RENDER, short for RabbitEars NextGen Data Evaluator and Reporter, is GPLv3 open-source software written to evaluate ATSC 3.0 signals and produce HTML Export files about them.

To download the latest version of RENDER, see here: https://www.rabbitears.info/dl/render/

To see output from RENDER as I'm working on it, see here: https://www.rabbitears.info/a3data/

RENDER is being written using Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude. It has been written for the Linux command line, but should compile on the Mac with the proper prerequisites and should be possible to get working on Windows. Many thanks go to to drmpeg; his l1detail parsing code has been adapted for use in RENDER. It, like RENDER, is licensed in GPLv3.

https://github.com/drmpeg/dtv-utils/tree/master

The software supports the following input formats:

Packets:
- HDHomeRun Debug
- IPv4-PCAP
- ALP-PCAP

Text:
- HDHomeRun plpinfo format
- HDHomeRun l1detail format
- HDHomeRun TUI text output format

Both the packet data and the text data are needed for full information. The ideal set of information is the ALP-PCAP combined with either the l1detail or the HDHomeRun TUI text output from an HDHomeRun with the Dev upgrade. These items together should have the same name, and provide all the information that the software can currently parse.

It supports or mostly supports the following ATSC 3.0 functions and parameters:

- PLP Information (if any Text available)
- L1 Basic and L1 Detail (if l1detail or TUI text/Dev available)
- Link Mapping Table (if ALP-PCAP)
- Service List Table
- Capability Descriptor Table, which is Signal Signing
- Broadcast Positioning System
- ROUTE-based audio/video and data streams
- System Time information
- Basic data usage analysis

These functions are known to be significantly incomplete or non-functional:

- MMT-based audio/video and data streams
- ESG support - Guide data chunks are present but not organized
- Bitrate calculations

To build on Ubuntu, it is believed you'll need these packages:

build-essential
libpcap-dev
libxml2-dev
zlib1g-dev
libssl-dev

To build on RedHat, it is believed you'll need these packages:

libpcap-devel
libxml2-devel
zlib-devel
openssl-devel

And you'll need the HDHomeRun library, but I've included that in the zip file if you don't already have it installed.

Building RENDER should be as easy as running “make” in the source directory, which will produce an executable named “render”.

To run RENDER, put a PCAP or debug file in the folder with your executable and then create a text file with that same name but ending in .txt which contains the PLP info from the HDHomeRun plpinfo command along with, if applicable, the l1detail string. Alternatively, if you're using the latest HDHomeRun TUI, using the a or z keys to capture a debug or PCAP file should result in a PCAP and .txt file with the same name that you can use.

To collect files without the HDHomeRun TUI, see the steps here: Capturing 3.0 Data

Then just navigate to the folder that both the software and the files are in and run it:

./render <pcap|debug file name>

It'll output an HTML file with the same name that you can then review. As RENDER is currently highly experimental, if any output looks questionable, please reach out to me by e-mail or on the RabbitEars Discord.

Please also reach out with any questions or comments. Enjoy this tool!

• Added support for bitrates in the Usage Chart for ALP-PCAP files. (General)
• Added support for stuffing packets when present. (WNYZ-LD)
• {Want to finish ESG support.} (General)
• {Want to add eGPS support.} (KWGN)

• Added version number variable and command line function. (General)
• Resolved PLP bitrate calculation bug. (General)
• Added handling for duplicate LMT entries. (WZBJ-CD)
• Added handling for EFDT tags and incomplete tags. (WUPV)
• Added work-around for when close object isn't detected. (WCVW)
• Resolved CDT parsing issue in ALP-PCAP captures. (KSTR)
• MMT support in-place, but most of the stations have incomplete MMT data, so there's a fall-back that attempts to directly parse the video and audio. (WHUT, WIAV-CD, WNUV, KUNS, KJZZ, KVCW, KVPX-LD/WDWW-LD)
• I've left a ton of debugging code in it. I stripped it out in 0.1, but removing it is a lot of work for no benefit.

• Initial release.