[n00b?] Suggest a server setup for live TV.

Do-more

Hi folks, I would really appreciate some help in trying to put together a system to stream Live TV to various points around the house.

I currently have Cat 6 cable installed to the various points that I want TV (2 or more cables at each point)

All cables go back to a central point under the stairs where I also have cables from the terrestrial TV antenna and provision for Satellite but no dish currently installed.

I currently just have TV in the living room which is connected to the antenna and have a mix of free to air and subscription channels with a CAM in the TV for the viewing card.

I want to now add live TV to two more rooms.

I can get a second viewing card from our TV provider on an offer at the moment.

At present I don't stream anything from the internet as we currently only have mobile broadband in the house but in the future when we get a landline installed I would like to have Netflix and possibly other TV streams with a VPN or Smart DNS.

In the living room I have a Pioneer surround sound Amp under the TV. At other points it will only be the TV.

I already have an Arctic fanless PC (Atom) with Win8 and XBMC on it but I have never used that for Live TV.

I also have a NAS lying idle which I would like to use to record live TV.

So I would appreciate suggestions on what I should purchase now (presumable as a server under the stairs) to distribute the digital terrestrial TV to the existing TVs (presumably) via the Arctic and A.N.Other (NUC? Roku?) as a client.

I would like the setup to be easy to upgrade in the future if I install a dish and to stream off the net.

Also if I don't get the second viewing card I assume that I would still be able to view subscription channels on one TV and either the same channel or free to air channels on the other TV?

Suggestions for both hardware and software to use would be great please!

As it is going to be on most of the time I would like the server to be low power consumption. Also from what I understand I shouldn't buy a NUC until the new N2830 processor version is released.

Backside

You could build a PC for under the stairs which includes a TV card and a few HDD's for recording, so all your content would be in a centralised place and stream live tv/ recordings to any of the room through the cat 6 network. The pc doesnt need to be overly powerfull for that function and most people use media portal or mythtv and the like.
On the recieving end you would need something that can handle the tv streams and if HD is involved the client will need to be powerful enough to handle. AMD have APU's now that would be a good purchase from what I read, save you having to purchase an additional graphics card.
XBMC would be good software to run on the recieving end.

Johnboy1951

I cannot quite grasp exactly what you have but will outline what I have done which might give you some ideas .....

I built a HTPC with dual SAT and dual DTT cards.
At present it sits under the main TV, but I will be moving the cards to a central server whenever I get the urge.

From there each room has a Cat5e cable to the TV location.

At the TV I have a R-Pi ..... the best available at the time.

With two feeds off the Sat dish, into the dual Sat card, I get two independent Sat channels to the first two TVs to grab the tuners.
The dual DTT card ensures that all TVs can tune into all Saorview channels independently --- because there are only two muxes so all channels are available.
If a third mux launches then I would need a third DTT tuner, or else hit some limitations on what is available to multiple TVs.

I used TBS tuners (PCI-e card) because my initial preference for Blackgold did not work out well ........ drivers were not available for Linux which severely limited my choices of OS when doing the set up.

I have settled for Openelec on both the client (Pi) and the server with the TVheadend backend on the server.

As my set up is FTA only I have no CAMs ...... but I saw there were options for such in some of the tuner cards.

In essence the system is working without any specific/branded receiver device.
The server/htpc does all the recording for all TV points, and makes the recordings available to all. The same applies to videos ..... all are available to all TVs from the server.

All sources are also available to any device (laptop etc) that connects to the wireless point of the router.

I can control the system from Pad or Phone using free apps.

When I move the tuner cards to the server box I will free up the HTPC box, and probably replace it with a R-Pi also.

So when it is all done I should have a server with tuner cards, connected to a 1Gig router, and the rooms connected to that router.
All TV points will then have a R-Pi or other client device to display LiveTV and stored video files on each TV.

At present only 3 TVs are connected like this but I hope later this year to finish the rest of the rooms (even though they might not have a TV presently).

I have no problems with the feeds provided I use a wired connection. Using wireless I can sometimes get drop-outs and thus stuttering.

Because of the plethora of plugins for XBMC I have no real need to go searching for videos to download. There are lots available

Do-more

Thanks for the replies.

Can anyone give me specific recommendations on what hardware to purchase for the server?

I see this Celeron motherboard on Amazon for a very reasonable price, I presume it would make a good basis for a client as an alternative to a NUC. But presumably not the best choice for the server?

I'm in Sweden and get my terrestrial feed from a company called Boxer I'm not sure how many muxes they use, it might be 3 but I am not sure if my understanding is correct.

Johnboy1951

Do-more wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

Can anyone give me specific recommendations on what hardware to purchase for the server?

I see this Celeron motherboard on Amazon for a very reasonable price, I presume it would make a good basis for a client as an alternative to a NUC. But presumably not the best choice for the server?

I'm in Sweden and get my terrestrial feed from a company called Boxer I'm not sure how many muxes they use, it might be 3 but I am not sure if my understanding is correct.

From your link

channels from Boxer broadcast on four national transmitter networks, of which three (MUX2, MUX3 and MUX4) can be received by 98 percent of the population using a regular antenna.

A Raspberry Pi is good enough for a client device when running such as Openelec with XBMC to play back HD Live TV or video.

For the server you would need sufficient PCI-e slots to accommodate the number of tuner cards you wish to use. I don't see the point in getting PCI cards these days.

Also there is no need for HDMI output from the server.

Neither does it have to be very powerful ....... but definitely dual core would help I believe.

Another consideration is whether you might wish to do video transcoding on the server. I have never had need of transcoding but I see others posting that they require this function.
If so, a dual core with 4 threads would be advisable.

Before deciding on the hardware you need to be very sure what you require of it.
Also you should have some ideas about what operating system you will choose ...... openelec will operate very well with 1GB ram, whereas if you wish to use Windows you will need multiples of that.

Choices, choices, choices ......

Backside

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

A Raspberry Pi is good enough for a client device when running such as Openelec with XBMC to play back HD Live TV or video.

Ive always wondered about these! I was however put off with the lack of mpeg2 support and other limitations, have you streamed dvb-s2 or dvb-t to this device personally with the R-PI ? Would love to know how they perform

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

For the server you would need sufficient PCI-e slots to accommodate the number of tuner cards you wish to use. I don't see the point in getting PCI cards these days.

Totally agree with this, one is just never enough

Do-more

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Before deciding on the hardware you need to be very sure what you require of it.

That is the question!

We have just moved into a new built house and when I was wiring it I had some particular things in mind.

We have a service here called Magine which delivers a package of 30 TV channels for about €12 a month over the internet. I had planned to have this available to the various TV's in the house.

But then the telephone company wanted approx. €2,200 to make the 30ft. landline connection between their cable on the roadside and our house and that kinda threw a spanner in the works!

I will probably have to stump up sooner or later as whilst we have a good 4G broadband service the caps are ridiculously small for streaming TV.

But for the moment I want to adopt Plan B so that we can have more than one TV in the house, I'm fed up of only ever getting to see the Disney channel at this stage!

The biggest problem is that I only installed coax to under the stairs and to the living room.

So I am trying to weigh up the alternatives.

The easiest short term solution would be to have another set top box under the stairs and use baluns to deliver the signal to the TV upstairs.

The question is if I could implement a better solution without having to spend a huge amount more.

Johnboy1951

Backside wrote: »

Ive always wondered about these! I was however put off with the lack of mpeg2 support and other limitations, have you streamed dvb-s2 or dvb-t to this device personally with the R-PI ? Would love to know how they perform

I stream live Sat HD TV, over Cat5e, to the R-Pi.

I also stream Sat live SD TV, over Cat5e to the R-Pi.

Both Sat streams use mpeg2, for which I bought a licence for the Pi, costing a little over €2 or such (too small to remember). Info on the Pi site.

The licence is tied to one device only.

I also stream Live DTT HD TV (Saorview) over Cat5e to the Pi. These are mpeg4.

Also full HD (1080) videos stream without problems.

The only real complaint about the Pi is that it is not as responsive to the remote (using a FLIRC presently) as devices with more powerful hardware.
As I don't expect it to be, I have no complaint in that regard.

For those that like to turn off devices when not in use, I would suggest a mod to the Pi which would introduce an On/Off switch, and maybe a reboot switch for the odd time it might be needed. These can easily be added to the 'b' model.

BTW .... I was using the Pi this afternoon and it informed me of an update ..... from Openelec 4.0 to Openelec 4.01 ..... I approved it and it updated and rebooted, so now it has Gothem 13.01b or such.
(I have the auto update feature turned off and set to manual because on some equipment I use a community edition of Openelec)

Hope that helps

Backside

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Both Sat streams use mpeg2, for which I bought a licence for the Pi, costing a little over €2 or such (too small to remember). Info on the Pi site.

Just spotted this when I looked through the site, damn you ... I might have to get one