Best DVB-T dongle

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

Hi,

Could you help me to understand which is the best DVB-T dongle I can use with osmc. I live in Italy.
I currently configured PVR client and I see all italian channels but:

  1. they are a little bit late
  2. the quality is not high

I already have antenna and I only want a dongle to connect via USB that allow me to see TV. Then I want to see TV Guide, check for program TV and setup in advance registration of TV program.

I started to read some thread here in the forum. Probably I need TVHeadend as addon, correct?
Any suggestions are welcome.

2

This was discussed just a few days ago, so not really good that you open a new thread

Yes, while tvheadend is not an addon it is a standalone server application.

3

Hi All,
I am back again. I did some progress. I bougth this stick:

that OSMC recognizes immediately. Then I removed PVR Client (previously installed for IPTV) and installed TVHeadend using OSMC Store. Then I did the following:

  1. From browser I connected <my raspberry ip:9981
  2. Configuration->DBB Inputs->TV Adapters
    3 I clicked on Device and I checked the Enabled checkbox.
  3. Then I created a Network going on Configuration → DVB Inputs → Network
  4. I created a new Network giving “Italy” as name. I left Initial Scan selected.
    6 Then Configuration → DVB Inputs → Mutex and I did a Force Scan.
    7 In Configuration → DVB Inputs → Services I found all the Italian TV Channel, here you can remove the one you are not interested.
  5. From System->Add on activate the plugin TvHeadend Client.
  6. Restart Kodi

In the main menu of kodi appear the TV menu. You can select it and choose all the channel detected by the DVB-T device.

My only problem now is the following. Whenever I start KODI I can watch TV only if the USB dongle is connected before the startup. If I plug it after boot and I try to watch TV a message appears saying that there is no device available. How can I solve this issue?

My problem is that I do not have the dongle always connected (at least not for the moment) but sometime I add it later after a boot when I decide to record a TV program.
Thanks in advance for your help.

4

You cannot. This is expected behavior.

5

Ok. Thank you. Another question is:

Should I expect some quality loss when I use my TV cable with USB stick + TVHeadend compared to the standalone TV? I noticed that at the very beginning the quality is not so high but later it become good. Why this happen?

6

It’s due to sudden channel changes / zapping I guess.

We have to wait for an I frame if I remember correctly. Until the first one comes through, the picture quality won’t be as good.

For video efficiency, some frames depend on previous ones (they are deltas). If you change video between full frames, then you experience the picture quality loss until a full frame can be decoded

7

Thank you.

My main goal to have DVB-T + TVHeadend is the possibility to record TV program. Now it seems the only way I can do it is through TV guide. Now my understanding is that when I activate it, the guide is populated asynchronously. Am I correct?

But I only see TV program for today. Is it possible see the whole week? If I want to schedule a TV program for tomorrow, should I use a timer?

Is there a way to remove automatically Ads?

Thanks in advance for your help.

8

These are all questions for TVH forum.

Use XML for quicker EPG downloading, otherwise it gets grabbed from OTA.

9

What’s OTA?