hdhomerun & dvr - prefer tvheadend

[Dieter BSD]

Bryce writes:
> I got a hdhomerun

> linux specific
Ick!

> Please give me suggestions to get this up & running or point me
> to good alternatives.

You don't need a custom kernel module.  Just a driver for your wired
ethernet controller.  Everything else can be done from userland.

Compile hdhomerun_config (a FLOSS utility from Silicondust).  Write a simple
and reliable (so that it can be run at rtprio) C program that reads data
from a port and writes it to a file on disk.  Write shell script that takes
arguments for tuner number, tv channel, number of minutes to record, program
description and generates a filename for the recording, then calls
hdhomerun_config and your C program.  Create at(1) jobs for unattended
recordings.  Cron(1) can automate recording the same show every night,
week, whatever.

The shell script can also generate a log file for each recording
with the debug information from hdhomerun_config and whatever other
metadata you think might be useful.

You now have a bunch of mpeg2ts files on disk to watch using your
favorite player software.

The hdhomerun can filter by PID, which reduces the network traffic and
the file size.  You don't want to miss capturing packets, as that generates
a nasty glitch, so consider efficiency (speed) when writing the C program.
Rtprio reduces the chance of other processes interfering (only the
C program needs to be run rtprio).  Increasing the size of the network
receive buffers helped.

I think Silicondust wrote some capture software that might be useful,
but by the time they released it I already had my own software working,
so I never tried theirs (other than the hdhomerun_config utility).