TVHeadend support for SAT>IP and direct streaming to SmartTV

Roland Rohde

Hi,

I'm currently using DVBViewer for my SAT streaming, but would like to go to a low-powered server setup with a Raspberry Pi as Backend. This works quite well, but I need a RasPi as frontend as well, and this does not work so very well since the RasPi is pretty slow and although it can stream content from TVHeadend just fine, navigating between channels, EPG and so on are all pretty slow.

So, I'd like to ask if there is a way to stream to a DLNA/UPnP compatible frontend, like a SmartTV directly? I know that there was a plan for getting this into TVHeadend at some point, but don't know where the development went from there.

Also, with the new Sat>IP standard now all but ready for prime time, I would like to ask whether there are any plans to integrate this into TVHeadend?

Thanks.

Adam Sutton

If you're looking to get a simple STB like setup on your pi then you might want to have a word with Dave Chapman (linuxstb on IRC). He has a nice little application (pidvbip) that he's been working on for this vary use case.

Now his setup doesn't have TVH on the pi as he uses a shared server to multiple pi front-ends, so not sure quite what the loading will be when running both frontend and backend. But his frontend should be pretty lightweight. I gave it a go myself recently and while it still has some way to go it was definitely usable and had some nifty little features in.

XBMC is getting better on the pi and I have it installed on mine in the bedroom, but I do accept that its not as quick as it could be.

There is currently no available resource for adding DLNA to tvheadend, we do get a few requests here and there for it, but unfortunately they are background noise I'm afraid compared to all the other more prominent requests. Though I have been told that if we provide an M3U playlist (which we almost do) then it might be possible to use another existing package alongside TVH to provide the DLNA stuff.

Adam

Roland Rohde

Thanks for your quick and detailed reply!

I'll see what I can find out about pidvbip. I'm planning to use one Pi as server and one (or several) more as clients, currently I only have one here, the secodn one is acting as a client-over-internet for a friend. As soon as she gets her own Pi I'll have two again and can try out the seperate Server/Client setup.

What about the Sat>IP stuff? Maybe that's a better route to use rather than UPnP since it's a standard and would make it possible to connect directly without additional STB to smartTV devices (as soon as they have updated their software to support Sat>IP)?

Dave Chapman

Hi, I'm the pidvbip author. As Adam said, it still has a way to go, but I hope to find some time in the next couple of weeks to do some serious bug squashing and getting it to a stage where it's usable for day-to-day live TV watching. I've recently been working on integrating it with a custom version of OpenELEC (replacing XBMC with pidvbip), and it now boots from a read-only FAT-formatted SD card.

My intention is to have a Pi hidden behind each of my TVs, and then use pidvbip/TVH for day-to-day viewing instead of the TV's built-in tuner.

Regarding uPNP support, one way to do this would be with something like "pshare" - http://ps3muxer.org/pshare.html This takes a .m3u playlist of http links to tvh and presents them to your uPNP device. Only problem is that (currently) you will need to generate that playlist file manually.

I looked briefly at SAT>IP in the past, and didn't really like it as a standard. IIRC, it just presents URLs such as http://server:port/tuner/0/freq/12345000/polarity/h/srate/27500/service/4811 - i.e. it's a simple, low-level way to remotely control DVB tuners. (Although my recollection may be completely wrong!).

To be honest, once the software is developed (either pidvbip, or xbmc improves, or something else comes along), the Pi is the perfect hackable set-top box platform, and you won't have to worry about fighting with proprietory implementations and their quirks.

Are there any cheap HD-capable SAT>IP receivers available at the moment? As well as the price, I'm not sure if anything would also match the Pi's form-factor, and the ability to hide it behind a wall-mounted TV.

Roland Rohde

Hi,

I actually quite like the Pi as a STB, and I hpe that in the future the software will improve, however, with Sat>Ip it should be possible to remove the need for a STB completely.
I can currently already use DLNA/UPnP to view live-TV (with DVBViewer backend) through my Bluray Player, but it lacks such features as EPG, Timshift, Settings timers and the like.
Sat>IP has the potential to offer that functionality within the standards of DLNA/UPnP...at least that's the idea.
Currently, there are only very few devices out that dupport Sat>IP, a lineup from Schwaiger is probably the most complete, Elgato and some other players are also getting started, but everything is still pretty fresh.
I'm not really bothered about the hardware though, I've got my SAT>IP compatible backend up and running, and according to Astra, it would be enough to add a simple Software update or smart app to current SmartTV devices to make them SAT>IP compatible.

The Standard itself just strips the DVB data (like the polarity and so on) from the stream and presents something like an RTSP stream to the client (much like IPTV).

If support for this Standard reaches the Client Hard/Software, then you could choose to use anything, from a dedicated STB, XBMC powered Pi or SmartTV to process the signal since the standard forces certain parameter and thus interoperatibilty. That's the beauty of the thing, at least in theory. Your backend could then be anything that outputs SAT>IP compatible data, so again, a Windows Server, Linux Box, Raspberry Pi with TVHeadend or a dedicated STA>IP server box.

But I guess it will take some time to get there...

Uintil then I'd be very happy to test your Sofware. Wrapping it in OpenElec is fine, though I'd perhaps recommend a more open platform like Raspbmc or even a complete Raspbian since it's easier to work with than the completely closed off OpenElec...can't even apt-get out of the box there...

I'm quite fond of XBMC as well though, but it currently seems to be hogging CPU power and the Pi has very little to spare...

I got sidetracked there...sorry...but what I'm actually looking for is a good Server Solution that usese less power then my Windows Server that currently idels at around 35w...unacceptable for 24/7 use in my opinion...I used to have it on auto-standby, but it suddenly stopped reacting to WOL for misterious reasons...
Using the Pi as server with a USB SAT Tuner would be fine, it has more than enough power for streaming even more than one HD channel, but it will currently only stream to XBMC devices, and that is not really what I want...my ultimate goal is diret-to-smart-TV streaming...and recording and so on. the Pi as Cleint is an interim Solution though...

Dave Chapman

If (and I am not convinced) SAT>IP support starts appearing in mainstream TVs, then I'm sure there will be someone who wants to add support in tvh. But until clients become more widely available, I don't think it's worth the effort (personally).

My software won't be dependent on OpenELEC - you could run it within Raspbian if you wanted (I'm using Raspbian to develop/test it). OpenELEC's "closed" nature is both its strength and its weakness, but IMO it's perfect if you only wanted to run my client (or pidvbip) on your Pi. If you want to combine it with other apps, then obviously something else will be better.

I've no experience of using the Pi as a server, but as I said, it's possible (with a bit of work and an external uPNP server) to get your smart TV streaming from tvh today. You will of course not have EPG.

Roland Rohde

I'd like to refresh this...

I've got a SAT>IP Server box now (gss.box) and it works great, also is by far the chapest way to get 4 DVB-S2 Tuners btw...

Only issue I have is recordings. Currently this is only handled by the clients, meaning I can record a channel with a SAT>IP STB, but then I can't watch anything on that same STB.

It would be really great to be able to use TVHeadend on my Pi to do the recording. For that we'd need SAT>IP support though. There is currently a large pull-request concerning RTSP streaming. This would be a step in the right direction, since SAT>IP relies heavily on RTSP (although my box can also stream HTTP, but then there is no EPG).

Maybe there is a simple way to get the IPTV aspect of TVHeadend to work with SAT>IP? That would be really great.

Another way is the DVBViewer route where the SAT>IP streams get treated like virtual DVB-S cards. Not sure how easy that would be to implement though...