Introducing Raspberry Pi TV HAT, a new addon that lets you stream live TV

Yesterday the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched a new device called the Raspberry Pi TV HAT. It is a small board, TV antenna that lets you decode and stream live TV.

The TV HAT is roughly the size of a Raspberry Pi Zero board. It connects to the Raspberry Pi via a GPIO connector and has a port for a TV antenna connector. The new Raspberry Pi addon is designed after a new form factor of HAT (Hardware Attached on Top). The addon itself is a half-sized HAT matching the outline of Raspberry Pi Zero boards.

Source: Raspberry Pi website

TV HAT specifications and requirement

The board addon has a Sony CXD2880 TV tuner. It supports TV standards like DVB-T2 (1.7MHz, 5MHz, 6MHz, 7MHz, 8MHz channel bandwidth), and DVB-T (5MHz, 6MHz, 7MHz, 8MHz channel bandwidth). The frequencies it can recieve are VHF III, UHF IV, and UHF V.

Raspbian Stretch (or later) is required for using the Raspberry Pi TV HAT. TVHeadend is the recommended software to start with TV streams. There is a ‘Getting Started’ guide on the Raspberry Pi website.

Watch on the Raspberry Pi

With the TV HAT can receive and you can view television on a Raspberry Pi board. The Pi can also be used as a server to stream television over a network to other devices. When running as a server the TV HAT works with all 40-pin GPIO Raspberry Pi boards. Watching on TV on the Pi itself needs more processing, so the use of a Pi 2, 3, or 3B+ is recommended.

The TV HAT connected to a Raspberry Pi board:

Source: Raspberry Pi website

Streaming over a network

Connecting a TV HAT to your network allows viewing streams on any device connected to the network. This includes computers, smartphones, and tablets.

Initially, it will be available only in Europe. The Raspberry Pi TV HAT is now on sale for $21.50, visit the Raspberry Pi website for more details.

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