2013-09-10, 00:19
I was using the Mediaportal PVR but decided to connect the USB tuner to the RPi and use tvheadend so that I don't have to waste loads of electricity having the PC on to watch TV.
When it's working it's OK and channel changes are quicker, although the EPG still takes about 10s to open and causes tv to pause/drop-out several times before it opens when already watching something. As with the MP PVR, it still doesn't close the EPG when changing channel, only when starting a channel when there's not one already playing, which doesn't appear to be a bug that's present in the PC version of XBMC.
I've had a lot of issues with it stopping working though. It would be fine for hours and then I'd go away and come back to it later or the next day and just get errors when trying to start TV. The Web portal would still show the dual-tuners but the Status page would show them as completely idle. I'd reboot, poweroff (including pulling the plug), disable/re-enable the tvheadend service/pvr and eventually got it working again by moving the USB tuner to the next port on the hub. Then I'd have the same problem the next time I came back to it and have to go through the whole routine again and end up moving it back to the original port.
I thought it might be a power issue, although I've got a UBEC powering the RPi through the GPIO header and the hub only has a remote receiver and the tuner connected (there's a USB stick connected directly to the RPi as well). I've connected a PSU directly to the hub now to see if that will help. Even since doing that, I've come back and found the screensaver has dimmed and it's completely locked up on the EPG (I see the light flickering on the USB stick though) so I have to reboot anyway.
Also, when booting it shows an error about "TVHeadend Client, no hardware present" or something but shortly after that the EPG data loads (I tried the "Store in database" option but as with the MP PVR, this just seems to make it load the data twice, taking twice as long so I'm not sure what the point of that is) and then I go to the EPG and can start TV, so it seems the error is it checking too early after boot or something.
When it's working it's OK and channel changes are quicker, although the EPG still takes about 10s to open and causes tv to pause/drop-out several times before it opens when already watching something. As with the MP PVR, it still doesn't close the EPG when changing channel, only when starting a channel when there's not one already playing, which doesn't appear to be a bug that's present in the PC version of XBMC.
I've had a lot of issues with it stopping working though. It would be fine for hours and then I'd go away and come back to it later or the next day and just get errors when trying to start TV. The Web portal would still show the dual-tuners but the Status page would show them as completely idle. I'd reboot, poweroff (including pulling the plug), disable/re-enable the tvheadend service/pvr and eventually got it working again by moving the USB tuner to the next port on the hub. Then I'd have the same problem the next time I came back to it and have to go through the whole routine again and end up moving it back to the original port.
I thought it might be a power issue, although I've got a UBEC powering the RPi through the GPIO header and the hub only has a remote receiver and the tuner connected (there's a USB stick connected directly to the RPi as well). I've connected a PSU directly to the hub now to see if that will help. Even since doing that, I've come back and found the screensaver has dimmed and it's completely locked up on the EPG (I see the light flickering on the USB stick though) so I have to reboot anyway.
Also, when booting it shows an error about "TVHeadend Client, no hardware present" or something but shortly after that the EPG data loads (I tried the "Store in database" option but as with the MP PVR, this just seems to make it load the data twice, taking twice as long so I'm not sure what the point of that is) and then I go to the EPG and can start TV, so it seems the error is it checking too early after boot or something.
