FreeBSD TV

I am back at it too. this time I have an Happauge HVR-1800 which was supported at one time via the wiki.
Looking at tvheadend it has been through some recent updating so that is good.


I got tvheadend working yesterday using LibreELEC on a RPi - I'd never used it before so wanted to see how it worked and it looks like the sort of thing I would like to have working permanently, but can't figure out what hardware to try to get it working on. I need to use a DVB-S2 interface, but not sure whether to use a dedicated receiver or get a DVB-S2 USB stick. Is any USB stick likely to be supported by FreeBSD?

Looking at LibreELEC, I wonder if it would be possible to put together an equivalent FreeBSD distrubtion - LibreEFEC....
 
LibreELEC is basically a "platform" for KODI. KODI has plugins for PVR / TV. Anything that works with a PVR plugin will work on LibreELEC. I use it as my frontend for tvheadend.
 
I watch TV (sometimes) via VLC on my FreeBSD machines. VLC gets the TV channels from a tvheadend server which is connected to a HDHomeRun 4DC network tuner. Sadly, the tvheadend machine runs Linux, I was unable to get the multimedia/tvheadend port to work in FreeBSD. I haven't tested in a while, it could be that the tvheadend ports works better now.

I installed multimedia/tvheadend on FreeBSD (11.1) yesterday and it came up ok and managed to pick up a few channels, although scanning seems to be a black art which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I couldn't figure out how to watch any of the channels though... Is there any other way to watch channels?
 
Mine scan fine all the time. If you're are not then that suggests to me you either have a mux configuration issue, or a signals quality issue. To watch channels you have to 'map' the muxes to services, etc. After that is done you can use an external player like VLC to request from TVHeadEnd the IPTV stream. They have a Wiki and forum you can use.

I actually gave up on TVHeadEnd for a while, but I might circle back to it someday. I'm using multimedia/emby-server mostly now, and still using multimedia/plexmediaserver some.
 
Mine scan fine all the time. If you're are not then that suggests to me you either have a mux configuration issue, or a signals quality issue.

I do have an issue with mux configuration... I don't really have a clue about how to set it up... There is a drop down list of pre-defined Muxes, but I'm not sure which to choose, I just want to scan for anything that is available... There is a '--Generic--: auto-Default' and a 'Poland: pl-Gdansk' which I think I could try, but I don't know what they provide.

I've just chosen 'Poland: pl-Gdansk' and the result was 3 muxes and 8 services. When I ran w_scan it found 30 channels...
 
Try using w_scan with the -L option to generate a vlc playlist (I simply run w_scan -c GB -L). Then open this playlist in vlc. vlc should play the first channel, and allow you to change channels from the playlist. At least then you know your setup is working.
 
Try using w_scan with the -L option to generate a vlc playlist (I simply run w_scan -c GB -L). Then open this playlist in vlc. vlc should play the first channel, and allow you to change channels from the playlist. At least then you know your setup is working.

Can I use VLC on a different computer on my LAN? I managed to get Kodi set up using the TVheadend HTSP PVR client using TVheadend running on FreeBSD. I came across something called VLC HTSP Plugin but didn't manage to get anywhere with it...
 
Can I use VLC on a different computer on my LAN?

That is pretty much the intended 'design' concept. You use TVHeadEnd to collect and process all of your TV signals and turn them into IPTV streams. Then from LAN connected devices you pull those streams.
 
That is pretty much the intended 'design' concept. You use TVHeadEnd to collect and process all of your TV signals and turn them into IPTV streams. Then from LAN connected devices you pull those streams.

If I run w_scan -c GB -L to produce a playlist as suggested, can I use vlc on another computer using this playlist?

I seem to be missing a step in how to get this working...
 
I don't know. But here is what I did that did work. After you have the mux correctly built, and mapped to a service, you will see a little play button icon next to the service. If you hover your mouse over it you will see the URL. If you click it, and open it with say VLC it will grab that playlist and work. Inside VLC you can find and copy that URL, and use it on other media players.
 
I don't know. But here is what I did that did work. After you have the mux correctly built, and mapped to a service, you will see a little play button icon next to the service. If you hover your mouse over it you will see the URL. If you click it, and open it with say VLC it will grab that playlist and work. Inside VLC you can find and copy that URL, and use it on other media players.

Do you have any issue with authentication? I would like to set up tvheadend without needing to login... I keep getting 'access denied' msgs...
 
Nope. The default configuration allows unauthenticated access to the admin account. If you are getting access denied messages then it sounds like you have made a change and blew yourself up.
 
Nope. The default configuration allows unauthenticated access to the admin account. If you are getting access denied messages then it sounds like you have made a change and blew yourself up.

When I click on play, Firefox attempts to open VLC with a link provided by the play icon, but VLC refuses to play the link.

Is there a logging function in VLC that I can switch on to see what the problem is?

I've found this error msg:-
Code:
Your input can't be opened:

VLC is unable to open the MRL 'http://192.168.1.2:9981/stream/channel/98527749be9cfe5a156bad894cbeccdb?ticket=33CCA797E4166325FCE898E5F50D355C5C73CC99'. Check the log for details.
but I don't know where the log is...
 
- tvheadend without authentication can be done by creating username "*" and password "*"

- I have the exact same issue as balanga :
I point VLC to http://mytvheadend-ip:9981/playlist and I get an error that VLC is unable to open MRL
I checked the logs: in /var/log/tvheadend/tvheadend.log and I don't see anything wrong except that "client hung up"

I am able to schedule a recording and watch it but I just can't get livetv to work.
 
balanga I guess I do... I think that's what "BSD TV" refers to, anyway... lol

I started this thread because I had no idea about the capabilities of FreeBSD in the field of TV reception and viewing, which seem quite capable. I'm now in the process of getting to grips with setting up FreeBSD as a TV/Media server...
 
I started this thread because I had no idea about the capabilities of FreeBSD in the field of TV reception and viewing, which seem quite capable. I'm now in the process of getting to grips with setting up FreeBSD as a TV/Media server...

If you have a YouTubeI wouldn't mind seeing what that looks like...
 
This shows how it works although getting it installed on FreeBSD is a little more complicated...

That's pretty neat... There's only like 3 or 4 stations that broadcast around here, though... Kinda useless for me, but if there were more, I'd definitely look into setting something up like that...

If I want TV it's cable/sat/ip or nothing, essentially... : \
 
I got tvheadend working yesterday using LibreELEC on a RPi - I'd never used it before so wanted to see how it worked and it looks like the sort of thing I would like to have working permanently, but can't figure out what hardware to try to get it working on. I need to use a DVB-S2 interface, but not sure whether to use a dedicated receiver or get a DVB-S2 USB stick. Is any USB stick likely to be supported by FreeBSD?

Looking at LibreELEC, I wonder if it would be possible to put together an equivalent FreeBSD distrubtion - LibreEFEC....
Six years later...

Thread 90262

Thread 90281

Basically, all you need to install on a bare FreeBSD system is xorg and kodi and change a few system settings, and you have the basis of LibreELEC on FreeBSD
 
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