I need a new tv server (I think...) are some of you using something else?
How do you use it and is it any good?
I have been using tvheadend on Debian for a few years.
After I moved I switched to IPTV and figured that it would be easy and great just to keep using tvheadend and the solution I already had for DVB-C and just add IPTV to it. While it does work but its far more "clunky" than I was hoping for.
In some ways I guess I'm an "advanced user" then again how hard can it be
I have tried a number of standalone apps and they work pretty well, most of them are lacking some functionality but they all are far simpler than what I'm using. But the reason for using tvheadend is mostly for recording or transcoded streams, I would not be able to view tv at the office if it was not transcoded.
I'm not trying to piss all over tvheadend, I really love it and it have been great over the years but when it comes to IPTV I dont think its really there. Some parts are not tvhedends fault at all, it's just how IPTV are being made by Rapid (and I guess others).
... or I am overthinking things and just make things more complicated than it really is.
Here is what I have and how I use my tvheadend if you are trying to give me advice on what other software to run.
As a front-end I mainly use Kodi. It is fairly simple to config and I have been using it for some years. My clients are Windows and Nvidia ShieldTV. And sometimes my phone running Android and TVHClient app.
Viewing remote from the office using on-the-fly LiveTV transcoding, the bandwidth at the office is not that great. This is done using a stream-profile in tvheadend that is configured in Kodi on my laptop.
I watch a few NHL Hockey games a week. These are for me mostly broadcast in the middle of the night (I am in Europe) so a good EPG along with a good PVR is crucial. When the recording is completed i copy the recording to a share and leave a copy on tvheadend for one day.
If I'm at the office I can view a transcoded copy of the recording trough Plex or Emby and if I am at home I can view the original recording in full quality.
Wow that all sounds really great, so what is the problem?
If I compare the overall experience and the effort of keeping this solution running it's lacking.
There are often glitches in the broadcast, picture freezes and audio continues or the other way round the solution is switching channels and back again, this usually works, but the problem is reoccurring.
EPG gets messed up so recording does not happens or something else is recorded.
Since I have to make changes to the m3u file (the ffmpeg pipe thing that must be done) I manually must download the playlist, edit it before updates happens.
Sometimes updates to the file gets really screwed by tvheadend, so that it messes up that things are added or removed and either imports channels multiple times or removes channels that have not been modified at all, or changes that have been made to the file are not read.
EPG autodetect is far from great, more than not it selects epg data from other channels... so I manually end up mapping what EPG to what channel and that complicates stuff even more...
How do you use it and is it any good?
I have been using tvheadend on Debian for a few years.
After I moved I switched to IPTV and figured that it would be easy and great just to keep using tvheadend and the solution I already had for DVB-C and just add IPTV to it. While it does work but its far more "clunky" than I was hoping for.
In some ways I guess I'm an "advanced user" then again how hard can it be
I have tried a number of standalone apps and they work pretty well, most of them are lacking some functionality but they all are far simpler than what I'm using. But the reason for using tvheadend is mostly for recording or transcoded streams, I would not be able to view tv at the office if it was not transcoded.
I'm not trying to piss all over tvheadend, I really love it and it have been great over the years but when it comes to IPTV I dont think its really there. Some parts are not tvhedends fault at all, it's just how IPTV are being made by Rapid (and I guess others).
... or I am overthinking things and just make things more complicated than it really is.
Here is what I have and how I use my tvheadend if you are trying to give me advice on what other software to run.
As a front-end I mainly use Kodi. It is fairly simple to config and I have been using it for some years. My clients are Windows and Nvidia ShieldTV. And sometimes my phone running Android and TVHClient app.
Viewing remote from the office using on-the-fly LiveTV transcoding, the bandwidth at the office is not that great. This is done using a stream-profile in tvheadend that is configured in Kodi on my laptop.
I watch a few NHL Hockey games a week. These are for me mostly broadcast in the middle of the night (I am in Europe) so a good EPG along with a good PVR is crucial. When the recording is completed i copy the recording to a share and leave a copy on tvheadend for one day.
If I'm at the office I can view a transcoded copy of the recording trough Plex or Emby and if I am at home I can view the original recording in full quality.
Wow that all sounds really great, so what is the problem?
If I compare the overall experience and the effort of keeping this solution running it's lacking.
There are often glitches in the broadcast, picture freezes and audio continues or the other way round the solution is switching channels and back again, this usually works, but the problem is reoccurring.
EPG gets messed up so recording does not happens or something else is recorded.
Since I have to make changes to the m3u file (the ffmpeg pipe thing that must be done) I manually must download the playlist, edit it before updates happens.
Sometimes updates to the file gets really screwed by tvheadend, so that it messes up that things are added or removed and either imports channels multiple times or removes channels that have not been modified at all, or changes that have been made to the file are not read.
EPG autodetect is far from great, more than not it selects epg data from other channels... so I manually end up mapping what EPG to what channel and that complicates stuff even more...
