Introducing the Raspberry Pi TV HAT

Great job!

Well done guys! I’m looking forward to see the refurbished radio’s and other cool projects!

Fab little hat there, will be great paired with Plex DVR.

Has the Pi Zero been tested to make sure it’s powerful enough to run it plus wifi, as obviously it struggles to do things like camera + wifi at times so would presume its going to be a similar situation here?

Yes – I ran a TV_HAT connected to a Pi0W over wifi without problems as a backend.

How was the frame rate? I’m getting very jittery performance. I’d expect the bitrate to be just a few megabits. Yet viewing via my browser on my MacBookPro seems unreliable.

I downloaded a new desktop Raspbian image, flash it onto a card. Plugged it into a brand new 3B+ with this new hat plugged in, did an update and installed TVHeadend, set it up from a browser on another PC and I’m getting jittery freezes, some channels not playing, and the EPG not populating with information sometimes.

When I’ve got time I’ll have a look at settings and config to see if I can tweak it to improve.

Update:
I had happened to test it on that night when Freeview was affected by the weather (Sat 20th).
I’ve also discovered that the browser pop-out video viewer in the TVHeaderend isn’t so great and since I replaced it with Kodi as the streaming client, it has been perfect, smooth and reliable video.

What a super little hat this is!

Good news! I have a question: how it’s handles HEVC codec (h265)? I’m asking because here in the Czech Republic we have DVB-T2 based on h265 and I know that RPi has no hardware acceleration for it. So, if this board is RF hardware only, than decoding will be CPU based and slllllloooow, right?

If you want to watch it directly on your Pi you need a powerful one.

“If you want to watch TV on the Pi itself, we recommend using a Pi 2, 3, or 3B+, as you may need more processing power for this.”

The use case for this HAT is that you want to stream the raw DVB-T2 signal through WiFi and/or Ethernet and leave the decoding to a client with the proper hardware.

I guess this means buying a new Pi as well as the TV Hat, I currently only have ancient RPis. Is anyone selling new RPis+TV Hat in the UK at a reasonable price?

The it is get Rust compiler working, ensure GTK 3 is > 3.18, get GStreamer > 1.12 and then compile and run Me TV.

https://github.com/Me-TV/Me-TV

We can decode 1080p30 H265 in software (we’ve spent a lot of time accelerating this), the only question is whether tvheadend suitably provides the right formatting information for H265.

Since we’ve been unable to test this in the UK (and we’ve not had feedback from our beta testers to the contrary), I can’t confirm it’ll work, but I’ve no reason to think it wouldn’t.

Thanks

Gordon

Is that h265-1080p30 a 3B+ or also on a Zero?

If zero that would be very impressive!

I assume it’s on a 3B+ but just asking because this HAT is shaped like a zero.

It depends on the format. I believe 1080p50, 720p50 and 540p50 are legal formats for HEVC TV broadcasts in Europe.

The latter two are fine. The first is beyond what we claim to support, but we have had reports of being able to play broadcast German 1080p50 HEVC from a TV-HAT with some overclocking.

Will this support SDR?

I suppose this boils down to the question if CXD2880 can provide raw signals in the same way RTL2832 can.

We first need to find CXD2880 datasheet for inspecting registers and see we we could find a trick to output I/Q. If any has clue (appart inspecting driver sourcecode), let me know. Evariste F5OEO

VHF III, UHF IV and UHF V it’s rather pretty useless.

I’ve had one of these TV-HATs for a few weeks (the RPF folks sent me a couple for early support testing).

The problem with getting it to run as a SDR is that you probably need to be able to poke some values in the Sony CXD2880 tuner’s registers.

Now, if I could find a datasheet for the CXD2880 I might be able to find some values to try driving it as an SDR.

I’m interested in ADS-B. I’ve got a RTL-SDR USB dongle that’s sitting on a Raspberry running very hot running a PiAware server.

As majority of DVB-T2 networks in europe is encoded, how will be decoding possible?

Can this be used with the 7″ display?

The TV HAT doesn’t decode the video, it just provides the video stream and allows you to access that stream through a software interface (tvheadend).

You can then view the stream using a Pi with a 7″ display the same as you would play any video on a Raspberry Pi.

Yes, but can it be the same Pi (e.g. Pi 3B+ with TV Hat and attached to 7″ display)?

Yes, it fits behind the 7″ screen, though the case needs an extra hole for the Antenna to fit through.

What about an digital output Hat like IQ Audio?
Is TV HAT compatible to KODI?

Works with TVHeadend and Kodi.

Not compatible with I2S audio HATs

Great news … is there a chance that there will be a dvb-s2 version as well?

It requires a different chipset and cable/satellite have the complexity of encrypted streams, so not imminently, but it’s something we are thinking about.

Do note that in continental Europe most DVB-T(2) channels are encrypted as well.

E.g. only the 3 public funded channels are unencrypted here in the Netherlands.
If you want to watch the other 30, you need a subscription/CAM/smartcard.

Actually creating a dual-tuner OR putting another 40-pin connector on the hat to allow two tuners be stacked one on top another would be very easy since the Raspberry-PI has TWO SPI interfaces on the hat!

What a pitty this wasn’t taken into account from the beginning!

There are much more free channels on satellite than on DVB-T2. In Germany all private channels are encrypted on DVB-T2 while the SD-versions are not encrypted via DVB-S(2).

Great, could use this to modernise my current network tuner setup. Is there a DVB-S/S2 version in the works to receive Freesat?

The Buy Now dialog doesn’t work on Safari on macOS. Took me 5 open-close-reopen cycles (“the server is probably busy?”) before I tried Firefox which did work.

So single tuner then ?

Yes. Single tuner. But viewing/recording multiple channels from the same mux is supported.

Shame as there is plenty of single tuners on the market and in London you can get 9 multiplexes:

PSB1 BBCA – DTG-3
PSB2 D3+4 – DTG-3
PSB3 BBCB – DTG-6
COM4 SDN – DTG-8
COM5 ArqA – DTG-8
COM6 ArqB – DTG-8
LW – DTG-12
com7 – DTG-6
com8 – DTG-6

DTG-3 64QAM 8K 2/3 24.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
DTG-6 256QAM 32KE 2/3 40.2Mb/s DVB-T2 MPEG4
DTG-8 64QAM 8K 3/4 27.1Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2
DTG-12 QSPK 8K 3/4 8.0Mb/s DVB-T MPEG2

How cool it would be to have a “one” pi TV hat to cover all of the multiplexes and truly universal TV streamer/recorder.

So how many programs could be recorded simultaneously on a single 3B+?

If you need several tuners you can simply use USB DVB-T tuners like here: https://myserver.opentechnologies.pl/en/technical-documentation/

Any plans for a dual DVB-T2 version for those that want to use it to stream to devices?

I wonder if you can stack them.

Nope.

Great job!

BTW, change the link to Wikipedia for TV Licenses from
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

Links changed and guilty parties dealt with accordingly. Thanks

Is it possible to use more than one of these HATs on a single Pi? I use two USB DVB-T2 tuners on a Pi 3B+ and occasionally get USB contention issues.

Cool, any plans for an ATSC version for those of us in the US?

+1 for an ATSC version for US RPi enthusiasts.

+1

+1’ing as well!

+1 for ATSC

+500

This is our first venture into TV hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already so stay tuned…

To speed an ATSC tuner to market, you can talk with the team at Hauppauge to try to incorporate their WinTV-DualHD usb tuner into a HAT compatible device.

For designing your own, you can use the MaxLinear MXL line as they incorporate demod and tuner into one chipset. They are here in California, so let me know if you need a contact.

Market for affordable/easy to use ATSC options is opening in the US market as shown by the launch of Amazon’s Recast.

There is some initial support for using the h264 hardware encoder via OMX/gstreamer in tvheadend https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/13892?page=7&r=22417

Hopefully this official TV HAT will attract some more eyes to further improve MPEG2->h264 transcoding performance!

When are you planning to release TV HAT to other regions such as Africa??‍♂?

Will the Pi4 have a mounting hole for the third spacer? ;)

Can I use this hat to stream free-to-air TV over Internet? Is it legal? Or can I use it to stream TV only over my home network? Maybe I can stream TV over Internet only to friends and family members? Did you investigate this?

A VPN would allow remotely viewing live TV over the internet (there are other solutions). Will need fast upload internet speed.

I hoped that streaming TV over Internet to my friends is allowed thanks to fair use rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use . Does this rule apply also in the UK or other European countries? If so, we will not need VPN and using this hat will be easier.

The Fair Use law is for the United States only and so would not apply to the rest of the world. Also, it would not apply to streaming TV to your friends over the internet. Fair Use is meant for short clips of videos, movies, etc, not the entire thing.

However, if you are streaming over the air broadcasts to a few friends, you’d likely not get fined for that, depending upon the circumstances. But, if you are streaming an American Football or Basketball game to a friend that can’t get it because they are in a blackout area, you’ll certainly be fined if caught.

The rule of thumb for America is that if you can receive the signals yourself, you’re allowed to watch it. If you can’t, then you’re not.

Space shifting (also known as place shifting) television streams and DVR/PVR recordings may be legal or illegal depending on the usage scenario and your country of residence. Legal use case scenarios will also differ in your country of residence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_shifting

Place shifting is legal for many European residents for personal use (as in only sharing to yourself) when traveling abroad for holidays/vacations and temporary work. I also believe that it legal for USA residents who are in the military service abroad.

Any plans to support also DVB-C?

+1 for DVB-C

I also want DVB-C. That would allow placing a single Pi to broadcast cable TV on any tablet or PC in the house, through WiFi. Bye bye cables! :D I’d really like to see this happen. :)

+1 DVB-C

I guess I’ll have to buy one of these and a new RPi (I only have old ones just now) and get Me TV working on it.

Me TV is a Rust/GTK/GStreamer application for watching DVB, known to work with DVB-T and DVB-T2 on Linux laptops.

https://github.com/Me-TV/Me-TV

RaspberryPi 3B and TV Hat purchased and delivered, but I had to travel before I could set it up. So small delay in trying to get Me TV working on this hardware. Cross compiling toolchain being set up though.

Same question as David, any plans for an ATSC version for USA AND Canada?

This is our first venture into TV hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already so stay tuned…

Any advice about using it for HD TV (1080p etc)? From some of the comments above it’s possible to infer that it works, but it would be great to have a sentence or two in the product description to say whether a) you can receive HD at all, b) whether there are any extra HW/SW requirements to stream HD, and c) what hardware/software is required to view HD on the same Raspberry Pi as the TV Hat.

UK Freeview SD (MPEG2) and Freeview HD (H264) broadcast on DVB-T and DVB-T2 work pretty effectively on all flavours of Raspberry Pi (from the Zero to the 3B+) in my experience using USB or networked tuners, and all flavours of Pi handle the MPEG2 and H264 576i and 1080i broadcasts in the UK fine (even with 2x deinterlace) The MPEG2 licence was needed at one point for all Pis, and may still be for the single core models.

The WiFI on the Zero W may be a bit marginal for streaming DVB-T2 H264 1080i stuff to other backends.

The UK has no encrypted DVB-T/T2 broadcasts, so decryption isn’t an issue here in the UK – but it will be for those in other European countries where often only the Public Service Broadcasters are Free-to-Air, with many commercial services pay-TV and encrypted. The discussion of ways of decoding these services outside of using official receivers is always very tricky – irrespective of whether you have a valid subscription card.

Out of interest – what interface is used to carry the MPEG2 transport stream (that is carrying MPEG2 or H264 video and MP2 or AAC audio) over the GPIO ports – is it a serial or a parallel transport stream interface?

The interface between the SONY device and the Raspberry Pi board is SPI.

But … does it support two TV-Hats per Pi or not?

One Hat per Pi with this board design is possible. The deafult 40 way header only uses one SPI interface, you would need to use a second SPI interface for two TV Hats.

I can confirm that a PI 3B+ is certainly capable of recording two HD channels from an external USB DVB-T2 decoder (PCTV 292e) and a couple of SD channels from a DVB-T decoder (Hauppauge WinTV Nova T Stick). That’s recording to the Pi’s own SD card, using TVHeadend. Oh, and with its other hand it logs data from my weather station using CumulusMX.

So in terms of data handling rate, it’s possible. Whether this HAT can handle recording more than one HD channel with suitable software (such as TVHeadend) is another matter, but I can’t see that it would be a problem.

Until I buy a powered USB hub, I’m not risking recording to an external HDD (spinning as opposed to SSD) because I’ve had a few glitches in the past where the disk dismounts itself and then comes back as a different device (eg /dev/sdb1 instead of /dev/sda1), so I have to make sure I copy recordings off the SD card via a SAMBA share to my Windows PC.

Will the co-axial aerial connector provide a 5 V feed for an indoor aerial booster?

There is no option to output +5V from the RF connector on this board.

But it is easy to DIY.

I guess that the MPEG2 codec license will be needed to view the DVB stream, at least on the player.

Codecs only required for Pi Zero and older models

Pi2 & 3 are fast enough to do it in software.

Would be nice to do the same for ATSC. Also maybe add an IR receiver onboard?

Thank You! Just what I needed right now.

Curious about the price quoted:
“Today we are excited to launch a new add-on board for your Raspberry Pi: the Raspberry Pi TV HAT, on sale now at $21.50.” Are these U.S. Dollars or some other currency? The reason for the question, when I follow the link to purchase one I get: “There are no resellers in your region.”

US dollars.

Yes, that’s the US dollar price. The electronic components used in our products are bought and sold in dollars, so we always quote prices in the same currency; it means we can give a stable price that doesn’t fluctuate with exchange rates.

As Roger mentions (near the bottom, so you’re forgiven for not scrolling down that far!), at the moment TV HAT is only available in Europe, but compliance work to offer it in other DVB-T2 regions is already happening.

We did realise that giving a dollar price might seem odd to some readers, given that the HAT isn’t currently available in the US. But because there simply is no specific price to quote in (for example) Euros, there isn’t really any other option unless we were to give a wordy explanation instead of just a price. Pi fans outside the US are long used to translating from the dollar prices of products.

How many TV hats can I stack on say a Raspberry PI 3?
Thinking of making a PVR that can record more than one channel at once with TV Headend?

One.

Have you considered using a Realtek RTL2832 chipset with a Rafael Micro R820T or R820T2 tuner instead? This would have opened many more possibilities than just TV! (See: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/) Can you tell us what made you choose the Sony CXD2880?

I guess the fact that the Sony manufacturing plant in Wales is used to make Pi’s might have influenced the chipset choice.

Secondly a chipset with SPI is needed, the RTL2832 uses USB this isn’t available on the GPIO header

Makes (a lot of) sense, thank you!

Will there be ATSC and ISDB versions as well, or a version that supports all three?

This ^^

OMG OMG OMG….O M G!!!

I want one of these…NOW. But I’m in the US. Please hurry and make these available across the pond!!!!

If you don’t want to wait then simply find ATSC USB tuner and connect it to Raspberry Pi. It works just as well.

I didn’t know that! Would anything that fit that description work with the software that the RPi model would use? If you have any specific recommendations, I’m listening too!

Thanks for the tip!

Just checkout linuxtv.org wiki for lists with compatible (USB) TV-tuners.

https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_device_information

The more compatible a tuner is with V4L-DVB (API on Linux) the better.

Is there any plans to develop a versión that supports ATSC?
We would love to use it in North America.
Thank you!

This is our first venture into TV hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already so stay tuned…

hello Rbpi team,
Do you have any plan for dvb-s2 ?? :)
Thanks

This is our first venture into TV tuning hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already, some of them bring other design challenges that aren’t present with DVB-T2 such as supplying power for the LMB for DVB-S.

I live in a ISDB-T country and hope you make a model for us.
Thank you.

Not available in the US? What’s it selling for?

See the bottom bit of the blog post; at the moment it’s only available in Europe, but compliance work to offer it in other DVB-T2 regions is already happening. The price you actually pay will depend on where you are and where you’re it buying from – it’s the local equivalent of US$21.50 (which of course will vary a bit with the exchange rate), plus local taxes + shipping.

Would love an ATSC version of this!

Is a MythTV server a possibility on a Pi now? I really miss my MythTV setup, it was so much better than any commercial PVR. Awesome work anyway, will have to get one of these!

Hi,
would appreciate a HAT for DAB+.
Yes, SDR-Radio is available with an usb stick. But a HAT would be smarter.

DAB uses OFDM modulation as well as DVB-T(2). Here one multiplex od DAB+ uses 1.536Mhz of spectrum in III band. Bitrate 1.8Mb/s

The chipset has support for 1.7MHz channel width, albeit with DVB-T2. Thus it may be possible that it can lock on the DAB signal and send the data. This feature may be hidden but there, has anyone looked?

It may be more beneficial to make a compact radio receiver with crystal clear sound using Zero W than to make TV.
Car radio comes to my mind…able to decode metadata embedded in the stream…

US over the air TV?

thats cool as long as you can receive digital OTA broadcasts. Most cable companies (Comcast for instance) you have to have a digital tuner box or a device that can accept a digital cable card. most OTA signals are now digital analog is useless in this day and age. just saying. keep up the good work guys. thats a nice looking board so far

Now if only we can get it to work for us in the States. Will that be an option soon?

This is our first venture into TV hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already so stay tuned…

Do you have the pinout or schematic showing which pins of the pi are used by the DVB hat and therefore can’t be used by anything else?

The most important question: Is it rtlsdr compatible?

If not: >> /dev/null

Europe is a good market for this initial product in a new class however your could have gone with a more modern Hybrid DVB-T/T2 and DVB-C tuner chip to also catch users of Cable TV too. Such a hybrid DVB chip would have cost just a little more but I think the value added would have made up for it. Now you have to release a seperate DVB-C HAT if you want to please cable TV users too. Easier to support only one chip/hardware/product.

This is our first venture into TV hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already so stay tuned…

Is there a lot of content that could be viewed with a DVB-C HAT in Europe?

>Is there a lot of content that could be viewed with a DVB-C HAT in Europe?

Depends whether you add a smartcard reader.
UPC/Ziggo (13 million customers) offers 70+ channels, but only the SD channels are unencrypted.

> Is there a lot of content that could be viewed with a DVB-C HAT in Europe?

I think so. In germany cable companies do not encrypt public broadcaster’s channels (ARD, ZDF, etc.) as far as I know. Commercial TV programs may be encrypted or only available unencrypted in standard quality.

Many DVB-T/T2-sticks or cards are able to receive DVB-C too.

+1 for DVB-C

Hi,

This is nice product to make an cheap SAT>IP Server.

See for specifications http://www.satip.info/resources

It is not only for DVB-S(2) as the name would suggest, but the specification also supports DVB-T(2) and DVB-C(2).

There are other SAT>IP Server software solutions other then TvHeadend like SatPI (which I am developing) see GitHub:
https://github.com/Barracuda09/SATPI

It already works with the Pi and connected DVB usb sticks

In regards to requested DVB-C supprt I should add that at least in Sweden we have several unencrypted DVB-C streams/channels on Cable TV broadcast. Those are either channels that the goverment produce or channels suppored via ads.

OMG this is going to unleash a ton of new possibilities and inovating projects! The custom made TV tuner system hobby was a big thing in the 90’s and slowly died away partly because of Internet streaming, but with the huge number of RPI users, that tuner might give it a second birth.
That is so exciting!

Wonderful product!

Only too bad the Flemish public broadcaster (VRT) in Belgium will stop its free-to-air broadcasts in December.

The only other OTA broadcaster has its streams encrypted, requiring a CI+ module, and thus incompatible with DIY solutions like this …

Bye bye DVB-T(2)
Bye bye tvheadend :-(

Anyone know if Plex.tv plans to release a Plex DVR distro for Raspberry Pi?

Plex Media Server with Plex DVR as a tuner server on a Pi would be awesome!

That could be a great solution for those who can’t afford a capable NAS.

Does the device show up as a standard DVB complient device in /dev/dvb ?

Which pins does the device use from the PI’s io connector?
Is it just the SPI or are other GPIO pins involved?

Yes, standard /dev/dvb device. It uses SPI (no other gpio).d

Dear Rasppberry,

I have smartcard from our cable company and I want to add it if I buy this TV Hat.

Are there any recommondations?

Yours Faitfully,

Murat

This board does not have support for smart cards at the moment, it is also only for over the air broadcast television, not cable.

Hope it sells well and we get further iterations. Support for stacked tuners would be the bestest thing ever

Will it be possible to add one to each zero on a cluster hat (4 tuners)?

How does this device work if we have only cable tv and no ‘antenna’ ??

We’ve only released a DVB-T2 version (broadcast Television), a DVB-C (cable Television) version is being considered at the moment. Cable users won’t be able to use this HAT.

Can’t wait for it to be available in the USA!

Why waste effort reinventing an existing wheel.

This board is twice the price of a USB receiver and can only handle a single channel.

To create a TV server your much better off plugging a number of SDR sticks into a USB hub that way you can serve several clients watching and recording at the same time

This is pretty much the cheapest DVB-T2 card you can get.
It is supported directly by raspbian.
It is also a much better technical solution for a Pi user as it uses SPI – leaving the USB interface free for network/disk use.

Great job guys but here i get Tv from a Rj45 cabel ( Fiber Optik ) Will there come a converter cabel or another board in future ??

I live in america. Will this ever be available in america

This is our first venture into TV hardware; DVB-T2 was chosen as it has a large adoption over the world and the tuner from Sony is a really great piece of silicon. We are looking at other technologies (ATSC, DVB-S/C) already so stay tuned…

Any info on if you’ll be supporting DTMB? China TV signal type?

I have been using JokerTV on my travels to Cuba, Iran, Poland, Slovenia, Italy, the Czech Republic, UK and works great and supports all the TV terrestrial systems US, China, Brazil + DVB-S2 (sadly no support for DVB-S2X) and DVB-C2 as well :)

It’s USB and it has Common Interface (CI) for descrambling TV channels :)
https://jokersys.com/joker-tv/

Open Source and Open Hardware :)

On first reading the headline, I thought it was a joke!

So whats the reasoning at PiTowers to put resources into developing and manufacturing broadcast recievers?
How does this fit in and further the foundations goals?
What problem does this address that USB dongles fail too?
Or is this just a lucrative segment to grow the foundations coffers?

Not being cynical, genuine questions.

We’re a charity. Every penny we make from selling hardware goes to further the Foundation’s educational goals (which you can read much more about on this website). We train teachers, reach hundreds of thousands of kids through our Code Clubs and Coder Dojos, provide free teaching and learning resources, and much more. Every time you buy a piece of hardware from us, you’re funding that work. This sort of application is something we’ve seen demand for in the community – so it makes sense to grow the foundation’s coffers through enabling it.

One word of warning (I speak from bitter experience!). I notice that the Pi TV HAT uses a miniature socket and an adaptor to take a standard aerial cable. I have found that the miniature plug on the adaptor tends to pull out of the socket on my PCTV 292e USB adaptor – I have fastened it in securely with sellotape.

Hopefully the socket on the Pi TV HAT is better engineered for a tight fit and doesn’t pull out if the aerial cable strains it. But have some sellotape ready just in case!

Here in Denmark, roughly 30 km. north of Copenhagen, we can watch DVB T2 OTA. Our TV’s tuner can only display unencrypted channels (typically Danish and Swedish public service stations). So, if I wanted to use the new HAT to watch all the commercial OTA channels, I would need a way to connect a smart card reader and perhaps software which could interface with the Pi TV HAT. Is that feasible?

We will need to look at what is involved in adding Smart card functionality, currently it is not supported by this HAT.

I’ve read on a distributor’s site that the TV HAT will not work with the older RPi version 1B. Why? I do see all the SPI pins at the same positions in the pinout diagram.

This board will work with any Pi that has a 40 Way GPIO header. Older models may struggle to stream and view TV on the same Pi, running as a backend should be possible on any version of Pi.

I can see this says it can receive DVB-T2 but I’m not clear on whether that means it can also receive DVB-T (what Australia is using currently). This would solve a terribly-placed antenna point problem in my apartment if it can receive DVB-T!

Yes, I believe you can receive DVB-T, DVB-T2 is an extension of the standard.

Yes – DVB-T2 is backwards compatible with DVB-T. This model is going to get a lot of interest in the UK where DVB-T and DVB-T2 are both used.

The specs for the TV uHAT are :

DVB-T 5,6,7,8 MHz
DVB-T2 1.7, 5,6,7,8 MHz
VHF Band III and UHF Bands IV and V

AIUI this covers all current DVB-T and T2 broadcast standards on-the-air around the world.

One question – does the TV uHAT use PID filtering to only send PIDs requested over the SPI interface, or can it stream the full 40.25Mbs DVB-T2 mux across?

If the latter then all 5 UK HD main services on PSB 3/BBC B can be received with a single tuner. If the former, then we may hit issues doing this if there is a limit on bandwidth / number of PIDS that can be filtered?

These days most USB 2.0 tuners allow a whole mux to be carried over the USB interface, I just wondered if SPI allowed the same on a Pi?

Hi Stephen,

Yes, it can record the whole mux, therefore as you say it’s possible to record BBC One HD, BBC Two HD, ITV HD, Channel 4 HD and Channel 5 HD simultaneously with just the one tuner.

Missed a bit off.

It doesn’t use PID filtering apparently. On the UKHOTDEALS website a chap who works on TVHeadend confirmed this.

Sadly the DVB-T2 PI HAT Tuner expansion will not work without online Raspberry installation procedure. I regret having bought the PI HAT Tuner that is completely useless without a working ready image! Why do they make it so damn difficult!!

There’s a nice getting started guide here https://www.raspberrypi.org/app/uploads/2018/10/Getting-started-with-the-Raspberry-Pi-TV-HAT.pdf

(I posted this yesterday – but for some reason it’s not appeared – apologies if it now appears twice)

Yeh right !
Like I said Pi TV HAT is completely useless without ready offline installable image!

What are the two pin outs on the board for?

I’m wondering the same thing. Putting solder pads for an IR TSOP would have been a neat idea (to allow for IR remote control to be added) – but I think that would require three pads (VCC,0V and Data)

I’d assumed they were for testing – but would be great to know?

I know in Europe powered indoor aerials/antennae with built in amps powered by 5V on the RF feed are widespread – could it be a way of injecting 5V to the RF feed? (They aren’t common in the UK and +5V outputs on STBs are unusual as they aren’t part of the Freeview receiver spec AFAIK)

They have no function for the CXD2880, one pin is ground and the other is connected to the EEPROM.

A lovely hat cant believe just how small it is, have some issues with signal strength on in door aerial and raspberry pi 2 hung a couple of times

Damn it! I bought this way too quickly. I didn’t know it was not licensed to be use in Canada! Wonder if it will ever be compatible with ATSC?

Jason – I’m afraid if’s DVB only, it won’t work with North American ATSC or South American/Japanese ISDB-T.

How many programs could be recorded simultaneously on a single 3B+?

I’ve had success streaming 3 x Freeview HD channels from PSB3 simultaneously over cabled ethernet on both a Pi Zero and a Pi 3B+.

I’ve not tried recording to USB or uSD storage yet.

The entire multiplex can be streamed over SPI – so assuming the channels are all on the same mux then the answer should be ‘a lot’

I’ve streamed BBC One HD, BBC Two HD and ITV HD with no major issues over cabled network connections to both a Pi Zero and a Pi 3B+.

I’ve not tried recording to either uSD card or USB storage yet.

This is a great peace of hardware! Also works in Germany and France (non-encrypted DVB-T/T2 channels), BUT:

1. the frequencies list for Germany that comes with tvheadend is outdated. You can instead add the DVB-T2 frequencies for your region (tables in https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2_HD) manually in the tvheadend web frontend: Login, Configuration -> DVB inputs -> Muxes -> Add (or Edit), Change delivery system to DVB-T2 (France: DVB-T), add frequency in Hertz, bandwidth 8 MHz, set the other parameters to AUTO, status to PEND, then save/create. Then, in menu DVB inputs -> Services -> Map Services -> map all multiplexes to individual TV channels.

2. viewing German DVB-T2 HD channels on the Pi is not a pleasure: they are H.265 (HEVC) HD of which decoding is too much work even for a Pi 3+ (best results I got with Kodi), but it can be used as a PVR or to stream via network to a remote Kodi or App. French TNT channels (H.264) can be viewed well on the Pi 3.

Try one of the LibreElec milhouse builds over at the Kodi Raspberry Pi forums (you replace Raspbian with LibreElec)

There has been a lot of work on optimising HEVC decoding – and I read that 1080p50 on a 3B+ was becoming feasible (probably with some overclock)

Hi! Is there a way to disable the LED on the hat? Thank you.

Not unless you remove it. It is connected to the +5V supply.

I’ve tried setting this up on a PI3B and a PiZEROW within Kodi but neither one was able to record.

If I set a timer, it would display a message to confirm that the timer had been set, then would immediately follow this with a message saying that the timer had been cancelled. Clicking record on a playing stream appeared to do nothing.

Can anyone advise please? Thanks.

Graham – have you configured a recordings folder? I wonder if TV Headend (which I think runs as user ‘hts’?) is trying to record to a folder it doesn’t have write permissions for?

I’ve only used my Pis for live streaming so far – when I get a chance I’ll fiddle with recording.

Are there any plans by the Raspberry Pi foundation to release a case which suppers the pi 3b+ with the uHat? It would be just right for a portable small pvr

Can I watch tv at the raspberry pi the tv-hat? Or can that pi with tv-hat only stream and I have to use another pi to watch tv?

OK, problem here. My Pi TV Hat doesn’t seem to be identified by the system.
I get no Network 2 option on Tvheadend, the green LED is on, voltages are normal on the TV Hat I/F, fresh OS on card and followed the install guide several times.
Using a thermal camera, there is no temperature rise on any of the TV hat board components.
Any clues anyone?

Ok, the answer to the TV uHat not being seen is to do this:

Add
dtoverlay=rpi-tv
gpu_mem=128
into /boot/config.txt
and reboot.

After few days can’t tune channels

cxd2880_tune: cxd2880_set_frontend failed -22

Reboot solves it, but it should not be like this…

I have recently purchased the TVHAT and have installed it onto my raspberry PI3 running OSMC and tvheadend, and followed the installation instructions but tvheadend does not see the tvhat can you help or advise me please

Hi, does somebody know how to scale down the H.265 1080p50 HEVC to H.264 720p (or even 480p) by using another computer (or Pi, preferabely)?
The thing is that I can’t even watch the signal on my iPhone 4S, because the CPU is way to weak for the signal used here in germany (displays around 150% CPU usage in Kodi) and I wanted to watch the stream on a iPad 1 running iOS 5.1.1..

Btw. the Raspberry Pi 3B is also too weak to receive & play (or is it due to Raspian?); hope your next Pi is compatible with the uHAT and is powerful enough to receive & play on the same deveice and maybe even scale down so that other old devices can be used for watching.

Hi, does somebody know how to use TV-uHAT with dvblast?

Where to buy in Malaysia?

Quick Question – Does anyone know what the socket specification the micro socket for the antenna is on the board? I do not want to use the adapter plug supplied, I want to use a short adapter cable to not put load onto the board edge. I could not find this anywhere. Also just out of curiosity, where is it made?
There are no “Made in XXX” words anywhere I can find. Thanks

Is there any documentation on the low-level communication?
Does it just stream TS packets over serial via the pins?
Is there a protocol to make it tune to certain frequencies?
Does it rely on firmware being loaded from linux?

Would like to know if I can capture the data from the air without needing a pi/linux :)

Using Stream in Hyperion??
Would like to build a “real-TV”-TV-Simulator with this HAT.
I saw some projects like “TV ambiente LEDs”, which controll RGB-LED-Strip via ‘ampilight’, ‘Hyperion’ and intern/extern (USB) Grabber.
Is it possible to grabb the internal stream from the TV HAT?

Schematic would be NICE, or at least what GPIO pins are used in Pi.

Do you have plans to release a case for the RPi and TV HAT? It’s working great but it would be nice to have safely enclosed…maybe with room for a cooling fan? I’m using the RPi3+

Yeah bro…. i am looking for it too ;)

I have tried it in Singapore, my home. With my Samsung TV, or any china DVB-T2 receiver, i can grab Malaysia TV very well, without any error.

But with this Raspberry Pi TV Hat, i can’t use to grab Malaysia TV. With the same antenna. I unplug my TV antenna and plugged into the TV Hat, it show the SNR 20. But doesn’t help. Keep getting error and can’t play video well. Any thing can i do to improve it?

How much power / current does this draw? Anyone foresee any brownouts if i add another usb tv tuner at same time that will draw 0.5A? Can the pi support tv hat plus usb tuner? Thanks in advance

can i add a usb ir sensor with remote with this new tv hat installed on the rpi 3 model b+ and hook up a hdmi cable to the pi and my tv and watch tv that way

Does it support Teletext (DVB-TXT)? I’m mostly interested in receiving Swedish Text-TV (SVT Text).

First, congratulations for the great work you’ve been doing. I’m a huge fan. Already have 3 pi’s 

I’m from Portugal I bought last week a TV HAT and I’m still trying to put it to work on Kodi but I have a question. Will the TV HAT work without internet connection? I’m asking this because I want to use this on my country house and there is no internet connection there (very small village). My intention is to create a media centre with Kodi and access to the national TDT tv.

All the best and continue with the great work

You will need internet at the beginning to download TVheadend software either through Kodi or Raspbian, but once that’s done and all set up you don’t need internet to watch tv.

Many thanks Jetaime

Hi all,
I have ordered one and my question is can I stream the TV to another location on Internet? i.e another part of the UK.

Hi All,
I got my answer, Thanks

Does TV HAT support BBC Red Button+ using MHEG-5?

How can people buy a TV HAT if their country isn’t listed in the ‘Other Parts of the World’ on the order page? Australia uses DVB-T, so it should work here, but there are no resellers here, according to the website.

Great product idea. Everyone seems to want one (me included).

Map of what type of DTV is used in your part of the world:
https://www.dvb.org/resources/public/images/site/dvb-t2_map.pdf

ATSC is used in North America. This device does not support ATSC. Apparently someone is working on an ATSC version, though
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1390423

Hope it works nicely with MythTV.

Hi, hope this dvb hat has been a success. I had lots of fun with mine.

Have you considered making one as a usb dongle? Would dearly love to be able to have a few of these attached to one rpi, so can record and watch many channels from different muxes, using one tvheadend source?

News

Watch TV with your Raspberry Pi

Stream television over your network

New HAT form factor

Licences

Related posts

Zero WH: pre-soldered headers and what to do with them

Explore the depths with the PiCam Marine

Approved Reseller programme launch PLUS more Pi Zero resellers

Raspberry Jam Big Birthday Weekend 2019

Next Post

Beer Cooler or: a Raspberry Pi Zero W walks into a bar...

Previous Post

HackSpace magazine 12: build your first rocket!

Share this post

197 comments

Rick

dom

MrWheeliebin

Gordon Bennett

Gordon Bennett

graycrow

Misel

GekkePrutser

dom

Fran

zook

Michal Tarovsky

Simon FD

Simon FD

Paul

Ingo

Paul

dom

Tilo

dom

Floris

asdjf2keoid

Renne

Peter JC

Ed

dom

Mark

Jack

Nathan

Misel

dom

Idris

Alex Bate

Thomas

David

Craig

GG Crew

James Carroll

Geoffrey Pitman

Raspberry Pi Staff Roger Thornton — post author

Maxious

mashudu nemavhola

crumble

Damian

dom

Damian

Charlie L

Andreas

Bobo

Martin

kneekoo

Alexander Kirsch

Tim

Raspberry Pi Staff Roger Thornton — post author

Simon Lambourn

Steve

Paul

Misel

Paul

Martin

TV

Paul

sp2swr

Idris