Using Tvheadend as a SAT>IP Server

The goal here is to set up Tvheadend (TVH) as a SAT>IP Server. This allows you to stream satellite streams to tablets and other devices - at least to the limit of the number of lnb connections you have.

I followed the Ubuntu instructions at https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/AptRepository to install TVH and then http://docs.tvheadend.org/configure_tvheadend/ to get the basic configuration set up.

Unfortunately the documentation for configuring SAT>IP is quite sparse and leaves out one important detail if you expect to use it with general SAT>IP clients: SAT>IP must be configured to use rtsp port 554 but TVH out of the box will switch to 9983.

Enabling Networks for SAT>IP

Go to Configuration - DVB Inputs - Networks. For each network you want to use change the SAT>IP Source Number to 1 (other values are documented).

Enabling SAT>IP Server

Go to Configuration - General. In the SAT>IP Server section enter 554 as the port number and Save Configuration.

Port-Forwarding RTSP

If, after enabling SAT>IP Server, you see the following error in the log (click the double-down arrow bottom right):

2016-04-24 20:19:25.568 satips: RTSP port 554 specified but no root perms, using 9983

Then you will need to allow clients to connect to TVH on port 554. While you can run TVH as root it is probably easier to create a port forward:

sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p udp --dport rtsp -j REDIRECT --to-port 9983

Following these steps allowed me to stream channels from TVH using the Elgato App from both Android and iOS.