50 replies to this topic

[myrantz]

ajm, on 18 September 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

What software would you run for DVB tuners? I didnt think XBMC supports TV or am I behind the times?

Drivers will probably be supported by the kernel....

Software side, for raspbmc, here's some info: linky

[renura]

ajm, on 18 September 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

What software would you run for DVB tuners? I didnt think XBMC supports TV or am I behind the times?

I am not sure of the details, the furthest I got when looking at this was here:
http://www.raspbmc.c...install-codecs/

In general though, I am pretty sure there are already versions of XBMC (windows/Linux/Android) with TV Viewing/scheduling support using plugins and TV server arrangements (eg Media Portal, etc).

Cheers

Renura

[DrP]

I'm not even sure of the point of it given a Wintel PVR PC that draws less than 20 watts (including the HDD) can be built using off the shelf components.

[myrantz]

DrP, on 18 September 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

I'm not even sure of the point of it given a Wintel PVR PC that draws less than 20 watts (including the HDD) can be built using off the shelf components.

The upside with the Pi one can get something up and running very quickly...

Wintel machines will involve a fair bit more tickering.

[DrP]

If you don't want Windows, linux is more than at home on the very same low dissipation hardware.

[ajm]

I think it's the $38 bit.

[myrantz]

DrP, on 18 September 2012 - 06:40 PM, said:

If you don't want Windows, linux is more than at home on the very same low dissipation hardware.

But it's not $35..

ajm, on 18 September 2012 - 06:55 PM, said:

I think it's the $38 bit.

+1...

May probably need to pay a bit more than that to get the MPEG2 hw decoder license... Don't really have time to test that part yet...

And on the good news front: 50% more performance for free

Quote

We’ve been doing a lot of work to understand the impact of voltage and temperature on lifetime, and are now able to offer a “turbo mode”, which dynamically enables overclock and overvolt under the control of a cpufreq driver, without affecting your warranty.

TBH the time I spent is on underclocking and undervolting, not the other way round. But for video playback the 50% increase in performance will be a good thing.

Just need to google and find out how to get HD audio to work..

[DrP]

myrantz, on 20 September 2012 - 10:25 AM, said:

But it's not $35..

But it does things the Pi couldn't do in a blue fit...

[myrantz]

DrP, on 20 September 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

But it does things the Pi couldn't do in a blue fit...

True, that's why I have so many PCs and virtual machines at home.. The Pi is quite limited in applications, but it can do video/audio playback, and should work better as a carputer (or a mame machine)...

One idea to try is to have 1 PC doing all the recording and serving, and then various small Pis as playback devices... The Pi can be powered from the TV's USB port, and just double taped to the back...

[DrP]

By a media player.  A WDTV Live is $100, a finished product with a slick UI and... it comes complete with a nice plastic box for the PCB too.

[myrantz]

DrP, on 20 September 2012 - 12:45 PM, said:

By a media player.  A WDTV Live is $100, a finished product with a slick UI and... it comes complete with a nice plastic box for the PCB too.

Yeah.. While still plug and play, if one don't already have the MCE remote, USB keyboard, USB charger and SD card, the costs will ending up costing more than a WDTV live...

The Pi will not suit everybody, but having saying that, somewhat disappointed only 2 pple so far has purchased one though ...

[ajm]

DrP, on 20 September 2012 - 12:16 PM, said:

But it does things the Pi couldn't do in a blue fit...

So does a jet ski.  But not for $35.

And by the same token the Pi should be able to do things the WD Live can't do.  Also, not for $35.

Obviously it's not an option for everyone, at the moment I really CBF messing around with another PC, but it's an option nonetheless.

Edited by ajm, 20 September 2012 - 02:49 PM.

[myrantz]

ajm, on 20 September 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

And by the same token the Pi should be able to do things the WD Live can't do.  Also, not for $35.

And one of the most glaring omissions is HDCP support.. At least with Raspbmc HDCP (still using RC4 as RC5 is delayed) is disabled according to my DVDO edge...

At least now I know why HD audio don't work !. Hopefully there will be a license key available to enable HDCP soon.

Also updated Raspian to the latest version (better USB and etc) and still couldn't get 24/96 or better to play.. Unsure at this stage if this is a issue with the Pi or my USB audio card... 16/44.1 works just fine.

So as a SD player, this is pretty good and plug & play.. As a HD player, it wouldn't work without tinkering..

[myrantz]

Raspbmc RC5 is out! More info

[DrP]

Question:  have you got your player working properly yet?

[myrantz]

DrP, on 02 October 2012 - 04:30 PM, said:

Question:  have you got your player working properly yet?

ATM using it as a MPD streamer (for 16/44.1 FLACs) and SD video...So yeah, it's working but I only got it to work with SD material at this stage.

There's a youtube video of a guy playing back FullHD h.264 material but that never worked for me .

[DrP]

... so that'd be half working.

[myrantz]

DrP, on 02 October 2012 - 07:20 PM, said:

... so that'd be half working.

Not really for me as I don't have a lot of HD content...   Have to be patient as folks discover what this old broadcom chip can do, the HD restriction IMO is more DRM than hardware limitation (as mentioned I don't have a lot of HD material to verify either way).

[drubie]

ajm, on 18 September 2012 - 01:22 PM, said:

What software would you run for DVB tuners? I didnt think XBMC supports TV or am I behind the times?

Couple of choices:  VDR will do it (not as nice as xbmc but useable for recording purposes).  When I was using the even more pathetic NSLU2 as a live TV recording device I just used a shell script and a program called "dvbstream".  It had no issues putting HD telecasts onto an ext3 file system.  It struggled mightily on NTFS but that was too be expected.

As a replacement for the NSLU2 I was looking at these devices until I realised that a custom rom in a WDTV Live could do everything I wanted anyway, I have not tried DVB sticks on it mostly because we have two or three other devices now that can record TV, so the ghetto PVR solution became quickly redundant.

[halsboss]

renura, on 17 September 2012 - 09:16 PM, said:

I have been told that a customer of ours has it working with one of our TinyTwin dual USB tuners, so I will try that as some stage when I got the time. One of the things we want to do is try and use it as a little client for some streaming applications and devices we are working on:)

Hi Renura.

I have ordered a raspberry pi and am keen to get it working as a recorder with a TinyTwin ... with something that works like WebScheduler and IceTV EPG hopefully.  I could then FTP the .ts recordings from the recorder to other machines as required ($35 ea!)

Do you (or anyone else) have links describing how to get this working (eg with RaspBMC) ?

edit:
I saw these (ps TVHEADEND is now included in RASPBMC out of the box since the posts were created)
http://forum.stmlabs...ad.php?tid=2912

http://forum.stmlabs...ad.php?tid=2648
where the tinyusb2 drivers for Pi are downloaded.  
Any ideas on what the drivers for the various versions of TinyTwins are called and where to download them ?

Edited by halsboss, 16 January 2013 - 09:35 AM.

[myrantz]

halsboss, on 15 January 2013 - 07:23 PM, said:

Any ideas on what the drivers for the various versions of TinyTwins are called and where to download them ?

That looks cool.. There should only be one TinyTwin USB2 driver (can't remember what it's called now).. But if you follow the instruction in that first post, it should work..

The driver is included as part of the linux kernel. So you need to get the kernel with the TinyUSB2 module compiled (details should be in that thread).

As the first post said, you most likely need to get the MPEG-2 license key to get it to work well as a PVR. I didn't use my Pi for PVR duties so not sure if the software decoding will work with all channels (software may not be fast enough for "HD" content?)...

[halsboss]

Thanks.   OK, I'll purchase both Raspberry Pi codec license keys, they're so dirt cheap I may as well.

I'm new to linux, so I don't know whether that means the USB Tuner devices mentioned by linuxTV http://linuxtv.org/w...B-T_USB_Devices have drivers "in" the raspbmc kernel already (given the header text in the post says "TVHEADEND IS NOW INCLUDED IN RASPBMC OUT OF THE BOX, AS SUCH MUCH OF THIS TUTORIAL IS OBSOLETE") ... text in the raspbmc forum posts above imply that the drivers may already be included now.

When the Pi arrives, with any luck it will be plug and play
Although I may need to disable inbuilt IR for the Tiny's (I'd like to use a TinyTwin since it has 2 tuners) so as to use the HP-MCE remote/IR I bought on ebay to operate raspbmc, along the lines

http://forum.stmlabs.com/showthread.php?tid=2912
8. Disable infrared on TinyUSB2 - this prevents confliting signals with the MCE IR receiver as the TinyUSB also has a receiver inbuilt.
Code:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/dvbt.conf

Add the line:
Code:
options dvb-usb disable_rc_polling=1

I'd be happy enough for it to do just time-shifting recording/playback ...

I guess I have more reading to do before it arrives

Edited by halsboss, 16 January 2013 - 03:42 PM.

[myrantz]

halsboss, on 16 January 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

Thanks.   OK, I'll purchase both Raspberry Pi codec license keys, they're so dirt cheap I may as well.

For PVR you don't need the VC-1.. Can save a few bucks

halsboss, on 16 January 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

I'm new to linux, so I don't know whether that means the USB Tuner devices mentioned by linuxTV http://linuxtv.org/w...B-T_USB_Devices have drivers "in" the raspbmc kernel already (given the header text in the post says "TVHEADEND IS NOW INCLUDED IN RASPBMC OUT OF THE BOX, AS SUCH MUCH OF THIS TUTORIAL IS OBSOLETE") ... text in the raspbmc forum posts above imply that the drivers may already be included now.

The TinyUSB driver should already be in there (based on that post you linked)..  But the only way to confirm is to try to be sure

tvheadend is a application (like xbmc - i.e. software), the kernel is more the operating system (boots up the Pi, drivers etc). The two are separate.

halsboss, on 16 January 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

When the Pi arrives, with any luck it will be plug and play

Raspbmc took out all the fun .. For the most part it should just work...

halsboss, on 16 January 2013 - 03:41 PM, said:

I guess I have more reading to do before it arrives

This looks interesting.. But not sure how good it'd be TBH, for one you'd prob need USB hub, all up it sort of destroys the beautiful small form factor look:p...

Probably a better idea IMO is to have a PC located somewhere else to record the shows, and then use Pi just as a playback frontend.. nice, sweet & beautiful...

[halsboss]

myrantz, on 16 January 2013 - 04:08 PM, said:

Raspbmc took out all the fun .. For the most part it should just work...

This looks interesting.. But not sure how good it'd be TBH, for one you'd prob need USB hub, all up it sort of destroys the beautiful small form factor look:p...

Probably a better idea IMO is to have a PC located somewhere else to record the shows, and then use Pi just as a playback frontend.. nice, sweet & beautiful...

Fun for a newbie    And I couldn't go past it being $35, although if you don't have extra spare bits the extra $ soon adds up (eg powered USB hub, 2W power supply, class 10 SD cards, TinyTwin tuner, IR+remote, 2TB USB Disk).

I already had a PC with a TinyTwin and WebScheduler (and VideoRedo) and an old WDTVlive which is starting to play up (hence the interest in the Raspberry Pi with XBMC).

What caught my attention, beside the price was right, was a really low power consumption ... I'm told it's beaut compared with a traditional PC... just leave the Pi on all the time, and the latest RaspBMC apparently spins down the external USB disk after 20 mins too.

For the price, if it works as a media recorder/player then it can look like the wicked witch on her broom, and I'd still be happy

[myrantz]

halsboss, on 16 January 2013 - 05:32 PM, said:

What caught my attention, beside the price was right, was a really low power consumption ... I'm told it's beaut compared with a traditional PC... just leave the Pi on all the time, and the latest RaspBMC apparently spins down the external USB disk after 20 mins too.

Imagine using it as a carputer ... But alas too many fun ideas, too little time and handyman skills ...

I think your Pi should be 2x better than mine (more memory), so more flexibility, more options.. Money well spent