IPTV OTA epg grabbings

Ronen Paz

hi,

i have recntly installed tvheadend on my computer in order to grab the epg from a few iptv channels (multicast udp channels).

my problem is that these channels do not publish the epg according to the standrads, so TVH cannot detect them.

after a few conversations with he supplier of these channels,

i figured that each channel delivers the EPG on stream type 5 (which is different from the video or audio).

in a test that i've made, VLC also cannot detect the epg.

the PID of these services (there are several according to what i've seen) is not detected by TVH.

is there any way to get these PID's detected and make the epg ota grabbing work?

thank you!

G Kazaroth

I am NOT an expert in OTA tvguides, but I have done some testing. I did testing with locast stream. To get tvheadend to use the full ATSC protocol including the PAT and PMI packets, I had to pull the stream via UDP through the DVB interface. What I found was the locast stream had used dummy parameters in the PAT and PMI and as such, tvheadend did not like all the channels having the same TSID. In the end, it was not possible for me to take an internet stream and run it through the DVB interface. I did this by using the HDHomeRun interface that streams ATSC via UDP to TVHeadend. I have not seen any OTA streams containing tvguide information for decades and am surprised that is being used. It was something that was used before HD channels (using analog channels).

I also know that the OTA grabbers seem to run even when there is no DVB interfaces enabled ... not sure why. The default install of TVHeadend seems to turn on OTA Grabbers, which I disable at this point.

As you can see, there are lots of issues and that assumes the stream actually contains a full ATSC 1.0 protocol. My code still exists to stand up the dummy HDHomerun device in tvheadend DVB tab, but not sure if it would really do the trick.