German DVB-T2 (HEVC) with Odroid-C2 and Si2168 based USB Stick

1. Preamble

New DVB-T2 HEVC standard

Since DVB-T LiveTV is switched off in early 2017 in Germany and replaced by DVB-T2, it is time to prepare a setup that can handle the new format. So far I used Libreelec with a Si2168 chipset based USB-stick on a Raspberry Pi 2 in a setup like this:

DVB-T Signal -> si2168 USB-stick -> RPI 2 -> TV

The new DVB-T2 is based on the h265/HEVC codec, which needs far more resources for decoding than the DVB-T h264 codec. All current Raspberry models are unable to decode h265/HEVC in realtime.

After some research I decided to go for the Odroid-C2, since it has h265/HEVC support and can handle the DVB-T2 stream. I intended to simply replace the RPI2 with the Odroid-C2 like so:

DVB-T2 signal -> si2168 USB-stick -> Odroid-C2 -> TV

Old Odroid-C2 kernel

But it turnded out to be more complex than this. A major pitfall is, that the Odroid-C2 runs on an old 3.14 kernel. And the si2168 chipset is only supported from kernel 3.19 onwards.

I tried my luck with the custom built LibreELEC 7.1.0 - media_build edition on the Odroid-C2, since it has drivers for the si2168 chipset. But it uses Kodi 16 and produces only choppy DVB-T2 playback which is supposedly fixed with Kodi 17.

Update: There are now Kodi Krypton based LibreELEC editions available in the Odroid forum which allow using a si2168 based USB stick directly connected to the Odroid-C2 and produce flawless DVB-T2 playback.

Since the RPI2 runs on a more recent kernel (4.4) it can handle the si2168 chipset. So I decided to reuse it in my DVB-T2 setup, and install the TVHeadend server on the RPI2, which would send the DVB-T2 stream to the TVHeadend client on the Odroid-C2:

DVB-T2 signal -> si2168 USB-stick -> TVHeadend server (RPI2) -> TVheadend client (Odroid-C2) -> TV

Hopefully just a temporary workaround

Hopefully one day there will be a newer kernel for the Odroid-C2 (or a new LibreELEC edition with si2168 drivers and Kodi 17), so i can run my originally intended setup, with the stick directly connected to the Odroid-C2. There was an announcement for a 4.4 kernel by Hardkernel in March 2016, but nothing has been heard of it since. And then surprisingly there was Odroid-C2 support introduced with the mainline 4.7 kernel, but it is rather rudimentary so far. So there is at least hope for the future.

Only public TV stations

Since the private stations will be encrypted on DVB-T2, it is only possible to receive the public broadcast stations (like ARD,ZDF, Arte, ...) with this setup. I don't watch the private stations anyway, so I am fine with this. I did no further research on how to deal with encrypted content.

2. New DVB-T2 Setup

2.1 Used Equipment

• si2168 based USB-stick (+ antenna)
• Raspberry Pi (could be anything with a recent kernel and TVHeadend server)
• Odroid-C2

2.2 RPI2 (TVHeadend server) setup

The si2168 USB-stick is connected to the RPI2.

It runs a basic headless Raspbian with a 4.4 kernel (like e.g. the raspbian-ua-netinst).

TVHeadend server on RPI2

It is necessary to run a recent TVHeadend server from the unstable branch. Since the official TVHeadend repository only offers stable builds for the armhf platform, I used this repository instead. As described I did:

 sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

and added

deb https://dl.bintray.com/djbenson/deb wheezy unstable

then installed the repository key

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 379CE192D401AB61

and the apt-https protocoll

sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https

and finally

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install tvheadend

Then there are still the firmwares

• dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw
• dvb-tuner-si2158-a20-01.fw

for the si2168 chipset missing...

As described here I did

$ cd /lib/firmware
$ sudo wget https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/raw/master/firmware/dvb-demod-si2168-b40-01.fw
$ sudo wget https://github.com/OpenELEC/dvb-firmware/raw/master/firmware/dvb-tuner-si2158-a20-01.fw

TVHeadend server setup

I connected to the TVHeadend server at port 9981 from a browser like so:

http://<RPI2-IP-ADRESSE>:9981

Then I ran a basic setup as described here. It includes adding a custom mux using these settings:

frequency (Hz): 650000000 (depends on your location)
Bandwidth: 8Mhz
Constellation: QAM/AUTO
Delivery System: DVBT2

But be aware that every place in Germany has it's own frequency. You can look up the frequency for your location here

2.3 Odroid-C2 (TVHeadend client) setup

• create a SD card using the LibreELEC USB-SD Creator. Make sure to choose the latest 7.90 Alpha release when creating the SD card!

• After basic setup of LibreELEC on the Odroid-C2, install the TVHeadend HTSP Client to be found under Add-Ons > Download Add-Ons > LibreELEC Add-ons > PVR Clients

• configure the installed TVHeadend Client and replace the 127.0.0.1 IP address with the IP of the TVHeadend server (the RPI2 in my case).

That should be it! I got very good DVB-T2 playback on the Odroid-C2 now.