portable FE/BE Combo system

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jfabernathy
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Location: Raleigh, NC
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portable FE/BE Combo system

Post by jfabernathy »

I've had about 4 months of testing portable OTA DVR solutions and thought it might help others with what I found.

I needed a OTA DVR for my RV for our long trip this year. And since the Raspberry 3B+ was the best I could get earlier this year I went with LibreELEC 9.0 software with the TVHeadend plug-in for backend and Kodi for frontend. That worked but was a real pain to setup in each city and only could record 1 or 2 shows at once.

However, now that I have a Raspberry 4 4GB I could build a Combo FE/BE with Mythtv Light. It worked far better and much easier to setup in each city.

The hardware was a 4GB version of the Raspberry Pi 4, a Silicondust HDHomerun Quatro, and a Linksys router with DD_WRT set in client mode. I just needed to boot the RP4 with internet access to get the right time, then internet access was not needed. I slaved the Linksys off my cellphone hotspot for this. For storage I use a SATA SSD connected to the RP4 with a USB3-SATA adapter cable.

I installed the Raspbian Desktop normally but move the image to the SSD for faster response using the technique and script documented here:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3232&start=15#p15884

I built the Mythtv Light plus backend using the technique and script documented here:
viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3232#p15773

Once you have mythtv-setup working at one location all I did was use the Channel Editor and delete all the channel and rescan in the Editor. Just remember to stop and start mythtv-backend using systemctl. Once the backend is backup, it takes 5-10 minutes to get all the OTA program guide. That was good enough and no complication with more elaborate EPG systems like I use at home.

I could easily record 4 shows while watching a previously recorded show.
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jfabernathy
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Re: portable FE/BE Combo system

Post by jfabernathy »

One additional thought. When you configure your HD Homerun Quatro, you need to set at least one of the tuners to do Active EIT scanning. This is part of the Capture Card setup in mythtv-setup.
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jfabernathy
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Posts: 577
Joined: Wed Feb 18, 2015 2:37 pm
Location: Raleigh, NC
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Re: portable FE/BE Combo system

Post by jfabernathy »

I recently add XMLTV via tv_grab_zz_sdjson_sqlite. This brings in 18 days of guide data. Works well on the RP4.
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