Incomplete/No EPG on HD/DVB-T2 Freeview Channels

moosefrankie · 2026-05-16T19:05:49+00:00

I am a new Tvheadend user, and I am trying to get set up with it to receive Freeview OTA channels in the UK. I am currently using a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B w...

moosefrankie

davep I have set those settings on the muxes and waited several hours for it to populate, but I am still getting incomplete EPG data.

davep

Ah, you're in Sandy Heath country, same as me.

Have you tried manually triggering an EPG update (the "Force Scan" button on the Networks tab)?

There was a thread on the forum a couple of years ago where someone was having a similar issue. He got it working eventually though I don't think anyone was ever quite sure what the actual fix was.
https://tvheadend.org/d/8272-epg-for-hd-channels-knows-program-times-but-not-titles-or-descriptions

moosefrankie

davep I tried manually triggering a Force Scan of the muses, and manually triggering the OTA EPG grabber. A bunch of EPG data does get collected, but there are still gaps, and none for the HD channels.

I looked at the logs while it was doing the scans, and noticed that some muses the OTA modules aren't working which doesn't look right:

2026-05-17 18:08:17.016 epggrab: no OTA modules active for 754MHz in DVB-T Sandy, check again next time 2026-05-17 18:08:17.016 epggrab: no OTA modules active for 714MHz in DVB-T Sandy, check again next time 2026-05-17 18:08:17.016 epggrab: no OTA modules active for 522MHz in DVB-T Sandy, check again next time 2026-05-17 18:08:17.016 epggrab: no OTA modules active for 474.167MHz in DVB-T Sandy, check again next time

I had a look at the older thread but it looks like that person was using Ubuntu with an older kernel, and solved it by using a kernel with updated hardware support. The current version of Raspberry Pi OS I'm using has a much newer kernel so I would think that would already have any driver improvements included.

davep

Can you check that the "UK Freeview" grabber is enabled in Configuration -> Channel/EPG -> EPG Grabber Modules? It seems that it is possible to specify a disabled module for a mux (definitely a bug!).

I've spun up a test installation on a Pi4 (Arch Linux not RPI OS) with a 292e tuner, and EPG grabbing definitely works across all channels.

moosefrankie

davep Yes, the UK Freeview grabber is enabled, it's the only one that is.

davep

OK I'm stumped. My test box has the same settings as yours and works.

I probably should have asked earlier which version of Tvheadend you are using?

moosefrankie

davep Here's a screenshot of my About page, it the current version provided from the linuxserver.io Docker package.

davep

So pretty much up to date.

The code around your

epggrab: no OTA modules active for 474.167MHz in DVB-T Sandy, check again next time

was last touched in 2019 and I don't understand how it's getting triggered.

One last try. Can you go into Configuration ->Debugging, tick "Enable Syslog", "Debug to Syslog" and "Enable trace", then enter "epggrab" (without the quotes) into the "Debug subsystems" and "Trace subsystems" boxes. Click on "Apply configuration" then start an EPG grab run. When it finishes open a terminal window and enter "journalctl -u tvheadend > tvh.txt" (you might need to be root or use sudo for that). That should create a rather large text file; if you can put it somewhere I can retrieve it I'll take a look.

moosefrankie

davep I enabled debugging settings and ran the EPG grabber again this morning.

Here is the log generated

A lot of "poll TIMEOUT" messages, not sure if that's relevant or not.

davep

Unfortunately there's nothing helpful in the log. The TIMEOUT messages are caused by scanning 586MHz - this is a 'local' mux which has a very limited service area. Since you can't receive it you could disable the mux.

I'm afraid I'm completely out of ideas. However there is a possible workaround, suggested in https://tvheadend.org/d/6104-epg-not-including-listings-for-dvb-t2-high-def-channels-in-uk/16

From the web interface, go to Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> Channels. For each HD channel click Edit, then View Level: Expert. Set 'Reuse EPG from:' to the equivalent SD channel - for BBC ONE HD, choose BBC ONE West, etc. Then on the EPG Grabber tag, click 'Trigger OTA EPG Grabber', then 'Re-run internal EPG Grabbers'.

moosefrankie

I've still been trying to solve my issue on and off, and thought I would share recent developments.

I tried using a different DVB tuner device to try and rule out possible hardware or driver issues with the Hauppauge tuner I had. I found an Xbox One Digital TV Tuner - a USB tuner with a different chipset and set up Tvheadend again. Still using the same Pi with Raspberry Pi OS, and the linuxserver.io docker package.

This time full EPG data for the all the SD/DVB-T channels quickly propagated - but still nothing for the HD channels. Which was still and improvement on the spotty EPG coverage I had before, but also not fully working. I was then planning to try a different OS image for the Pi, but unfortunately I had to leave the project for a few days.

However, when I got back to looking at this today - surprise! There is now full EPG data for the HD/DVB-T2 channels as well. Which is great that it now works although I would like to find out why.

Is there any reason the EPG data might take so long to be received? I'v heard that it can sometimes take a several hours to come in, but not 1 week+. Perhaps the different tuner is getting a better reception from my aerial? Or maybe the gremlins have finally just left my system.