What OS/Hardware do you run TVH on

Jonas Lang

I was curious what OS/Hardware other users have TVH installed on. Personally I started out with Ubuntu on an x86 PC using a hybrid DVBS/T PCI card many moons ago. DVBT is of no real value to me where I’m based (limited selection of DVBT channels available) so I’m purely using TVH for reception of DVBS only.

I’m beginning to see some real exotic setups being deployed and was interested to hear a little bit more about them.

I did use a PPA to install TVH but digging a little deeper into TVH I am little more confident now and understand the flexibility of building from source.

Anders Gustafsson

A noname box with RAID-5 and OpenSuSE, corrently four USB tuners and a card reader for OsCam. Been running tvheadend since 4.7.0 when our old PVR deemed obsolete (granted I had replaced the hardddisk and recapped the PSU on that). With tvheadend the switch from DVB-T to DVB-T2 what pretty painless. Just replacd two tuner sticks.

I use both DVB-C and DVB-T2

Saen Acro

Ubuntu 8.04 to now days 22.04 x86 and x86-64
from 350Mhz single core with analog tuner to USB/PCI/PCIe C/T/S even 12 tuner dektec DTA-2139C
OpenWRT port, and even SH4 on my Octagon sf-1028p with have just 64Mb ram

Jonas Lang

Looking interesting so far. It’s hard to say which is the most popular these days, DVBS, T or C. I understand that many are opting for the IPTV route but I don’t think IPTV would be one of TVH’s strong points. Hopefully a few more will respond here so we can gauge what direction TVH should go in.

Eyerex UK

I use a Pi3 Model B+ running Raspberry Pi OS Lite with a Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD USB TV tuner which works great for watching live TV SD and HD and for recording TV shows

PS don't go near a Pi4 with Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD USB TV tuner as you will see errors and glitches on recordings and live TV

DaveH

An Acer Core i5 box with openSUSE 15.1 and a TBS 6205 quad DVB-T2 tuner. OS not updated because I'm too lazy to recompile the out-of-tree driver. TVH 4.2.6 'cos it works.

Anders Gustafsson

Same here. I treat it pretty much as an "appliance" and only upgrade the OS when I have to. openSuSE 15.2 is pretty recent :)

I might need to consider another box or at least replace the disks in a while though.

Jonas Lang

Interesting choice OpenSUSE in both cases. Any particular reason for that choice.

DaveH

In my case, it was what I used at work so I used it at home too. But I'm considering migrating to something else since SUSE don't really have LTS versions any longer. I also have Debian and Mint on another box, and a recently acquired Hauppauge quad tuner somewhere about the place. But change causes disruption. :)

Jonas Lang

Yes I thought so. Being a commercial centric OS I suspected that was the reason for your choice.

I’m running Ubuntu way back from the days of 6.x as I found it easiest to configure. Debian was pretty basic at the time so it wasn’t really an option.

I started with MythTV front and backend and progressed to TVH. Running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on an i7 and still using the Hauppauge HVR4000 which is super reliable.

DaveH

Jonas Lang wrote:

> Yes I thought so. Being a commercial centric OS I suspected that was the reason for your choice.

My employer wasn't commercial, and our group used openSUSE not SUSE at work. Other groups used Scientific Linux, MacOS, Windows etc etc.

> I started with MythTV front and backend.

Yes, me too. But I found it difficult to build and configure.

Ron L

I have a home made computer build from an ASRock Q1900MPro3 running Linux Mint 20.2 at the moment. Prof 7301 DVB-S2 and TBS5980 DVB-S2. The are no terrestrial broadcasters here. I've added in a Cabernet server to feed IPTV into TVH and have some plain m3u iptv.

Anders Gustafsson

> Being a commercial centric OS

Some of the systems I use at work are Sles-based, but we also have other flavours. I am no Linux expert, but have friends that work with variants of Suse so I know where to turn when I get stuck. I agree that an LTS version would be preferable, but I really only needed to upgrade once, because a certain tuner needed the 5.x kernel.

I use XBMC as a frontend. Initially on an RPI, but now on a Vero4. I have another XBMC running on a PI2 in my library with a HiFiBerry Amp. Both systems use the tvh box for storage. The one in the library is for Music.

Saen Acro

XBMC from long time is renamed to KODI

For such embedder devices as RPI AlpinLinux, less then 64mb for OS itself.

Anders Gustafsson

> XBMC from long time is renamed to KODI

Sorry. I mistyped. I run the OSMC variant. I also run KORE on my android devices, plus Robert Siebel's TVHClient

> For such embedder devices as RPI AlpinLinux, less then 64mb for OS itself

Do you mean: https://www.alpinelinux.org ?

Will check it out. OSMC is debian-based, but I would not dream of running tvh on the same box. I know that a lot of folks do, but I try to separate all my eggs into different baskets. Same for IPTV/DVB-T/DVB-C. I do not use IPTV per se, but the TV has a Netflix client and clients for the various non-commercial channels here. If something is out of service, then I can always watch one of the other :)

We also mainly watch programmes that are aired one TZ behind us so recording and watching next day makes sense on weekdays, not to mention being able to arrow up through commercials.

Edit: Further weirdness :) You know when you never have the network outlets where you want them :) When we built the house 20 years ago, I ran cabling for speakers and CAT5, but nothing by coax where the TV is so now I have a 3Gb MOCA there that runs ethernet from the tvh box is the basement (as it is big and makes noise, including the UPS) to where the TV is.

An UPS is nice to have. I got this one for free. Many scrap their UPSes and buy new when all you need to do is replace the batteries.

DaveH

Ah, front end :) I use VLC on my PC or Kodi on an Amazon Fire TV displaying on our TV. We only built our house ten years ago, so I do have an Ethernet socket next to the TV :)

We record pretty much everything and hardly ever watch live TV. Between simple timeshifting and skipping adverts ...

What's a MOCA, BTW?

Anders Gustafsson

> What's a MOCA, BTW?

Multimedia over Coax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Alliance

Saen Acro

Anders Gustafsson wrote:
> > For such embedder devices as RPI AlpinLinux, less then 64mb for OS itself
>
> Do you mean: https://www.alpinelinux.org ?

Exactly.

Anders Gustafsson wrote:
> > What's a MOCA, BTW?
>
> Multimedia over Coax.
>

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multimedia_over_Coax_Alliance

USA variant of DOCSIS ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

Anders Gustafsson

> USA variant of DOCSIS ?

No idea. I am in Europe, but MOCA boxes are readily available and reasonably priced. I initially (many years ago) bought something frpm Taiwan, originally aimed at apartment blocks that wanted to provide internet over CATV. A nice solution, worked well, until it stopped :) Then I bought the MOCA stuff. Hitron Bonded Moca IIRC. In theory I could have used two wifi-cards as well.

Jonas Lang

This discussion is getting really interesting.

I’ve a Kodi front end operating on the i7. I also have deployed a RockPro64 with LibreELEC which manages my audio system using a Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100 which works “out of the box” on LE. The RockPro64 can of course act as a client to the i7 server. Ironically LE have a TVH server add on which is easily installed and can be simply configured from a remote browser.

The more feedback we can get here the easier it will be to judge what setups are most popular with TVH. It could also help other users to decide what direction to go in.