Ideal HD HomeRun product for Live Tv archival

[CHOXUWU]

Greetings, name is Chox.

I've been interested in obtaining an ATSC 3.0 tuner device for the LONGEST time but have just been stumped in general with the lack of USB / PCI only tuner devices.

I'm personally familiar to the PCI tuner cards by Hauppauge such as the HVR 1250, HVR 1255 and HVR 1290. And have been using SmartDVB as my preferred software to record and archive major live tv events.
Problem is I only see set top box models for ATSC 3.0 capable devices. And I really am not a fan of neutered proprietary environments similar to those cable Tivo boxes.

I'm looking for something that I can interface directly with my computer just like with the PCI and USB tuners by Hauppauge, perhaps record locally on my on own drives.

Really something that will let me see and record the raw media stream being carried over the RF ATSC 3.0 signal is all. No transcoding or anything.

I don't care for DRM support, just that I can see the actual raw media stream. Set it to record on software on my PC.

Hopefully something that works with perhaps the local network stream from the set top box device that can then be recorded using something like TsReader or something similar?


Any input would be appreciated :3

[signcarver]

Since you say you don't care about drm support one of the atsc3 USB tuners may be best based on what you described but because this is SD's forum we can't really talk about non-SD (hdhomerun) products. I will say that typically "raw" doesn't (always) really exist in the sense of what other tv standards use and you typically do have to tune by virtual channel. In my area one of the stations has 3 plp's (0, 1, and 2) and the way it is configured it is impossible to tune plp1 and plp2 at the same time which is one of the reasons I say you won't get a real/complete "raw" capture... there are also some things at some lower levels you won't get to see.

For what it seems like you are trying to do, I think the best you can hope for is a HDHomeRun Dev unit (i believe dev features can still be added later... and dev is still a $100 premium) which connects to your network (can be directly connected via ethernet for what you described but note for the app to work the tuner itself must also have internet connection but internet isn't required for 3rd party capture) so you can do some pcap captures (not sure if any of the USB devices out there will let you do such as it is much easier to let the device tune the virtual channel) or possibly one of the "engineering" type atsc3 capture devices (think $$$$+) that are out there that may let you select by plp (due to the possible issue i mentioned before) but from what I've been told, not all of them allow such plp selection so may fail when trying to capture "everything". Also for some data to be useful, they may require multiple plps to be captured at once (again not all combinations are always possible).

[CHOXUWU]

Since you say you don't care about drm support one of the atsc3 USB tuners may be best based on what you described but because this is SD's forum we can't really talk about non-SD (hdhomerun) products. I will say that typically "raw" doesn't (always) really exist in the sense of what other tv standards use and you typically do have to tune by virtual channel. In my area one of the stations has 3 plp's (0, 1, and 2) and the way it is configured it is impossible to tune plp1 and plp2 at the same time which is one of the reasons I say you won't get a real/complete "raw" capture... there are also some things at some lower levels you won't get to see.

For what it seems like you are trying to do, I think the best you can hope for is a HDHomeRun Dev unit (i believe dev features can still be added later... and dev is still a $100 premium) which connects to your network (can be directly connected via ethernet for what you described but note for the app to work the tuner itself must also have internet connection but internet isn't required for 3rd party capture) so you can do some pcap captures (not sure if any of the USB devices out there will let you do such as it is much easier to let the device tune the virtual channel) or possibly one of the "engineering" type atsc3 capture devices (think $$$$+) that are out there that may let you select by plp (due to the possible issue i mentioned before) but from what I've been told, not all of them allow such plp selection so may fail when trying to capture "everything". Also for some data to be useful, they may require multiple plps to be captured at once (again not all combinations are always possible).

Thanks for the technical reply!! And yes I envy anyone who owns those engineering devices. The software looks so cool!! But god the price.

Just took a look at the dev kit description on the shop and found some very interesting info listed.
"Real-time TAR file containing DASH files from DASH/ROUTE.
Real-time TAR file containing DASH files converted from MMTP.
Real-time TS generation from DASH/ROUTE content.
Real-time TS generation from MMTP content."
How do these TAR files work? Are they like local network versions of mpd urls for your home network? Does the real time TS generation send the raw ts stream to any 3rd party software of ones choice in the local network?

[signcarver]

ATSC 3 is NOT a ts and I think that is the main cause of your understanding... they are typically ip packets typically using ROUTE/DASH. I typically only use the dev features for pcaps when some others need one for testing... a dev unit will also display actual dBm levels rather than such strength as just a percentage (with nothing above 100% when as a percentage)... perhaps the following thread might help: viewtopic.php?t=74254


The HDHomeRun 4K units (dev or not) typically tune a virtual channel and send out a TS (which may actually be what you are looking for)... but that isn't a "raw" stream and it sounded like you may have wanted either the pcaps or possibly the dash-tar which with a little work can be made to play, Its basically consists of a manifest.xml, and a bunch of audio, video, and data "files" (the data appears to be mainly an xml of captions and the audio for the station I just captured has 2 audio streams)

[jasonl]

ATSC 3.0 is a stack of network protocols. Using our good friend the OSI model, layer 1 uses OFDM and QAM modulation, not unlike wifi. Layer 2 is the ATSC Link-Layer Protocol or ALP. Layer 3 is IP to multicast targets. Layer 4 is UDP. On top of that lives MMTP or ROUTE, which are both designed to deliver files, generally containing audio, video, or other media.

The TAR option is a continuous file in the Unix TAR format containing the MPD and segments. The TS options repackage the media segments into a transport stream. This is the standard mode for using the HDHomeRun, mostly because everything already supports it and it's just more convenient to work with.

[CHOXUWU]

ATSC 3 is NOT a ts and I think that is the main cause of your understanding... they are typically ip packets typically using ROUTE/DASH. I typically only use the dev features for pcaps when some others need one for testing... a dev unit will also display actual dBm levels rather than such strength as just a percentage (with nothing above 100% when as a percentage)... perhaps the following thread might help: viewtopic.php?t=74254


The HDHomeRun 4K units (dev or not) typically tune a virtual channel and send out a TS (which may actually be what you are looking for)... but that isn't a "raw" stream and it sounded like you may have wanted either the pcaps or possibly the dash-tar which with a little work can be made to play, Its basically consists of a manifest.xml, and a bunch of audio, video, and data "files" (the data appears to be mainly an xml of captions and the audio for the station I just captured has 2 audio streams)

Thanks for the thread recommendation. I am somewhat familiar with pcap capture having experimented with WireShark here and there. And yes I am coming from experience with MPEG TS although I came in with the expectation that ATSC 3.0 works more like a DASH .mpd stream more commonly seen in online live content. And the idea that ATSC 3.0 works with small segments of video audio and metadata in a packetized form. Very much interested in obtaining the dev unit seeing you can get a full mux recorded in a pcap capture from the looks of it.