[Dam0]

i understand that the pi, is not a great power pc, however, id like to build small footprint standalone mediapc for my outlaws with dual tuner pvr included.

it would be great if the raspberry pi could run the required backend software for me.

firstly, would it be likely to install ok and run reliably?

secondly, since im winblows skilled only, could anyone pls provide "windows user friendly(complete nix virgin)" guides to assist me with install, if its possible?

thanks in advance,
Dam0

[Dilligaf]

Raspbmc has a TVH server built in it works ok to other PCs but playing HD tv on the PI itself is a little iffy. If you're just looking for a TVH server then probably the easiest way to do this is install Raspbmc and then simply disable xbmc from starting up.

[Dam0]

thanks for the quick reply.

unfortunately, it seems i will need to run my backend on an x68 machine, i think my 70 yrs old outlaws might be better off with a setop pvr + pi for xbmc combo

Dam0

[Dilligaf]

Sorry if I misunderstood, I thought you were looking to run the PI as the backend TVHeadend server and a Media PC as the frontend, not the other way around.

[adamsutton]

Just to clarify, TVHeadend can run on a pi (as a backend) however you might struggle with performance due to USB on pi (though I know its a lot better than it was). Also if you're receiving scrambled streams, then this is one area where you are likely to come unstuck as a reasonable amount of CPU grunt is required to do the descrambling. You can enable dvbcsa (rather than the built-in stuff) which may provide some performance benefit on the pi, but it still won't be optimal.

Using pi as a TVH client is definitely possible. XBMC-PVR currently has a bug that means playback of some (in my case H264/HD) streams does not work and it can be a bit laggy on channel change etc.. However most of this is not a fundamental limitation of the hardware but more that XBMC was never designed to run on such and though its been optimised to do so it is still a little heavyweight (though personally I find it more than usable for occasional stuff).

One of the TVH devs has created his own STB application (pidvbip) which runs on the pi and is pretty much exclusively a TVH client and since that is specifically for the pi (and only the pi) it runs very well and the performance is excellent (though the software is early days). It provides an interface and performance that is much closer to a standard off the shelf PVR. He's even recently been investigating PIP and has been able to get the pi to decode/display 3 simultaneous channel streams, though I'm not sure whether that was HD or SD.

Anyway just my 2 pence

Adam

[oldtechie]

I am doing this now. Installed TVH on standard raspbian wheezy. It worked pretty well at first but for some reason now I'm getting some pretty messed up (totally unwatchable) recordings. Not sure if it's the drivers, tuner or what.