HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

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PhilB
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HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

I currently have a big AMD box with Hauppauge PCI tuners as a combined FE/BE and am looking for my next generation of Mythtv hardware. I think I've settled on an Intel NUC with SSD. I'll add a big hard disk which will probably be shingle and migrate 'mature' recordings to it. With just the SSD and a selection of data imported from my 'live' system it seems to behave well with xbuntu 20.04 and Myth 31. The newer Intel graphics drivers look super - a great improvement!

For tuners I'm considering HDHomeRun CONNECT QUATRO HDHR5-4DT(UK). I want both DVB-T and DVB-T2 and to use off-air EIT scheduling data from Crystal Palace.

Is anyone in UK using this tuner and would you recommend it? Any issues?

Phil
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kmdewaal
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by kmdewaal »

I have the 2-channel version of that box and it works perfect with the Dutch DVB-T2 signal. I think the four channel version is a perfect choice for the UK. About the quality of the EIT I do not have an opinion but Schedules Direct is always an option.
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

Many thanks. I will go for it!
Phil.
luc5588
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by luc5588 »

I'd be interested to know if the UK version can record multiple channels on the same mux without it using a second physical tuner. I've read a number of conflicting reports. So, perhaps try and record BBC1HD/BBC2HD and three other channels to make five simultaneous recordings and report the findings. Though, with four tuners perhaps it's not so much of an issue.

MythTV has internal rules to tidy up some of the EIT irregularities such as removing "[S]" for subtitles, etc. SchedulesDirect gives you good consistent data for the channels it supports but it can be tricky to set up. It becomes especially annoying since you often need a mix of EIT and SD if you want to watch/record the channels for which SD has no guide such as some of the old movie stations, music stations, etc.
luc5588
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by luc5588 »

Re: ssd. I wouldn't necessarily bother with a complicated system of recording and migrating and would just record on the big usb drive. They're easily capable of the throughput. Unless you're worried about the noise of the second bigger drive spinning in a living room? My experience with usb drives though are that the new ones don't last as long as an IronWolf and the usb gets read errors after a few years. Perhaps I've just been unlucky. I'd probably put an IronWolf in a usb case and know it would just last (rated for 180TB/yr).
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

Your comments on disks are very interesting and have me doing an about turn! I presume you mention Ironwolf because that is one of the few that the literature says is cmr? Seagate says it is designed for NAS use - is the different error handling an issue though?
WD red plus also seems to be cmr.

I will be checking out the hd homerun fairly soon and will report back.
Phil
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

Hi luc5588,
I have tried the HDHomerun. It does indeed do multirec - I've just tried 5 SD recordings and 2 radio - all from the BBC multiplex. All used the first tuner which had multirec set at 10 (yes - a bit over the top!). Also a further 2 at the same time on the ITV multiplex.
Setup steps:
Connect HDHomerun to network; fix IP address in DHCP server, tried with Windows 10 - working ok.
Ran Mythbuntu Control Panel - > roles > additional software - installed both HDhomerun items.
Fired up backend setup - Remove existing channels, sources, devices (inherited from database backup copied from 'live' system)
Setup HDhomeruns - set up 3 tuners each with 10 simultaneous.
This was very useful:
viewtopic.php?t=3314 See MikeB2013 27 Sep 2019

One subtlety - if you record an SD program it also marks it in the HD channel as being recorded and vice-versa. However, it only records the channel you selected. Clever I think.
I also want to figure out whether I could keep one tuner back for use other than with Mythtv or whether this would introduce clashes.

EIT is also working fine - I have always used this rather than Schedules Direct. I do not seem to get the problem you have of EIT info missing from the less popular channels - which ones are you missing?

The other good news is that HD is displaying great with Intel graphics.

The Ironwolf 4TB and caddy arrived today but have some loft work to do first - HDHomerun and 'all those wires' will not be allowed to stay in the kitchen!

Phil
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Steve Goodey
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by Steve Goodey »

One subtlety - if you record an SD program it also marks it in the HD channel as being recorded and vice-versa. However, it only records the channel you selected. Clever I think.
Interesting, I thought this was a bug, but you think it's by design?

Steve,
Don't forget the Wiki.
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

Interesting question. My thought was that there must be some code to look for that condition. Maybe the thinking is that you would never want to record both hd and sd.
We always used to say that one mans bug is another man's feature!
Phil
luc5588
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by luc5588 »

Thanks for the tests on the HDHomerun. Very pleased to know it handles muxes correctly.

For EIT, what I meant was that with SchedulesDirect, the last time I used it, it didn't have guide for many of the less popular channels; perhaps Talking Pictures, Smithsonian, etc. Though, it of course has BBC/ITV, etc. But, certainly once you mix in a satellite there were a lot of channels without any guide such as most news channels.

For EIT SD/HD, what tends to happen is they have the same "program id" and "authority." So the database records the details of what you record and your dup checker will then never record it again. But, if you mix in a satellite, then it often become fun since one authority is "five.com" on aerial and "five.tv" on satellite (or the other way around). So then MythTV thinks they are two different programmes (since different combined IDs), so you then have to use "dup by title", which then can't work with remakes that have the same title...

For IronWolf, I like them because I've had a number of drives and the IronWolfs seem to last without problems; perhaps because they are NAS they can handle quite high temperatures and vibration, etc. I run btrfs filesystem so "scrub" the disks once a month (which reads all the data to check it's still ok and not got read problems), so the disks get perhaps 12 hours of sustained peak rate reads, and the IronWolf has never had problems, whereas my USB Seagate/WD don't like that workload; and even some other internal disks started having a couple of errors after a few years.
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

Multirec undoubtedly works with my HDHomerun quattro DVBT/T2 device but I cannot understand how.

My probably over-simplistic view was that a tuner (eg PCI or USB) would tune a multiplex and pass the whole of that multiplex stream to the backend.
The backend will then filter out the channels it requires from that multiplex stream.

Now an SD recording here in the UK will typically be 2GByte/hr or 4.44Mbit/sec. If the multiplex has (say) a dozen channels then a tuner will need to pass 53Mbit/sec to the backend. Since the device has four tuners that will exceed the 100Mbit/sec ethernet link.

Is the filtering still done by the backend or does the HDHomerun do it and just pass the required channels to the backend?

Phil
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kmdewaal
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by kmdewaal »

PID filtering is done by the HDHomeRun. For multirec of two channels, the total set of PIDs of both channels is sent to the HDHomeRun.
Your mathematic is, as I see it, correct; it should be possible to schedule so many recordings in parallel that the 100Mbit/s is exceeded. If that is a consideration for you then you could add a second HDHomeRun and create only two capture cards on each HDHomeRun. Note that for DVB-T/T2 there is a slightly cheaper version of the HDHomeRun that does have only two tuners instead of four.
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

Thanks for the explanation. 100Mbit/sec will be good for several recordings!
Phil
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by jksj »

Bare in mind that each UK multiplexer is limited to 40Mbits/second, so adding the bit rates for each channel gives an excessive figure.
Each mux dynamically adjusts the bitrate for each channel to fit in with the limit.
I can't imagine you need more than a dual to record anything you want, particularly as the HD channels are only broadcast on 2 muxes.
Mythbackend is very efficient at taking lots of channels from the same mux.
I just tested receiving 5 HD chanels from one Mux and a single channel on another. No data loss perfect recordings using a Hauppauge Dual HD USB stick. Connected to a low end NUC.
PhilB
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Re: HD Homerun DVBT/T2 in UK

Post by PhilB »

I understood kmdewaal to say that the hdhomerun filters out the required programs from the multiplexes and sends only them over the network to the backend.
Phil
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