Kodi Community Forum

Hi there,

I've recently installed TVHeadend on a Synology NAS and am using Raspbmc as the client to access LiveTV.
While the whole setup works very well, I'm wondering about the status of timeshift, or why it doesn't work properly.

To clarify what I consider "proper timeshift":
1. As you tune into a channel (or optionally as soon as you press "Pause" while watching), the stream is paused and written to disk
2. When you press "Play", playback resumes, using the saved buffer
3. Jumping ahead and back within the saved buffer should at all times be possible
4. When you reach the end of the saved buffer, LiveTV should resume (whether the saved buffer is kept and updated further, could be optional)

As of now, 1. and 2. work perfectly. However, without 3. timeshift is only useful to start watching later. Not being able to skip commercial breaks afterwards is really frustrating, considering there is a saved buffer, but you just can't jump ahead!

I have read several threads on the subject, on several forums, most are a few months old, though. There doesn't seem to be any sign of progress... I'm not even sure what is actually missing. Does the backend need to be updated to support skipping? Does the PVR addon need to be updated?
An almost 10 years old Philips DVD/HDD recorder that I have, already does this flawlessly, so it can't be too hard, right?

The one thing that gets my hopes up is this: when you explicitly record a channel and then play back the recording (even while it is still recording), you -can- actually jump forward and backward, which is essentially the function I'm looking for...
I was wondering if the addon could be modified in a way that instead of just starting a live stream, it could start a recording in the background and immediately start playing that recording. That would effectively make proper timeshift as outlined above possible.

I hope I'm not talking complete nonsense here... I would be willing to try and do those modifications myself, I'd just like to hear from an experienced addon author whether it could work or not

Or is there an update already in the works, that will soon make this possible? That would be even better.

Thanks for any pointers in the right direction.
Regards, Marc

I use tvheadend, i don't watch a huge amount of live tv, but I'm pretty sure all 4 points worked last time i watched something. I'll test again later.

What version of tvheadend are you using?

I'm using the version available on the SynoCommunity repository (it says 3.4.27-6 in the Synology package manager).
Other than compiling it myself, that is the only available option as far as I can see...
Looking very much forward to your test, though... if this indeed works I'll have to figure out what to update..

I use tvheadend on my media center and #3 & #4 could work a lot better. I was actually trying to do this last night and I was able to skip the commercials fairly well by fast-forwarding but the 30 second skip on my remote wouldn't function and when I caught up with the live feed it glitched out.

how you pi setup? frodo? gotham? SD or USB install? Skin?

(2014-02-13, 18:37)stuCONNERS Wrote: [ -> ]how you pi setup? frodo? gotham? SD or USB install? Skin?

Standard Raspbmc install. That's Frodo I guess. SD install. Skin is confluence.

try frodo rbej, install to usb, and amber skin and overclock to same as raspbmc turbo settings. should fix your problem

my information is, that timeshift has no priority for the developers of TVH. (talked to them via IRC). I do have a similar setup compared to Mettanie and timeshifting does not work at all for me (after 2 minutes of playing recorded TV the playback stops and can only be resumed by stopping TV and switching back to livetv...

I have been told that more recent versions would do this better but as you said.. i do not want to complie this stuff on my own!

(2014-03-01, 12:41)tom1502 Wrote: [ -> ]my information is, that timeshift has no priority for the developers of TVH. (talked to them via IRC).

Seriously? I appreciate this is free software developed by volunteers but I'm sure plenty of users would donate or even *ehem* pay for this feature. This is IMO the number one reason for watching live TV in xbmc and not on the tv itself. Crazy.

There is a new implementation of the Tvheadend addon for XBMC (https://github.com/adamsutton/xbmc-pvr-a...ns/pvr.tvh), it has proper timeshift support and a bunch of other goodies.

(2014-03-13, 08:24)negge Wrote: [ -> ]There is a new implementation of the Tvheadend addon for XBMC (https://github.com/adamsutton/xbmc-pvr-a...ns/pvr.tvh), it has proper timeshift support and a bunch of other goodies.

Thanks for the heads up (pun intended)
Is this for Gotham or Frodo? I'm no expert at building from source, has anyone got a zip with it built for raspbmc?

Gotham only, and no I don't think there are any ZIP files available at the moment.

(2014-03-13, 12:33)negge Wrote: [ -> ]Gotham only, and no I don't think there are any ZIP files available at the moment.

Cool!! Do you know how to install this on OpenElec generic latest nightly build?

I attempted to build this last night on my raspbmc pi, it took quite a while, I left it running over night in the end but I seem to have ended up with some zips of all PVR addons in that git. There was probably a way to compile the HTS addon alone and maybe could have done it on a more powerful machine but new to this so I did what seemed right to me.
Haven't tested it yet but will post later see if it works. I'm guessing the addon compiled would only be compatible with a pi running raspbmc test build as I did a .configure on this?

Windows build available at:

http://werket.tlk.fi/~negge/pvr.tvh/pvr....elease.zip