend has it's own web interface and you can stream the channels from that interface from any web enabled device. Alternatively you can feed TVHeadend into a plugin on your Kodi device which gives more flexibility in distributing the channels to other TVs/screens in the house. Add-ons > My add-ons > PVR clients > Tvheadend HTSP Client.

In the end I wasn't happy with the performance I was getting. So many factors determine that... like the signal quality from your dish and the hardware you run minisatip on, the bandwidth of your home network and the specs of your kodi devices.. too many moving parts.

A better solution might be to go hardware satip with a Digibit R1 although there's probably a newer device out now.

I can try answer any questions you have but hopefully JohnBoy won't mind me saying that he is the Guru of Satip.

Flex

Kenny Powers

Looking at doing this myself, how did you get on after? Can I ask what image you used?

I third OpenATV 6.4 with no joy can pick up the tuners etc but everything keeps crashing.

FlexMcMurphy wrote: »

Hello,

I installed minisatip onto an Amiko Alien2. The Alien2 functions as a Sat>IP device streaming its triple tuners to Tvheadend running on a Pi. And from there to a TVH client in Kodi on the same Pi running osmc.

I'm having trouble getting an epg working. There seems to be lots of approaches but documentation is sporadic and confusing.

In my TVH I have enabled the Over the air - EIT: DVB Grabber and I think this is what is giving me the epg for Saorview although it is 3 days only. I am trying to get the XMLTV Grabber to work using this guide but I don't think I have installed the xmltv package correctly on my pi running osmc. There is no xmltv folder in /home/osmc/.hts/tvheadend unless I am meant to make that myself?

Has anyone got an epg working, preferably 7 days, on an Irish centered use case with Saorview channels and free to air satellite channels? With a PKT hyperion image on the Alien2 I can use crossepg and get 7 days terrestrial and satellite and it was alot less hassle!

Any help much appreciated.

Flex

Johnboy1951

fritzelly wrote: »

Thanks for this thread - just moved to Kodi from MP and had major headaches getting the EPG to fill - now sorted - spent hours trying all kinds of different options

Still have some channels with nothing (or rather just now/next) including quite a few +1 channels - any ideas?

You need to provide some information about your set up in TVH ........ such as muxes enabled to get EPG and what EPG grabbers are enabled.

Johnboy1951

FlexMcMurphy wrote: »

How come your HDHR Quad was working with a good picture but the dual doesn't? What has changed in your set up other than the device?

The only change is the device and I have concluded it is faulty.
Heck I cannot even get a good stream directly from it using VLC!

I got the Pi Tv Hat and never got any decent picture out of it. Now I think the issue might have been interference from nearby devices. I noticed that when I had two Pis side by side sitting behind my TV that the continuity error count in TVH server was higher compared with when I moved one of the Pis underneath the TV. Is your HDHR dual model sitting too close to something emitting a whole bunch of electromagnetic radiation?

Nope, initially it was in exactly the same position as the quad, and during tests I even hung it in free air well clear of all other devices.

Seemingly there are various SBCs that have PCIe support or can be adapted.

The RockPro64 has a PCIe slot on the board.

The ?cheaper Rock Pi 4B has an M.2 slot to which a PCIe adapter can be attached.

Thanks for the links ..... will have a browse to see if anything suits my needs.

I recently discovered the "Explaining Computers" channel on Youtube. That guy is really cool. Kinda like BBC TV presenter from the 70s cool!

Flex

Yes, rather droll presentations

He is fairly good in content ..... have viewed his stuff irregularly over some time.

Thanks again.

fritzelly

Thanks for this thread - just moved to Kodi from MP and had major headaches getting the EPG to fill - now sorted - spent hours trying all kinds of different options

Still have some channels with nothing (or rather just now/next) including quite a few +1 channels - any ideas?

FlexMcMurphy

How come your HDHR Quad was working with a good picture but the dual doesn't? What has changed in your set up other than the device?

I got the Pi Tv Hat and never got any decent picture out of it. Now I think the issue might have been interference from nearby devices. I noticed that when I had two Pis side by side sitting behind my TV that the continuity error count in TVH server was higher compared with when I moved one of the Pis underneath the TV. Is your HDHR dual model sitting too close to something emitting a whole bunch of electromagnetic radiation?

Seemingly there are various SBCs that have PCIe support or can be adapted.

The RockPro64 has a PCIe slot on the board.

The ?cheaper Rock Pi 4B has an M.2 slot to which a PCIe adapter can be attached.

I recently discovered the "Explaining Computers" channel on Youtube. That guy is really cool. Kinda like BBC TV presenter from the 70s cool!

Flex

Johnboy1951

I arranged a refund for the failed HDHR quad ..... they would not replace it.
But of course the replacements are very much more costly now, so I went with a two tuner HDHR.
That arrived today and I immediately put it in service.

In between times I had been using an old TBS PCIe card in an ancient Pentium Dell machine set as Sat>IP for the tuners, and running an old version of LibreELEC (8.?). It performed faultlessly during the time.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the new HDHR device.
No matter how I attempted to view the Saorview channels, they were crappy ..... dropped frames, losing sync; corrupted (blocky) display; video disappearing and audio continuing and it even crashed Kodi a couple of times. Those test included DLNA as well as two different methods of connecting TVH to it.

I think my best bet now is to source a used very small PC with a PCIe slot to take the TBS card, and use that as server.
Let me know if you know of a suitable PC ..... have a couple of USFF PCs but they have no PCIe slot

I am really peeved!
/rant

I have not had any ongoing errors or faults with the R1 .... there might be a few continuity errors now and again but nothing that is ongoing, just a few when the tuner locks on.

Then of course I do not 'stream' directly from the R1. TVH is the only connection to the R1 and it manages all the streaming, including recording etc etc. and it is to TVH that the client devices connect.

TVH is quite happy serving out on a 100Mb/s connection.
I have had in excess of 6 clients tuned into 6 different muxes running concurrently without a problem.
Of course they were hardwired and not using wifi, which IMO is unsuited to live streaming.

Let me know if you think of a suitably small PC as my server, thanks.

EDIT:

I forgot to mention that the Vbox Gateway was just too unreliable ..... probably due to being underpowered.
That caused me to dig out the old Dell Pentium box with the TBS dual tuner card still sitting in it since I put it aside a few years ago.

FlexMcMurphy

Hi Johnboy,

Do you get many continuity errors in tvheadend? I still have it installed on my Pi3B+. I never get a completely rock solid picture and when it's breaking up the continuity error count increases.

I tried with LibreELEC on a separate Pi and the count went through the roof. You were telling my TVH can run on low powered devices but I think it needs to be on a device with gigabit ethernet if you want to stream to remote (around the house) clients.

I went so far as to buy two Pi4s. I was all set to install TVH server on one of them when not one but both of them broke down on me! Now all I get is a rainbow screen when I try to boot up any sd card containing OSs that previously worked fine. I've asked over on the Pi forums, not getting very far.

Anyway, in case you don't know there is a custom firmware you can put on the Digibit R1 that lets you stream using TCP rather than UDP. Maybe it can improve continuity error count and picture quality if that is a problem for you..

Regarding your HDHomeRun device RIPing on you.. too bad, if you had a triple tuner laying about the house you could re-purpose it for its sat and terrestrial tuners by installing minisatip on it. Then once connected to your network TVH will see those tuners like any others.

Cheers,

Flex

Johnboy1951

Your different output is likely because you are using icon names and not picons for the channel images.
I thought as much which is why I posted

I think that might be dependent on you using picons.

"Have a look at your TVH - Configuration - Channel/EPG - Channels and note which number type is used for the User Icon. That is what you need to use."

You lost me there!

This is what you would see if using picons (click image for larger pic)

########

You just found out what I meant about the older Pis ..... just not up to the job as a client device. Well capable as server device though.
The Odroid C4 has a S905X3 which is a very competitive chip presently. I think it will even manage 8K video ... downscaling it.
I have a cheap Android device converted to run CoreELEC here with that chip. It is well capable of smoothly running as a client.

No matter what you get there will always be something better out soon. So I get what will serve me for the present and not worry about trying to future proof it, as I do not believe it possible for these devices.

####

A power event took out my HDHomeRun device yesterday.
I have just now succeeded in beating an old Vbox Gateway 3344 device into submission, and adding the two DVB-T tuners to TVH server, pulling the EPG for Saorview from the Vbox.
I have no idea how I managed it but it is working!

So back in business but with two tuners, not four.

FlexMcMurphy

Hello again,

I tried your command, but it didn't give me the service numbers... only lots of lines like this...

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201; One icon:file:///home/osmc/.hts/tvheadend/picons/rteonehd
#DESCRIPTION RT&#201;2 icon:file:///home/osmc/.hts/tvheadend/picons/rte2hd

Regarding how to get the service numbers in your DVB-T bouquet

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201; One 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:835:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

"Have a look at your TVH - Configuration - Channel/EPG - Channels and note which number type is used for the User Icon. That is what you need to use."

You lost me there!

I tried TVH client in LibreELEC on a Pi1 with TVH server on the Pi3B+ and the picture was terrible, Kodi menus really slow. I know it would work better with the Pi3B+ as the client but if I'm going to keep the Pi Tv Hat I need to have that in the Pi3B+ with TVH server.

So, as you say, I need to get a new higher powered device to be the client. Can you recommend a specific model? What about the Odroid C-4 running CoreELEC? I'm not sure which devices are better than a Pi4... which has gigabit ethernet, 4GB memory and USB3 now. I suppose you need to look at GPU and speed of memory..

Cheers,

Flex

Johnboy1951

This can be run against a previously set up TVH server ..... only tested on LibreELEC and Coreelec servers, and run from a different Linux distro on the LAN.

Where $ADDY is
username:password@<ip address of TVH server>
and you have used username and password (if not just omit everything before <IP address>)
this command should produce a bouquet file like posted above, where you run it from.

curl [url]http://$ADDY:9981/api/channel/grid?limit=999[/url] | sed 's|},{|}\n\n{|g' | sed 's|"name":|#DESCRIPTION |g' | sed 's|"icon":"picon://|#SERVICE |g' | cut -d ',' -f4,5,6 | sort -n -k2 -t :| sed '/./,$!d' | sed 's|.png||g' | sed 's|"||g' | sed 's|_|:|g' | awk -F, '{print $1" "$3}' | sed 's|#|\n#|g'   >> MyBouquet.tv

I think that might be dependent on you using picons.

I did look about, at the time, for details on how to construct a bouquet like those Sky or Freesat ones that come with TVH, but searched in vain and settled on the above method.
It works for me ...... might not for others.
I don't know of anyone else using it TBH.

Johnboy1951

You run Windows embedded on them

No, I do not use Windows of any kind.

except mine starts with 1:0:19... instead of 1:0:1

Have a look at your TVH - Configuration - Channel/EPG - Channels and note which number type is used for the User Icon. That is what you need to use.

Quite a lot of tuner devices are limited to 100Mb/s, so the LAN limitations will not be any lower if you use Cat5e or Cat6 cable. I have no problem viewing 6 simultaneous channels on the LAN ..... mixture of HD & SD channels.

I would suggest you use the least powerful Pi for the server and the most powerful for the client.
You will soon find out if either of them is underpowered for the job.

I strongly suggest you consider using LibreELEC as the operating system for the Pis.
It is a Just Enough Operating System (JeOS) to run Kodi and its addons, with no unnecessary packages or running processes.
Dedicate the devices to the sole use of running the media distribution.

If you need it I can try to find a BASH script that I used to extract the information from a fully set up TVH for my bouquet. I might have it saved someplace if required.

FlexMcMurphy

I like all these details... I'm learning!

As I have OpenATV on my Alien2 I booted into it and went to ServiceInfo... here I see the Service Reference for RTE1 and on my set up it is:
1:0:19:835:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

Which is the same as yours except mine starts with 1:0:19... instead of 1:0:1...

I FTP'd in to /etc/enigma2 on the Alien2 with Filezilla and opened up:
bouquets.tv
userbouquet.favourites.tv
userbouquet.LastScanned.tv

But none of those files have that RTE1 service reference I see on my TV screen. I'm trying to see how would I get all those service reference numbers, for channels I want to keep, to load them in to TVH.. or can you get them from TVH? Why does yours start 1:0:1... but mine starts with 1:0:19... ?

The Pi has improved since you last used them it seems. I'm thinking of getting a new Pi... a Pi4 with 4GB memory but am open to what is the best hardware for this use case for a reasonable price so yes I'm curious exactly what amlogic clients do you have so I can look up their specs? Are they Odroids? You run Windows embedded on them... never used that.

I have 4 Pis... 2 x Pi 1's, a Pi3 and a Pi3 B+

Actually I have one Pi3 that simply has a temperature sensor monitor attached to it and a NextCloudPi file server. Maybe I could put those applications on a Pi1 and use that Pi3 for TVH server and then the Pi3 B+ as the client.

Or easier.. leave the Pi3 as it is with the temp senor and fileserver running on it and just install TVH server on it as well? That Pi3 is connected directly to my router.. I then have Cat6 running from the router to a gigabit switch under my TV where the Alien2 and Pi client is attached to. Do you think that network layout would pose a bottleneck? I wonder would it be better for the Pi running TVH server and the client Pi running TVH client be both connected directly to the same switch in terms of shorter distance for packets to travel? Maybe I'm over thinking this!

Thanks for your input.

Flex

Johnboy1951

I don't use channel tags at all, only Bouquet tags, and those so I can confirm the mapping is from my bouquet.
I had, several years ago, gone through the painstaking effort of setting up my preferred channels.
Then discovered that this setup was prone to being lost if something untoward happened to the device.
So I did one more set up and then extracted the information from TVH and parsed it into that example I posted above. I did the same for the Satellite channels.
When channels change frequency a small edit to the .txt file is all that is required to bring it up to date.
I now regularly swap devices for testing and have no fears of setup, as besides getting tuners recognised this list covers everything. I keep the current version on my PC as a backup.

I had/have R-Pis in use and gave up on them as completely unsuited as client devices. They were too slow to handle the graphics as well as requiring the purchase of some codecs. I never bought the later Pis as I had moved on to better and cheaper alternatives.
A fully functioning R-Pi was costing up close to €85 back then .... with a 'hobby' case and no display. An Android box that could be 'converted' to Linux, cost me ~€35, and had proper case and display and came with a suitable remote. It also had a functioning OS to get started. Those also had more powerful CPU/GPU.
One just had to be careful to buy the correct product for the purpose.

That said, a TVH server has very little 'work' to do, so an older Pi should be well capable of doing it.
The more powerful device is required as a client, because of the graphical needs of the UI and also maybe displaying the picture in UHD (4K).
So presently I use an older AMLogic Android device, now running CoreELEC, as a server ..... it never breaks a sweat!
The client devices are similar, just more modern/current, with better hardware. Heck one of them is capable of outputting 8K it seems!
All devices now run CE if Amlogic, and LibreELEC if other CPU.

I did have the server and client on one device but decided that for the cost of an extra device the system was hugely better off with them separated. Of course over time I retired some Amlogic client device and put it to server use, so now have no R-Pi in the system.
The devices will all be kept reasonable updated by replacing client devices as required and using the old client device for server or other use.

My suggestion would be to try your R-Pi as server, so no graphics requirement at all except when being set up.
Put it away out of sight and only access it through SSH or similar. If you have a 'spare' Pi then do a set up for that also on a spare SD card. Now your server is well covered, with a backup should it be required.

Get better devices for clients.
I have found that using the original Android installation on those cheap Asian boxes is less than satisfactory, but would certainly do better than R-Pis up to '3'.
Running Linux they perform very well.
The main difficulty is selecting the correct device from the right source.
Similar looking, and often named, devices can have different hardware which can screw up the best laid plans.

If you want to do things a bit better (more costly doesn't suit this cheapskate) then there are now some very interesting Single Board Computers on the market, which are more powerful again than what I refer to above. They also have consistent hardware so no problems there. I can probably get 4 cheap devices for the cost of one of those, and as longevity is not something to be depended on with media serving, I go the cheap route.

The two original devices I bought - Tanix Tx3 mini x 2 - are still working although one has a faulty display segment, and the other produces distorted graphics output after some time and needs to have Kodi restarted.
They function great as server devices!

This has turned into a long ramble - apologies.
Please ask specific questions and I will try to give answers more to the point

....... if I can.

FlexMcMurphy

Do you not have any Channel Tags then? Those tags are used in Kodi like bouqets on an enigma2 image.

I like what you suggest because you could create a channel list more quickly than the painstaking approach I've been using in TVH and could use those files to get up and running quickly if you needed to re-install TVH. I read your posts on that in another thread recently.. can you explain how you got those "service" numbers say, for RTE 1?

Other question is.. I think I have too much going on by having everything on one Pi.. apart from minisatip on the alien2. Do you use Raspberry Pis in your set up? Do you maybe have a separate Pi for each client? Are any of your Kodi clients running on the same machine as your TVH server? I'm wondering what is the weakest link in terms of achieving stability in this type of streaming TV set up? I mean... I've no doubt that hardware sat/ip (Digibit R1) is a better approach than software sat/ip (minisatip) but maybe it's the hardware running the TVH server and clients that is even more important in achieving rock solid picture, esp with HD channels?

I have a spare Pi 1 with the VC-1 and mpeg2 hardware codecs. I might put osmc and the TVH client on that and attach it to my TV. Then put a fresh raspbian buster on the Pi3B+. And have just the TVH server and the Pi TV Hat on that Pi.

Flex

Johnboy1951

I don't know if this interests you, but TVH can understand E2 type 'bouquets'.
You can add a bouquet by saving a file and then using the path to that file in the bouquet settings. The file would contain lines like this

#NAME   My DVB-T

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201; One 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:835:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201;2 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:44E:3E9:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION Virgin Media 1 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:44F:3E9:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION Virgin Media 2 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:452:3E9:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION Virgin Media 3 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:837:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION TG4 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:450:3E9:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201; Junior 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:83B:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201; One +1 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:83F:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201;2 +1 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:836:3EA:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION RT&#201; News Now 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:451:3E9:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

#DESCRIPTION Tithe an Oireachtais 
#SERVICE 1:0:1:44D:3E9:2174:EEEE0000:0:0:0

That is the one I use for Saorview channels.
You can of course mix & match and provided your channels are set to Ignore Providers Channel Number, the list should be in the order of the bouquet, in Kodi.

The #SERVICE numbering is the .png for the channel slightly altered, but the numbers are the same.

The 'NAME is what is displayed in Kodi

You can have several such bouquets, and so long as you provide an 'offset' number for each to start with, they will not overlap.
HINT: Allow plenty space between them in numbering, as those numbers are ignored in Kodi, and channels are numbered there consecutively as they are displayed.

If all that makes no sense let me know and I will try again to explain what I mean. I know it seems a bit garbled

FlexMcMurphy

Yes you can extend the EPG grabbing time in:
Configuration > Channel /EPG > EPG Grabber "EPG Scan time-out in seconds"
That might be the problem there alright.

I think the initial MUX list has EPG scanning enabled by default on all Muxes so people don't have to work out what transponder the epg data they need comes from.. don't think you can change that. Not too hard to "show all" muxes on the same page, untick them all, then save.

I definately think TVH could do a better job of helping you organise scanned channels into user defined categories. What the enigma2 world calls bouquets. But I don't understand what bouquets are meant to be in TvHeadend so I just made my own Channel Tags which function as "bouquets".

I posted a question on raspberrypi forum about my PiTvHat... I was trying to get your setup but again, on the cheap! One day I'll give in and shell out for all the proper hardware... everything would run far better me'thinks.

Flex

Johnboy1951

Pity about the Pi not working well for you.
Yes Saorview is DVB-T only. Freeview is T2 I believe although I cannot receive it here.

EPG

I have Ch4HD to 7am Fri morn along with a few others like TVC News, Al Jaz HD and a few others that don't really matter to me. ETV 5 is not populated.
All others are filled to midnight Fri 15th as at 15:40 today.

Enable (Auto) 11425H UK:Freesat

So it seems to be filling it adequately at present.
I will know if what I see now is just what was filled earlier in a couple of days if some of the channels fall behind in the EPG.
I think it might be necessary to use

"11778V Auto-detected EIT"

to fill in the gaps.

I get the impression that the EPG grabbing might be timing out before everything is completed, so must check on that if possible.
Is there a setting for that time? I thought I saw one .....

Any ideas on how to get an initial mux list wit all EPG Scanning disabled, rather than the present all Enabled?

FlexMcMurphy

As for my Pi TV Hat,

Well I figured out why I lost Saorview channels through TvHeadend is because I was editing the Mux and changing the delivery system to DVB-T2. I thought Saorview was T2 now? Anyway the channels tuned in again when I changed it back to DVB-T.

The Pi TV-Hat is not working well for me at all... loads of continuity errors and the picture is unwatchable. If I have the Pi Hat tuner enabled in TVH, at the same time as the other adapters/tuners from the Alien2, TvHeadend always goes to the Pi tuner first I guess because it lists it as the first TV adapter before the Sat>IP adapters from the Alien2. So then I effectively can't get any Saorview reception.

From googling it could be the OSMC Kernel or maybe the Pi3 B+ just isn't up to it especially given I have TVH server and Kodi running on that same Pi already.. nothing is easy with this.

Flex

FlexMcMurphy

Hi JohnBoy,

I check just now... 14:38 on Fri 8th and I have...

Drama - EPG until 14:00 on May 15th
Drama + 1 - EPG until 15:30 on May 8th
Channel4HD - EPG until 06:00 on May 12th
Paramount+1 - Had no EPG at all until I played the channel then got now+next only.

I think it's safe to say the Freesat grabber isn't complete either! I got the tvguide.co.uk grabber and the xmltv.co.uk grabbers working as well.. was very complicated and they don't give full data for all channels either but you could try them to fill in blanks left by Freesat. I can give full explanation if needed.

Regarding the EIT grabber, I thought it was a terrestrial only grabber but the TVHeadend site says: "EIT : This is a DVB standards compatible EIT grabber. Typically it will retrieve now/next information, though on some networks there may be more extensive data published." Maybe there are other Muxes that carry epg data as well, I suppose google is your friend... certainly silly to scan every single one of them un-necessarily.

Flex

FlexMcMurphy wrote: »

For setting up an epg in TvHeadend do you mean? Or describing the whole satip to TvHeadend streaming set up?

My initial motivation was my aging Alien2 that wouldn't recognise a 4TB USB drive I bought for TV movie recordings. So I moved the drive to a Pi and streamed channels from the Alien2 to it. Enigma2 is actually switched off, the Alien2 is only used for it's tuners, minisatip runs on the Alien2 and streams the channels to TvHeadend over the IP protocol.

I think my initial inspiration about this set up was this blog post: New TV Distribution System (No More Sky). But David doesn't go deep into details.

Flex

describing the whole satip to TvHeadend streaming set up please?
I have an old Alien2 with Enigma running on it but want to stream to TVHeadend.

Johnboy1951

I have 11425H enabled for UK Freesat and 11778V enabled for EIT. All others are 'Disabled'
I have full 7 day EPG on all but a couple of odd channels I don't really care about, such as BBC Alba.

I have yet to decide if I get any benefit from 11778V scanning.

The only 'oddity' I have is that a few channels do not show the full listing for the 7th day, but appear to stop listing at 7am on that day. Not a big deal ..... just something I noticed and wondered if it was the same for other users.

The ones I noticed are Drama, Drama +1, Sony Crime, Sony Movies +1, Sony Action +1, Channel 4 HD and Paramount +1

***

Regarding your problem, all I can suggest is that you revert your Pi to the state it was in when it worked --- remove the Pi TV Hat and test again --- but you have already reduced the problem to its introduction so you have considered that

I have never used a Pi TV Hat so really cannot contribute anything useful, unfortunately.
How good is the PSU for that Pi?
Is it well capable of handling the extra load of the 'hat' and its tuner?

FlexMcMurphy

I disabled all of them in the Muxes tab except 11425H. I don't use the OpenTV SKY UK Over-The-Air grabber either... don't think it works. Try scanning just 11425H with only the SKY UK grabber enabled... does it get any epg data?

I have a problem now actually. I stopped getting Saorview channels. The cable is fine and aerial too because the Saorview channels tune in fine when cable plugged directly into the TV... also works in OpenATV. But when I switch on minisatip and stream to TVHeadend I get no Saorview signal. Sat channels working fine. It's not the Alien2 tuner or cable or aerial because they work in OpenATV.

It happened around when I was installing a Pi TV Hat on my same Pi running TVH. The Pi TV Hat sees the saorview muxes but does not tune in any channels. I've triple checked I'm using the same frequencies that worked with cable to TV direct.

When I click on "Force Scan" in TVH now it doesn't do anything. I tried delete and adding back the muxes several times. Tried restarting TVH, restarting the Pi. Maybe I need to re-install TVH? Can't see any errors running any of these commands on the TVH Pi:

dmesg
journalctl -u tvheadend
systemctl status tvheadend

Would you have any ideas?

Cheers,

Flex

Johnboy1951

What Muxes are you now using for EPG?
Just the one or more?

FlexMcMurphy

For setting up an epg in TvHeadend do you mean? Or describing the whole satip to TvHeadend streaming set up?

My initial motivation was my aging Alien2 that wouldn't recognise a 4TB USB drive I bought for TV movie recordings. So I moved the drive to a Pi and streamed channels from the Alien2 to it. Enigma2 is actually switched off, the Alien2 is only used for it's tuners, minisatip runs on the Alien2 and streams the channels to TvHeadend over the IP protocol.

I think my initial inspiration about this set up was this blog post: New TV Distribution System (No More Sky). But David doesn't go deep into details.

Flex

@FlexMcMurphy

Any chance you could do a guide for this when finished as I would be very interested in this setup?

Johnboy1951

I just checked my Tvheadend server set up and it appears I had left it with some 12 muxes enabled for EPG scanning.

No doubt a number of those could be disabled, but I am uncertain now which ones.
I do know that some +1 channels and a couple of others needed something 'extra' at the time.

Anyway just the 12 muxes being scanned during sleep time does not interfere with anything, and is done quite quickly when the four tuners are being utilised, I expect.

Johnboy1951

It is so long since I even looked at any of that, and probably did not grasp it all at the time anyway, that my comments are most likely next to useless.
I remember I had to make some addition for a few channels available FTA that were/are not on the Freesat EPG.
One more recent one - Channel 4 HD - comes to mind.
I think I was trying to get that from the Sky UK module ...... but as I said, memory is not good on this.

FlexMcMurphy

Thanks JohnBoy,

I tried enabling the Over-the-air UK: Freesat grabber then tweaking my MUX Scheduler cron to make it run and it seems to have done the job. I've got 7 day EPG now! The OpenTV: Sky UK Grabber doesn't work for me anyway. It might not be working for you either but you don't notice if you also have the Freesat one enabled?

Now I only have these grabbers enabled:
EIT: DVB Grabber (For Saorview channels)
UK: Freesat (For Free to Air Satellite channels)

If you look at the TVheadend log... in the little pop up screen at the bottom of the TVH window.. you might notice every ten mins there are messages like:

"epggrab" subscribing to mux

This is the OTA Grabber trying every single transponder for EPG data. But it only needs to scan 11425H to get EPG data for satellite channels. The EIT: DVB Grabber needs to scan the Saorview MUXs to get epg data for them. You can stop TVH scanning all the Satellite MUXs un-necessarily by going in to: Configuration > DVB Inputs > Muxes and set EPG Scan to enabled (auto) for 11425H... all the other Sat MUXs could be disabled. In this case a MUX scheduler wouldn't be necessary. Now TVH will scan that one MUX as often as is defined in the cron entry in the EPG Grabber tab.

I know you know most or all of this JohnBoy but in case anyone else lands here confused like me.

Cheers,

Flex