How to configure TVheadend via the wizard

If you are unsure how to get to the web GUI for TVheadend, I would suggest a quick review of this post. Particularly looking at step 3. In a nutshell, you need to use a web browser to configure TVheadend. Go to the IP address you set on your device. If it is your first-time use, you will not get a login screen, however, you should get the wizard to come straight up. If for some reason you canceled the wizard, you can find it by clicking ‘Configuration > Start Wizard’

Open up a web browser and enter the IP address of your TVheadend Server. Also, use the port number ‘9981’. (For example http://192.168.1.168:9981) This will bring up the TVheadend Web GUI. On the first startup, you will be presented with the setup wizard.

Select the web interface language and the EPG language if different. In most cases, you will only need to select the web interface language. Click next.

This section allows you to set ‘allowed’ networks to use the server. You can insert 0.0.0.0/0 to allow all networks, or you can use something like 192.168.1.0/24 to allow anything on that network to access the server. This is a personal preference. You might also notice an open IPV6 entry separated by a comma. This is also acceptable. You can add multiple networks this way. Add an admin login, keep this super strong, especially if you plan to stream content via the internet. If you plan to allow other users into the network, then set them up here also.

The next section will give you an insight into how many adapters the server has picked up. You should see all of them plugged in. If not, then check your connection to the tuner (USB) and ensure the RPi operating system has loaded the drivers. Some TV tuners may not be picked up by Linux. Network 1 always defaults to IPTV, disregard this and continue to your adapters/tuners. Assign each adapter to a network. In my case, it is DVD-T which is Digital Terrestrial TV in Australia.

Because terrestrial television is transmitted on different frequencies dependant on your location, you need to select a profile that matches the location you are in. This will tell the tuner to look at these frequencies. Go ahead and select the correct profile for your area.

This next screen will begin to scan for all services available for the area that you selected. If you accidentally select the wrong location, then you may run into issues. Also, ensure that your TV antenna is connected at this stage. Some of the tuner details can be found in the window behind the wizard. We can revisit this screen later to fault find signal quality issues.

Now that we have found the desired TV channels, we need to map out all the tags and channel names/numbers. This can be done automatically by selecting the 3 check boxes. It is possible to re-sort these at a later date. For now, it is easier to allow TVheadend server to sort it out.

Congrats, your server is now set up! Be it at a basic level, you should now be able to consume some IPTV. The next section will cover off on some ways to do this!

Watch a stream with VLC

Now that you have done all the hard work, its time to consume some IPTV. This section will outline how to view a channel with VLC. If you have not downloaded VLC, then you will need to do this first. https://www.videolan.org/ For those of you who are not aware, VLC is a media player that is very popular and compatible with a LOT of different media types. We can use VLC media player to open our TVheadend streams.

Open up the TVheadend web GUI and navigate to the channel you want to watch. Click on the small ‘info’ button on the left-hand side of the screen. This will open up a modal window with which you can grab the stream.

Select the ‘play program’ button. This should initiate a download. This file is basically a .m3u which can be opened by VLC. VLC will then be pointed directly to the stream you selected.

Open the downloaded file with VLC.

Your stream should then begin to play in VLC.

I do want to give a bit of a shout out to CWNE88, (Go follow him if you get a chance!) This is the guy that got me started streaming TV via the Raspberry Pi, however he concentrates a lot on multicast streaming and to be honest, most of us do not have the infrastructure to handle multicast traffic on our LAN. So I had to find an alternative option that actually worked. (dvblast works great?if you have suitable switches/routers to handle multicast) Anyhow, during my research, I stumbled across TVheadend. I learned pretty quickly that it could be installed on a Raspberry Pi and be used to stream tv via HTSP. (Home TV Streaming Protocol) HTSP is a TCP based protocol and works in a unicast type fashion without killing your home network.

This is the hardware you will require:

• Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (This is what we tested with)
• USB Extension Cables
• Good quality 5v power supply for RPi
• USB TV Tuner (We used Avermedia Volar Green HD @ $29ea)
• Splitter (We used a 3-way splitter to really push the RPi3B+)
• F-type adapters
• USB to Ethernet Adapter (Optional)

Prerequisites

I am going to assume you know how to get Raspbian/Stretch Lite onto your Raspberry Pi. If not check out the Prerequisites of this post here. It will walk you through, downloading the image, using Etcher to put the image onto an SD card, setting up the RPi via Raspi-config, and enabling SSH. Once you have completed those steps, come back here and continue.

The end state of the Prerequisites is to have access to your Raspberry Pi via SSH and have the command line up and in front of you.

For those confident on the RPi

Step 1: Update/Upgrade the Raspberry Pi

First things first, you need to ensure your Raspbian repositories are up to date. Run the Following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

After running the second command, select ‘Y’ and go get a coffee. This process can take 5-10 minutes depending on how old the initial image was.

Step 2: Install TVheadend server

Now that your Raspberry Pi is fully up to date, you need to run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install dirmngr

This command may not need to be run, however, for me, TVheadend would not install without it.

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 379CE192D401AB61

More info about installing the GPG keys can be found here.

echo "deb https://dl.bintray.com/mpmc/deb raspbianstretch stable-4.2" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tvheadend.list

Again, more info on where to get the correct repo for the RPi is here.
Check and make sure the correct one is used. This can update at times.

sudo apt-get update

In a nutshell, we are telling ‘apt-get’ to grab any updates from the repository we added above. This will then allow us to install TVheadend because it now knows where to ‘grab’ it from.

sudo apt-get install tvheadend

Select ‘Y’ and allow TVheadend to install. If you tried to run this command without doing the steps above, you would run into errors

During the install, you will be asked to set an administrator username and password. (See Screenshots below!) Be sure to set this correctly and remember. You do not get two chances to enter the password. I learned this the hard way!

If for some reason, you did stuff up the username and password. Uninstall tvheadend with:

sudo apt-get purge tvheadend

and

sudo apt-get autoremove

Then reinstall tvheadend again.

Step 3: Log into TVheadend

Open up a web browser and enter the IP address of your Raspberry Pi. Also, use the port number ‘9981’. For example http://192.168.1.168:9981 (Your IP address for the RPi will be different.) Type ifconfig in the terminal screen to confirm RPi IP address.

When you first open Tvheadend, you will get the Wizard which will step you through setting up the tv tuners. Hopefully, you left them plugged in from the start. If not, plug them in and restart the Raspberry Pi. Go back into the web browser and log back into TVheadend.

Step 4: Configure TVheadend for streaming

The configuration for TVheadend settings post is here.

I have no doubt, however, if you got this far, you will be able to bumble your way through the configuration. This was the easiest part. I then used VLC to watch the streams. You can get these links from inside Tvheadend.

Update: Apple/iOS App

If you want to consume some TV from your iOS device, I can confirm that the tvhclient app works a treat. No nonsense setup, easy channel browsing. It can be used in conjunction with the VLC app to stream video easily.

Update: Video Hardware Configuration

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