Configuring Tvheadend for ATSC in North America

Here's how I configured Tvheadend for ATSC (North America)

• Install Tvheadend. I would up using the Fedora packages and not the container, after spending too much time debugging containerization issues.
• dmesg showed error messages related to the firmware. The USB stick's firmware was available in Ubuntu but not in Fedora. The same model card can have different tuners, but my Hauppauge WinTV HVR-850 required sudo wget -O /lib/firmware/dvb-fe-xc5000-1.6.114.fw https://linuxtv.org/downloads/firmware/dvb-fe-xc5000-1.6.114.fw per the linuxtv.org website.
• Enable TCP 9981, 9982 through the firewall.

In tvheadend's configuration interface,

• In TV Adapters, enable the ATSC-T side of your adapter. Always press Save.
• In Networks, add and enable an ATSC-T network perhaps named after your city. Use United States: us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB-062009. The ones with a suffix omit no-longer-used TV frequencies, don't worry about w_scan, we only have 35 to worry about.
• Go back to TV Adapters. Add your new network to the enabled ATSC-T adapter's Networks dropdown.
• Force Scan on the Networks tab. The system will check each ATSC channel for signal, and populate found channels on Services.
• On Services, choose Map All Services

Tvheadend will gradually populate the program guide for channels that provide one. It's possible to watch the channels that don't appear in the guide by switching to them.

Hopefully now you have Tvheadend showing signs of life, and can configure it to work with a more pleasant frontend interface like Kodi.