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Recording TV on Raspberry Pi

Posted by Mike Redrobe | Posted in Technology | Posted on 13-11-2016

4

RpiAs an update to my previous guide, things have become a little simpler in Raspbian Jessie, since there is now a precompiled version of tvheadend available.

Add the TVHeadend repository to the pi’s sources list:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

add the following line:

deb http://apt.tvheadend.org/unstable/ jessie main

Now we can install tvheadend:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install tvheadend

The rest of the configuration can now be done through your PC web browser, pointed at port 9981 of the raspberry pi’s ip address:

http://192.168.1.35:9981

Select your tuners from Configuration / DVB Inputs/ TV adapters, and click the enable checkbox for each one:

choose-tuners

Now goto the Networks Tab and click Add to create a new network

choose-dvb
(DVB-T for freeview)

Tvheadend has a list of transmitter to speed up the scan process, you can find your local transmitter by typing your postcode into http://www.ukfree.tv/transmitters.php

choose-transmitter

Give it a name (e.g. “freeview”), and click create.

Click the Muxes tab, and after a while, you should see channels (“services”) detected in the right hand column below:

muxes-display

Now it has scanned the channels, you can add them into the lineup, click on services, and then “Map-all”:

map-channels

I had to click play on one of the channels before the EPG would populate, but that may have just been a matter of waiting:

epg

Now you can browse the EPG, and record shows.

An hour long TV show takes around 1GB of space, so SD card storage would fill up quite quickly if left like that, I use an attached 2TB USB HDD, just change the location in Configuration / Recording / Digital Video Recorder / Recording System Path:
/media/usb/TV

Comments (4)

Just a couple of questions:

I am in the USA and attempting to use an HDHomerun Extend for some OTA Live TV/DVR functions on a RPi 3.

First 2 attempts to make the RPi a TVHeadend/Backend server but I used LibreElec as the TVHeadend came with the package.

Must the Tuner be installed directly on the RPi or can it just feed the network via ethernet to the router?

Would a USB HDD be better than the NAS I am attempting to use?

The NAS works well with a laptop running Win 7 ServerWMC/Windows Media Center but that is power extensive and not good to leave the laptop on 24/7

Sorry for the additional question but is Raspbian Jessie Lite sufficient for this application?

Yes, you don’t need any more than Lite (no GUI)

Many thanks for writing this guide Mike, however I’d like to point out to anyone that comes across this that the version shown & the apt repo mentioned is no longer supported.

Please see https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/AptRepository for newer info :).

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