LiveTV noob
#1
Hi,

Been using XBMC for past couple of years for downloaded video, about to venture into world of live tv.

I'm in the UK, and my current setup is as follows:

Unraid server
1 x Acer Revo 3610 running Windows
1 x Zotac ND22 running Windows

What I am looking to achieve:

I want to be able to watch Live Tv (freeview HD) on both my HTPC's. The ability to record programmes would be nice, but live tv is more important.

I'm looking for some advice on the best way to set this up. I thought initially it would be to have a tv tuner running on the unraid server but after doing a bit of reading this seems very complicated. So would a tv tuner on each HTPC be simpler? If so where would the backend run?

Any advice would be much appreciated?

Please note that I am looking for Freeview HD - anyone got any experience of this working?
Reply
#2
I have Freeview HD running on a PCTV USB DVB-T2 stick on a Revo 3600.

Thoughts:

1. Tuners need to be connected to the system on which the backend software runs. Personally, I'd look to OpenElec instead of Windows, especially on an Atom-based system, simply because of the performance/boot gain.

2. Backends can usually run on the same system as the frontend software. Performance may become a challenge, though, especially if you're running Win7 on those boxes. My experience of trying Argus 4TR on the 3600 wasn't great.

3. So, you can have a shared backend - which could be your unRAID server, but you'll have to compile something like tvheadend yourself, I think. Or you could make one of the Windows boxes a client and server and have the other one as a client only. Or you could rebuild one of the systems under Linux and have that as your client and server, and then have the other one as whatever OS you wish.

4. Which backend software... ah, there's a bit more reading and playing needed there :-)

5. You'll practically need one tuner per concurrent stream for Freeview. So, if both HTPCs would be in use at the same time, that's two tuners. This isn't strictly true, as you can probably watch different channels at the same time so long as they're on the same mux, but you're inevitably going to tie yourself in knots sooner or later.

6. You're limited to USB devices on the Revo because of the size of the chassis.

If it helps, I have XBMCbuntu on one Revo that runs tvheadend as the TV server and XBMC as the client, plus hosts the TV tuners - and then I have OpenElec on another Revo that's purely an XBMC client. My media is all then on a separate NAS.
Reply
#3
Thanks for the reply.

Tempted to switch the two HTPCs to OpenElec or XBMCbuntu - only thing that has given me reservations is my remote setup. I use a MCE remote R6 remote on both of these using the following setup:

http://xbmccustomregis.sourceforge.net/support.html

Would want my remotes to work correctly with the HTPC.

Would it be possible/beneficial to build a seperate linux box just for the TV Tuner side of things? This could be a seperate little box that is on all the time on the network that could run both tuners - that way I could get internal tv tuners and wouldn't be loading either of the HTPCs with both the backend and frontend?

Ideally I wanted to do the above with Unraid but it appears to be very difficult to do this.
Reply
#4
I think the MCE remotes are well supported under Linux - I certainly used to use one before I switched to Pulse-Eight's CEC adapter (which I would heartily recommend to anyone wanting something that's basically idiot-proof). Maybe it's worth booting OE from a USB stick beforehand just to test and do some playing with the remote.

Is it beneficial to have a separate box? That's entirely up to you. You could run tvheadend on an OpenElec system, but that box then always has to be on - but the Revos are low power, and don't eat electricity if that's a concern. However, you may not have the room to do that, or may still wish to go for internal cards and then put the box somewhere where its whirring doesn't upset the kids/cat/whatever. It's certainly not an issue of CPU grunt to run tvheadend and XBMC on the same device, I've done that for many years (which is more than can be said for a Windows-based backend/frontend combination on the same hardware).

If you're thinking of building a dedicated tuner system, though, you can use whatever takes your fancy and spec it accordingly - there are ways and means to speed Windows boot times as well, but an always-on system doesn't really care about booting too much anyway, by definition.
Reply
#5
MCE remotes work just fine under linux, however make sure you buy a tv tuner that is supported under linux.
Reply

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
LiveTV noob0