New to VDR in 2026

Hi everyone! Just started my journey with VDR and I have couple of beginner questions to seasoned users:

1. I noticed vdr is tuning to channel right after it is started. Can I disable it so that it will only tune when there is a client to serve?
2. What is the current recommended output plugin for general desktop use? Is there anything that works on Wayland natively? Debian only has old Xine-based plugins packaged that have since been abandoned by upstream.

3. Is it possible to get signal strength in Kodi over VNSI? Currently the stats are empty:

   The content cannot be displayed because you do not have authorisation to view this content.

4. Any way to disable frontend 0 on Astrometa USB stick? I feel like it causes problems and additional delays when tuning to channels. There's no command line option to choose between DVB adapter frontends. Is patching vdr really the only way to get rid of it?

   Code

   kernel: usb 2-1.1: DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 0 (Realtek RTL2832 (DVB-T))...
   kernel: dvbdev: dvb_create_media_entity: media entity 'Realtek RTL2832 (DVB-T)' registered.
   kernel: usb 2-1.1: DVB: registering adapter 1 frontend 1 (Sony CXD2837ER DVB-T/T2/C demodulator)...
   kernel: dvbdev: dvb_create_media_entity: media entity 'Sony CXD2837ER DVB-T/T2/C demodulator' registered.

I hope to explore more in next couple of days

Quote from fnu

Regarding output, what is your approach using VDR? Using it on a desktop PC to watch TV occasionally?

Desktop mostly for early testing before I set things up. I plan to do actual watching in Kodi on RPi hooked up to a TV. Still I wanted to try the native interface to see what it offers and because it looks interesting.

Quote from fnu

VDR by nature starts right away tuning a channel, that works as designed. VDR starts to have trouble if it can't receive a channel on startup to fulfill its coded purpose.

I see but wouldn't it make sense to suspend the tuner for power saving if not used?

Quote from fnu

DVB frontends are needed by any DVB adapter, otherwise they are not working at all.

This device in particular has two frontends on single adapter (tuner) which correspond to two different demodulator chips present on board. One of them is DVB-T only so it's of no use for most of today's TV broadcasts in Europe. The only way I found to prevent vdr from using it is deleting its corresponding device file in /dev. I noticed this allows Kodi to display tuner statistics which it fails to do when both are being used (as demonstrated on previous screenshot)

I figured out an udev rule that blocks access to first frontend:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="dvb", ENV{DVB_DEVICE_TYPE}=="frontend", ENV{DVB_DEVICE_NUM}=="0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0131", ATTRS{idVendor}=="15f4", ATTRS{manufacturer}=="astrometadvbt2", MODE="0000", TAG-="uaccess"

Unfortunately lack of access makes vdr confused and it fails to startup.

Quote from SHF

VDR uses all available DVB devices by default.
You can change this behavior with the -D command line option (see man vdr).

But it only allows to choose adapters not frontends!

/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend1
/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0

So I came up with another hacky rule that overwrites one frontend with another:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="dvb", ENV{DVB_DEVICE_TYPE}=="frontend", ENV{DVB_DEVICE_NUM}=="1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0131", ATTRS{idVendor}=="15f4", ATTRS{manufacturer}=="astrometadvbt2", RUN+="/usr/bin/mv -- $devnode /dev/dvb/adapter$env{DVB_ADAPTER_NUM}/frontend0"