TV HAT is announced for watching TV on Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, supplied this year by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, is an affordable single-card nanocomputer (NanoPC) suitable for a variety of applications. It is scalable and many hardware components (expansion cards) can be added to increase functionality.
Two months ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation launched a HAT (Hardware Attached on Top), the Raspberry Pi PoE HAT, which allows Pi to run over Ethernet with a technology commonly referred to as PoE (Power over Ethernet). Recently, the arrival of TV HAT, a component that allows you to watch TV on a Raspberry Pi or, more importantly to, create a TV server to transmit the stream to other network-connected devices, was announced.
The Raspberry Pi TV HAT (or simply TV HAT) plugs into the 40-pin GPIO connector on the Pi. It has a connector for connecting a TV antenna. It is designed in such a way that it does not obstruct the display connection after installation.
HAT TV allows you to receive and decode digital television (DVB-T) streams on a Raspberry Pi via the integrated DVB-T2 tuner and then display them directly (also called multiplex) or via another device (e.g. PC) connected to the same network as the Raspberry Pi. The integrated Sony CXD2880 TV tuner allows it to decode one multiplex at a time, each of which can contain several channels.
However, it should be noted that it is the end user’s responsibility to ensure that they have the necessary permits and licenses to receive television broadcasts in their country. The TV HAT can be used with a Raspberry Pi 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3+ or higher. It supports DVB-T2 TV standards (1.7 MHz, 5 MHz, 6 MHz, 6 MHz, 6 MHz, 7 MHz, 8 MHz) and DVB-T (5 MHz, 6 MHz, 7 MHz, 8 MHz) as well as the following reception frequencies: VHF III, UHF IV and UHF V. It sells for around 23 euros.
“Initially, we will only offer HAT-TV in Europe, but compliance work to develop other DVB-T2 regions is already underway,” explained the Raspberry Pi Foundation.