:) So far though it seems incredibly promising. I'm going to set up the directories for recording and the schedules direct stuff later and see how that goes. You have to make sure the jail has vimage enabled otherwise you can't x11forward. The thing that also sucked about mythtv is the mythtv-setup you have to run to configure the server is X11 ONLY. You just have to make absolutely sure your server is configured properly.
There is an add-on for it in the PVR clients section. MythTV support is in XBMC (so you should be able to use a Pi). So far I have it playing on an XBMC client attached to my TV. I finally gave up on it and moved onto trying to get mythtv working. I couldn't get any of them to work properly in tvheadend. I even tried a cx88 which is probably one of the better supported cards for FreeBSD. As far as other tuners go, this is my 4th tuner at an attempt to get this working. I guess newer versions are integrating the HDHomerun support. Even in a Linux VM I had issues trying to get it to work. This isn't practical in FreeNAS since it would require that this was actually part of the distributed build or that you keep building your own updates. This is done in Linux with kernel hackery to make a device by building a module. The problem with tvheadend was that it requires a dvb device even for the hdhomerun. Right now I'm just going to set up a vbox with ubuntu and see about getting it working. I guess the only alternative is to wait for a working tvheadend + libhdhomerun that can be installed in a jail without the need of kernel module hackery. Thus far though I was unsuccessful with an HVR-850, HVR-950, and a cx88 based card (I built the cx88 module myself a while back). Apparently the newer versions of tvh have static support for the HDHomerun but I'm not seeing it. Hopefully someone comes around with some more information about it. I've not even attempted nor have been successful doing this just yet. I guess they use some sort of hackery to make a virtual dvb device by using a kernel module. Currently the build of tvheadend doesn't properly work with it. I've been trying to toy with a HDHomerun I received this weekend. But a special build with the proper modules and webcamd on the freenas side is necessary. I experimented with webcamd on the freenas side and it seemed to half ass work but I was never able to get a functional tuner box.
The problem with that is you can't install webcamd in a jail. You can install it using the FreeBSD ports It works well and is supported by MythTV ( which is arguably the best PVR application available on unix (linux or freebsd). Single and dual tuner version are available for both US (ATSC) and the rest of the world (DVB) and aren't much more expensive than PCIe or PCI digital tuners. They have single, dual and quad-tuners (that last one is very expensive). What you should use instead are networked tuners like an HD HomeRun (short HDHR) from Silicon Dust: It will for some, it completely won't for others: so it's not a path you want to follow.
Most of the digital tuners available these days (be it DVB or ATSC) only come with windows or linux support (via V4L: Video for Linux).Įven using ESXi my experience is that pci passthrough doesn't work consistently well.
Hardware TV tuner support in FreeBSD is virtually non-existent.