Vu+ or Gigablue - The Age Old Question

newbieraf

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Hey All

I know this subject has been covered before and or has been asked a lot but I wanted to ask for my particular use case. I've just left Sky (Yipee). I am currently running a 1.2m dish fixed to 28.2E (Freesat UK) with a Hybrid LNB. Since leaving Sky Ive been messing around with TVheadend on my RPI, HDHomeRun and Plex, all of which I have working but they all lack a half-decent EPG Grid and a decent interface that is wife friendly.

I am also running a NVidea Shield and Apple TV, Synology Plex, as you maybe able to tell I am a bit of an IT Geek that can get around linux but no expert just yet. Which leads me on to the main subject.

The IT geek in me is thinking about buying the Gigablue Quad 4k, but then I look at the specs of the Vu+ Duo 4k and its even more powerful with a Quad CPU and 4GB RAM and I presume does Hardware transcoding but I am left wondering if I really need all this power of the VU+, and I need to lash out on such an expensive box. The things that are important to me

  • Good 7 day or more Grid EPG
  • Fast and can handle transcoding if I install TVHeadend on it
  • The ability to run apps such as plex, netflix, discovery plus etc - I may want to consolidate my boxes
  • Expandable tuners - although this is not a must
  • Reliable - although I like to tinker but at the same time I like it just to work if I don't
  • Reasonable community support or just plenty of forum type stuff around the WWW.

So which do you guys/gals think would be a better fit. Of course, I'm willing to consider other brands

Thanks
 
I think I am settling on the Vu+ as although apparently a older Chipset to the Giga it seems to be more 20k MIPS Quad compared to 15



Any last pieces of advice?
 
Can’t really add much in the way of advice (though interested to hear your thoughts when you have the device).

Why are you looking to install tvheadend on the box? If it’s for external clients there are plenty which support dreamplayer pvr servers.
 
Will do, just to consolidate all my boxes. I may not as its running perfectly on my RPi. Doing some research likely I will just use Kodi on clients to connect directly to the Vu+
 
Yep, the Kodi vu client over adding works well - there is also a really good Android TV dreamplayer client too.

One thing I really struggled with previously was adding a vu box as IPTV tuners to tvheadend. I used tvheadend for many years, but have moved away from it as Development seems to have stalled.
 
oh interesting, yes TVH was a steep learning curve for me. I new to the sat world but comfortable with IT as its my day job. I think I'm going to buy it from World of Satellite are there any other companies you can recommend? WOS charge a 20% restocking fee which is the only thing that is making me hesitant - I always like hassle-free returns
 
I’ve only used WoS - can’t fault them really. I’d start with OpenVix which they support well.
 
Yes I’ve been asking lots of questions and they’ve been very responsive
 
You inspired me to get out my old E2 box (an Edison OS Mega), got it set up with latest OpenVix very quickly and it still works well. Going to give the Android TV clients a drive and see how it gets on.
 
You inspired me to get out my old E2 box (an Edison OS Mega), got it set up with latest OpenVix very quickly and it still works well. Going to give the Android TV clients a drive and see how it gets on.
Haha awesome yeah I got plans for mine including adding to it my cloud network (zerotier). Likely I’ll put my experiences on my blog

I may ping you on the TVH front as I’m still trying to get a semi reasonable epg for it
 
Haha awesome yeah I got plans for mine including adding to it my cloud network (zerotier). Likely I’ll put my experiences on my blog

I may ping you on the TVH front as I’m still trying to get a semi reasonable epg for it
TVH EPG is partly why I stopped using it.. Its fine for OTA EPG (which is mostly ok in UK and you can get most channels from the SKy feed), but anything else is a mess. I could never get EPG artwork to function which is really annoying as it looks ace in Android TV and with Recordings.
 
Kind of the same for me. Firstly I had to disable a bunch of channels that were either nothing or ones that I’m just not interested in. That made the list a bit better and now using dream player I get the artwork but the epg is very sporadic. I may try again, but that one’s of the main reasons why I’m going for an enigma2 box running vix. I hope it will give a decent epg
 
Before you splurge.. have you tried HDHomeRun with PVRLive Android TV live channels? Ticks all your boxes above pretty much.
 
I have indeed. I’ve connected it to Plex which has a good epg however two issues. One since my nvidea sheild or the Apple TV only have a 100 NIC the stream just stutters. Secondly sometimes the HDHR just becomes unavailable. Having said that the HDHomeRun app actually works fine without stutter ok the AppleTV. I guess I just can’t be bothered with the lack of reliability
 
I mean this app:


Uses the native EPG from Android TV. Runs on the shield (should all be gigabit NIC). You can have it record anywhere - including to a synology
 
I just downloaded it and the epg seems good. There are some unknown channels but I’ll figure out how to get rid of them. Thanks so much I’ll give this ago for the next few days
 
So I paid for the app this morning, got the channel art but no epg, which is weird because it was working from the home run yesterday night. I’ll try again this time with the TVHeadend as the source
 
Doesn’t work with tvheadend unless you have artwork in tvheadend (which I couldn’t get to work).

Works perfectly with HDHomeRun direct (manage your channels in the HDHomeRun Webui).
 
Will do. Can’t seem to get to the WebUI.

Let me know how you get on epg wise with openvix
 
Got to the webui did a firmware upgrade and rescanned the channels then in the pvr app I cleared the cache to push a rescan and it now works

Secretly I’m hoping it has a flaw as I want a new gadget hahah
 
Got to the webui did a firmware upgrade and rescanned the channels then in the pvr app I cleared the cache to push a rescan and it now works

Secretly I’m hoping it has a flaw as I want a new gadget hahah
Oh same, but haven’t messed around with it for a year or so it really is superb. Only thing which comes close is Channels DVR - also doesn’t need a new gadget but does have a monthly charge.
 
I think only downside you might find is that the HDHomeRun EPG is limited to 24 hours without a HDHOMERUN DVR subscription (which is about £20 for year and very good value).
 

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