XBOX One DVB Tuner and LibreElec 8.1.1 ?

  • Just to get that one straight, GaryB....

    I can plug multiple tuners into tvheadend server running on some hardware and a remote (or local) Kodi, running the tvheadend client, works perfectly with, say, recording multiple MUX at once.

    But, if I have two tvheadend servers each on their own hardware (and each with one tuner each) then a Kodi client doesn't like the arrangement ?

  • Yes, exactly.
    You can assign priorities to the tuners and it will try them in order, so if you have one SD and one HD, you make the SD one higher priority to keep the HD tuner free unless needed. You can also record multiple channels from the same mux at the same time from a single tuner. Obviously limited by getting it onto disk fast enough.


    It's not that Kodi doesn't like the second arrangement, it works, but you get all the channels twice, and you can't tell which one is from which box (unless you re-name or re-number them). If one was terrestrial and the other satellite, for example, it would make sense, but when it's all from the same transmitter it's a mess.

  • Understood. Thanks for the explanation.

    I guess the next question is, what is the limiting factor on how many tuners you can have? Is it the hardware the tvheadend server is running on/how quickly you can record to a HDD?

    Currently, I'm running this get up on an i3 desktop stuffed behind the telly but it uses 240W. I'm thinking to use a Pi3 as the hardware for the tvheadend server and to just plug a usb HDD into it along with a couple of these tuners.

    I do have the option of putting this on a pi zero w but I'm imagining that there's not enough grunt, even if it's just a headless Linux distro with tvheadend server installed (not libreelec) (?)

  • From my understanding, the tuner doesn't do a great deal with the data, it either writes the raw stream to disk, or passes it on (or both). So the limiting factor is likely to be disk I/O.
    I can confirm that the Pi3 can handle one tuner, but I'm not certain it would cope with more. All of the I/O (network and disk) is going through a single USB 2.0 channel, so it's limited to 480 Mbps. IMHO I/O performance is probably the biggest limitation of the Pi. In your position I'd look into tiny PCs, for example one of the newer Asus EeeBoxs.

  • I'm using a RPi2 with two dvb-t and one dvb-s2 tuners, connected to my lan through a Wi-Fi router acting as a repeater, and I can watch 3 simultaneous 1080p streams (one on the Rpi2 and the other two on S905 boxes) without any trouble.

  • ^ Sounds like an interesting set up and the sort of thing I might end up building myself if I can get around some niggles - picture quality and power consumption.

    As above, one point about this tuner is I'm sceptical about the HD quality of it (and in general) now I've watched/recorded more with it.

    If I watch a HD channel (e.g. BBC1 HD), I'm not entirely convinced there is a noticeable quality improvement over the BBC1 SD. If I look at the stream info for the channel (via Kodi), for the SD channel the resolution will be 576 and, for the HD channel, it reports 1080 but I don't think the picture is as sharp as HD programmes I have downloaded using get_iplayer nor can I see a significant difference between SD and HD.

    I think there are two "DVB-T2" Muxes listed in TVheadend (one for the COM group and the other for the BBC MUX) so I guess it should be HD but...

    For some SD channels, the picture is also a little blurred and the colour vibrancy isn't as good as for my TV or Topfield tuners.

    Is this just some setting somewhere, a limitation of the Xbox tuner or...my imagination?! O, is there a way of checking for an HD stream for sure?

  • I didn't notice any quality differences between my internal DVB-T2 capable tv card and the xbox one. From my understanding there shouldn't be any differences since the cards basically pass on the broadcasted transport streams and all the processing/decoding happens by the codecs that Kodi/LibreELEC are providing. So there shouldn't be any noticeable differences between tuners at all.

    Edited once, last by backslash (September 11, 2017 at 11:00 AM).

  • I've created this entry for the scan table for file:

    \dtv-scan-tables-tvheadend\dvb-t\uk-SuttonColdfield

    New entry:

    [C35 COM8 HD]

    DELIVERY_SYSTEM = DVBT2

    FREQUENCY = 586000000

    BANDWIDTH_HZ = 8000000

    CODE_RATE_HP = 2/3

    CODE_RATE_LP = NONE

    MODULATION = QAM/256

    TRANSMISSION_MODE = 32K

    GUARD_INTERVAL = 1/128

    HIERARCHY = NONE

    STREAM_ID = 0

    INVERSION = AUTO

    Can someone check this/add it into the file in Github ? I've not got an account.

  • I've been told that BBC HD channels are supposed to have a HD logo in the corner of the screen which I'm not getting so something is messed up somewhere and what tvheadend thinks is mapped as HD channels are not.

    Can anyone confirm or deny this logo being present?

  • I just looked, BBC1 HD, BBC2 HD, BBC News, and ITV HD don't have a logo. 4 HD and 5 HD do. Though I'm sure I remember seeing the HD logo on BBC1 before.

    Don't forget that the HD channels don't always broadcast HD content. I just flicked between BBC1 HD and BBC1 SD and couldn't see much difference. I read somewhere that they vary the bandwidth for each channel, depending on what is being broadcast.
    There are only about 15 HD channels, around half of the channels on the DVB-T2 muxes are SD.

    That's interesting dcervi, maybe I'm being overly critical of the PI. Once I get a PSU for my Pi hub I'm going to try it with multiple tuners. I have 3 USB ones, and a dual tuner PCI card scattered between various machines, it would make sense to get several of them in one place.

  • The BBC retired the BBC One HD logo a very long time ago.

    BBC One HD on DTT and DSat is 1080/50i (aka 1080i25). However the encoders on DVB-T2 use a dyamic i25/p25 switch to improve picture quality for a given bitrate (as DTT runs at a lower rate) You need to make sure that you are deinterlacing properly (MMAL - Advanced enabled) to get decent quality, and also need to ensure you're video output is 50Hz not 59.94/60Hz. (Either fix it at 50p or enable 'Adjust Refresh Rate on Start/Stop' in Player settings.

    The iPlayer streams (apart from on Sky which uses 1080i downloads) top out at 720/25p or 720/50p - and are lower resolution (and have a lot more compression artefacts on busy stuff, particularly native 50i/i25 stuff)

  • Hi, did anyone get the Odroid C2 build of Libreelec to work with the Xbox DVB tuners? I manage to get my RPi3 working with it but my Odroid C2 never seems to pick it up. Both are on the latest 8.20, using TvH 4.2 server through kodi add-ons.

  • Hi, did anyone get the Odroid C2 build of Libreelec to work with the Xbox DVB tuners? I manage to get my RPi3 working with it but my Odroid C2 never seems to pick it up. Both are on the latest 8.20, using TvH 4.2 server through kodi add-ons.

    Same experience with a Wetek Play 2 - just doesn't get picked up. LE 8.2.1. I am going to try on RPi2 install tomorrow.

  • Hello all!

    Thanks to all the devs for Libreelec! I am loving it! : )

    It has allowed me to resurrect (and upgrade) a broken android tv box!

    Can anyone give advice to get the xboxone adapter to work for me?

    I have version 8.2.3.1

    Architecture: S905.arm

    I installed

    LibreELEC-S905.arm-8.2-8.2.3.1.img.gz

    onto a A95X box

    -Amalogic Quad core Cortex A53, Quad-core Mali-450 GPU, Ram 2GB, ROM 16GB, 4K

    I have installed:

    PVR client Tvheadend HTSP Client

    Tvheadend Server 4.2

    Tvheadend Setup for Kodi

    I have the box set to my region.

    I have put in the TVheadend configuration the IP address of the Libreelec box.

    I have the Tvheadend Username and Tvheadend Password empty - do I need to add one here??

    In the adapters config I have two(?) devices:

    Panasonic MN88472#0: DVB-C #0

    Panasonic MN88472#0: DVB-T #0

    -there is no xboxone adapter? Has it mistaken the adapter or are the above just generic identifiers?

    -I enabled both Panasonic adapters.

    It says I have 6 muxes - ?

    When I scan channels it says:

    New services found: 0

    There are no new services to map to channels.

    I cannot get reception or epg.

    nb Australia

    Any advice for a novice?

    Thanks.

    Edited 2 times, last by anarchotaoist: Additional info (February 2, 2019 at 2:31 AM).

  • The Xbox One Tuner has a Panasonic chipset - which is why it is reported as a Panasonic device. Are the mux frequencies in your muxes list the correct frequencies for your area, and are the DVB-T parameters correct?

    I have a couple of them in the UK - and they aren't the most sensitive of tuners and there seems to be a driver bug that means a popular UK frequency doesn't tune at all well.