General tab

The general tab contains information and some per-adapter global configuration.

Add DVB Network by location...

Pressing this button will popup a window that allows the user to select a DVB network based on location. The adapter will be populated with multiplexes from these networks and immediately start to scan for services.

Map DVB services to channels...

Pressing this button will start a process that scans all services on all multiplexes and tries to verify if the service is actually a working TV channel. If so, the channel will be created and mapped to this service. You can start mapping services to channels once all muxes have been processed. Until then the option will be disabled.

Adapter name

You can change the display name for the adapter. This is highly recommended for multi-adapter setups with adapters that report the same name to avoid confusion.

Autodetect muxes

The DVB transmissions contains information about other muxes available on the same network. If this checkbox is enabled, Tvheadend will automatically create new muxes as it receives configuration for them via the DVB networks.

Skip initial scan

By default Tvheadend will rescan all muxes before more detailed background scanning (including EPG scans) can be properly started. This is to verify all muxes are still valid.
This will not stop the ability to watch live TV, however for most setups this option can be checked.

Idle scanning

When nothing else happens Tvheadend will continuously rotate among all muxes and tune to them to verify that they are still working. If your adapter have problems with lots of tuning, try to disable this.

Close device handle when idle

This will attempt to close all available device handles. This can be necessary to allow some devices to go into low power states.
However, this option has been known to cause problems with some multi-tuner DVB cards. If you have signal problems, try disabling this option.
Note: this option has no effect if idle scanning is enabled.

Skip service availability check when mapping

By default Tvheadend will validate that a service can be correctly received (including any descrambling) when mapping channels. You can disable this checking by enabling this option.

Use SID as channel number during mapping

If you enable this option then the initial mapping of channels will use the service ID as the channel number, should no local channel number be provided in the service information tables.

Monitor signal quality

If you enable this option Tvheadend will attempt to monitor signal quality of a mux using an internal metric. If the calculated quality falls to low the mux/adapter will generally be ignored.

Disable PMT monitoring

This disable monitoring Program Map Table (PMT) for all services on a mux.
Most people should not require this, but because this involves creating a lot of table filters, some DVB cards have problems and report errors related to too many open file descriptors. If this happens try enabling this option.

Write full DVB MUX to disk

If this is enabled, Tvheadend will store the full mux stream to disk for debugging and development purposes. Don't enable this unless you know what you're doing.

Original Network ID

If you experience problems caused by overlaps between multiple network providers this option can be used to filter which network ID is received by a given adapter.

Extra priority

This field can be used to define a priority ordering for adapters. This will be used when determining which adapter to use to service a subscription request. It could be used for example to prefer a DVB-S adapter over a DVB-T one.

DiSEqC version (DVB-S only)

If you're using a DiSEqC switch, then specify the version here.

Turn off LNB when idle

This option can be enabled to disable the power to the LNB when the adapter is not in use. This can reduce power consumption, however for poorly shielded multi-tuner setups you may have some interference when the LNB is re-enabled.

Multiplexes tab

All multiplexes on the currently selected adapter are listed and can be edited in a grid.

• To edit a cell, double-click on it. After a cell is changed it will flags one of its corner to red to indicated that it has been changed. To commit these changes back to Tvheadend press the 'Save changes' button. In order to change a Checkbox cell you only have to click once in it.
• To delete one or more entries, select the lines (by clicking once on them), and press the 'Delete selected' button. A popup will ask you to confirm your request. Note, that if you have automatic mux discovery enabled the mux will probably come back quite soon.

The columns have the following functions:

Enabled

Uncheck this if a multiplex is of no interest to you or otherwise temporary broken

Network

Network name as given in the DVB stream. Cannot be changed

Frequency

Center frequency for the mux. Cannot be changed

Modulation

Information about the modulation used on the mux. Cannot be changed

Polarisation

Information about the polarisation used on the mux. Cannot be changed

Satellite config (DVB-S only)

The satellite configuration in use on this mux. Cannot be changed.

Frontend status

The status of the frontend signal last time the mux was tuned. Cannot be changed

Mux id

Unique ID for this mux in the dvb network. Cannot be changed

Quality

Tvheadend's estimated quality for the mux.

Services tab

All services on the currently selected adapter are listed and can be edited in a grid.

• To edit a cell, double-click on it. After a cell is changed it will flags one of its corner to red to indicated that it has been changed. To commit these changes back to Tvheadend press the 'Save changes' button. In order to change a Checkbox cell you only have to click once in it.
• Service cannot be deleted since they are directly inherited / discovered from a mux they will reappear in just a few seconds should one delete them.

The columns have the following functions:

Enabled

Uncheck this if a service is of no interest to you or otherwise temporary broken

Service name

Service name as given in the DVB stream. Cannot be changed

Play

Open the VLC plugin window to play this service.

Channel name

Double-click on this column to map the service to a channel.

DVB default charset

According to "ETSI EN 300 468", the default character set for EIT data is ISO6937. Unfortunately, some broadcasters actually use ISO-8859-x encodings but fail to correctly announce it. To fix this you can set the default charset to use when none is specified by the broadcaster.

EPG

Uncheck this if EPG data should not be retrieved for this service.

Type

Type of service. Cannot be changed

Provider

Provider as given in the DVB stream. Cannot be changed

Network

Network name for the mux this service resides on

Multiplex

Center frequency for the multiplex this service resides on

Information button

Press this to get a popup with more information about the service

Satellite config (DVB-S only)

Satellite configurations in use on this adapter (for controlling switch equipment). The default entry will work fine for non-switched setups.

• To edit a cell, double-click on it. After a cell is changed it will flags one of its corner to red to indicated that it has been changed. To commit these changes back to Tvheadend press the 'Save changes' button. In order to change a Checkbox cell you only have to click once in it.
• To delete one or more entries, select the lines (by clicking once on them), and press the 'Delete selected' button. A popup will ask you to confirm your request. Note, that if you have automatic mux discovery enabled the mux will probably come back quite soon.

The columns have the following functions:

Name

Descriptive name for this configuration

Switchport

Port number to select for this configuration (numbering begins at 0).

In DiSEqC 1.0/2.0 mode, ports 0-3 are valid.

In DiSEqC 1.1/2.1 mode, ports 0-63 are valid.

Use numbers 0-3 for LNBs behind first input on the uncommitted switch, then 4-7 and so on to support up to 64 ports using DiSEqC 1.1/2.1.

LNB type

Select the LNB type from the list of supported LNBs. If your LNB is not supported please contact the Tvheadend team.

Comment

General comment to remind you what this is for.

A word about DVB adapters

A DVB adapter represents a piece of hardware attached to the system. DVB receivers with dual tuners will present themselves as two adapters to the Tvheadend application. Tvheadend support DVB-T, DVB-C and DVB-S adapters.

There is currently no way of adding a new adapter to Tvheadend when running. If a new adapter is plugged into the system Tvheadend needs to be restarted in order to detect it.

If Tvheadend has configuration for an adapter and the adapter is missing upon start-up the configuration will be left untouched in case the adapter will be back in the future. There is currently no way to remove configuration for a no longer present adapter.

Warning: Unplugging an DVB adapter (USB, etc) during operation (i.e when Tvheadend is running) can result in deadlocking the kernel USB subsystem, most likely requiring a system restart.

Warning2: Suspending a system is (from a USB driver perspective) equivalent to a unplug/insert event. Thus, suspending a system running Tvheadend with USB adapters is not recommended at the moment.