I've tried using the search function but for some reason come back with no results. I'm new to this Kodi thing and relatively new to community forums, but i do know to try to search first. I've got my first Kodi box Mi Box from Wal-Mart and successfully set it up and have a ton of add ons thanks to this community, but I find myself in a couple situations that I'd LOVE some help resolving. First I would like to address the idea of being able to record television. The loss of my DVR in the cord cutting process has been one of the most sensitive matters in my household. The other issues I can deal with for now. I've purchased a outdoor digital antenna for my local channels that come in in HD perfectly, but I'd like to be able to record a couple shows from that antenna feed. Mainly my evening news. We often find ourselves watching programming on the Kodi box when the local live news is airing, and we can no longer go back to watch or rewind the newscast. It would be nice to find something that would also be able to record certain things airing on the Kodi box as well that are live, but I'm not sure I'm smart enough to figure all of that out quite yet. This DVR problem is my biggest cord cutting problem I need to deal with, I'd just like some input or direction on the best possible solution for my family on this. The last matter is my kiddo and wife are upset we've lost Sprout Live. There are a ton of threads on this, and I think I may be able to find a work around by side loading the SproutNow app onto my Mi Box and sharing login credentials from a friend that is a current cable TV subscriber. I'd love to find a standalone solution for this, but it seems all the threads I've found on this issue offer no mention of a solution other than the standard Kodi Sprout add on from the Kodi repo which is very limited on the shows available and doesn't offer live content. Someone, anyone....please help a guy out as my family is slightly mad at me for cutting the cord, but I do realize this is my own fault. Thanks in advance for any input or advice. Lastly, for the DVR, I don't mind spending some cash on a nice solid unit if its kind of expensive, as I do understand you get what you pay for with hardware. Thanks again fellow members!
Rocky
http://kodi.wiki/view/PVR
Kodi is not a magical application that instantly gives you access to free TV. It is a media player; think of it as a DVD/BluRay player, but instead of discs, you give it digital files. In reality, that's all that Kodi is.
For TV, you need a couple of things in addition to Kodi. First, you need a tuner. This is a piece of hardware that you plug you antenna/cable feed into, and gets it into a computer or onto your network. Next, you need software. Kodi itself does not handle TV. The PVR backends act as a sort of middleman, to interface between your TV software and Kodi, so that everything is presented in the same interface.
As always, start with the Wiki, as there is a lot of information there to answer you questions.
Well, to get you started here is my setup. I'm assuming that you are in the US.
Tuner:
HdHomerun Connect - This needs to have a feed from your antenna and a hardwire connection to your network. It recieves the TV signal and translates it into a network stream.It has 2 tuners so you can watch one show while recording another or record 2 shows at once.
A windows PC with
Npvr installed. Most any version of windows will work. You don't need a powerful pc for this. I run Npvr on my little desktop which is just a celeron with no problems.You may need a larger hard drive as a typical recording averages 5 to 6 gb per hour. The biggest problem with setting this up is that windows 10 doesn't include decoders for the mpeg2 tv broadcast format by default. You may need to install codecs if your pc didn't come with something like cyberlink dvd player. Be careful about installing the all-inone codec packs from the internet. Most of them will really screw with your system. Research this on the npvr forum...
A subscription to
Scedules Direct. This will cost you $25 per year. I think that you can get a free month to try everyting out. You need this data to see the schedule of TV available on your particular channels for the next 2 weeks. Otherwise you have to do manual recordings like a vcr from the 70's.
The Npvr addon for kodi. This lets you watch live tv and your recordings in Kodi on the mi box.
You will get as many different opinions on the ideal setup as there are people on this forum. This is just what I use.
@
rocky_mtn grab yourself an hdhomerun from silicondust and get their DVR service at silicondust.com/shop. They have an official add-on in the kodi repo for viewing and recording
Sent from my DROID Turbo
The connect or extend are what you want.
Sent from my DROID Turbo
Precisely the answers I needed. Thank you so much folks. I think this might just make the family happy. Seriously, thank you folks!
I do have an additional question if someone might know...I do indeed love this MiBox with 1 exception...no LAN port. It wont even load 1080p streams. I mean it will, but with it being basically wifi only, it takes 20 minutes of buffering before it will even attempt to play. Then its not consistent. Dgeezer, I've went with your advice with the homerun and pvr service, but my question is, do I need to use the USB port on the MiBox in your setup? It seems MiBox makes an adapter to turn the USB port into a LAN port, which i think would help considerably with speeds. I get 25ish down wireless, and well over 100 mbps wired. I have an external 2tb HD that is on my network for recording to and all my PC's are windows 10. Will this adapter for the USB port on the MiBox to change it to a LAN connection interfere with my recording abilities, or is that all done over the network and I can keep the 2tb HD for recording to still connected to the Windows 10 PC? Thanks again guys, I sincerely appreciate it.
Bump...I'm going to go with dgeezers setup more or less, but I'm curious if the HD used for recording can be on any PC on the network? I am highly considering using the USB slot on the mibox for the LAN adapter. I cannot even load 1080 video without waiting 30 minutes or longer for buffering over 802.11ac 5ghz. Everything else works flawless, just wish they had included a LAN port. Thanks again guys. My HDHomerun arrives today...yay!
Well dgeezer if you are still around, I have a few questions for you directly. I've tried the PM feature, but it says I don't have access to that feature? Maybe it's a post count thing...anyhow, PM me if you wouldn't mind as some of my questions aren't being answered here and I believe you have the keys to my questions. Once I come to a conclusion, I'll post back here for posterity. Thanks guys.
Well guys, got the HDHomeRun Extend in the mail early this morning and spent HOURS setting it up. Should have been pretty straight forward, right? I mean, theres tons of help and content out there on the interwebs...well setting it all up took only about 30 minutes, configuring is where it became VERY cumbersome. Heck, I even got the codecs working since all of my PC's are Windows 10. Pretty proud of that since this is like week 3 for me with Kodi and cord cutting to begin with. At any rate, the hangup suffered was the HDHomeRun was installed and configured really easy. NextPVR was slightly more difficult on the backend of the system to setup, but I managed to get through it relatively easy. Now for the front end in KODI....This is where I about threw the remote through my 60" TV! Went into settings and enabled HDHomeRun PVR client, worked fine, went into and "configured" the NPVR client and kept getting lost connection errors for hours...WTH!! 127.0.0.1...I could see the HDHR on the network, heck, I could even login to the web interface of NPVR from any device on the network by accessing 127.0.0.1:8866. Even triple checked firewall settings and allowed programs and ports... Worked perfectly. But in KODI, not so much. Finally after screwing with it for a couple hours tweaking things, consuming more coffee and Xanax than is probably recommended, I realized that the server address was wrong in the KODI config page for NPVR. Changed that to 192.168.1.2 and BAM!! No more lost connections, channels loading, TV enabled in main home screen...I'm in business right? Heck yea!! Well, I've essentially screwed with it all day and have yet to subscribe to schedules direct because I wanted to make sure I'm fully functional before starting the trial. Here is my current dilemma...The record feature will NOT work. Button is not accessible and greyed out on live streams, I can long press on a program in the EPG and the record option is there, but it does nothing when clicked. Won't start live recording, won't schedule a future recording...I'm at a loss on the recording feature. It seems to be a KODI issue as the NPVR software is clearly setup to record to my 2TB external HD on my network to a specific setup folder. I've went through all the KODI options I can find and think of, it recognizes both HDHomeRun and NPVR in system info under PVR service...Please someone rescue me from this problem so I start recording my wife and kids' shows and move on with my life....I've done tons of searching on this matter and am striking out getting results on "greyed out record button in KODI solved". Someone, anyone? Thanks in advance as usual.
Why are you using both PVR clients? If NextPVR is configured to tune and record from your HDHR device, only use that PVR client. The HDHR PVR client is merely turning the HDHR View video addon into a PVR client that does not record.
Fair enough. Duly noted, changes made and all is working pretty good. Thanks peeps!
Sorry for not getting back here. I don't really monitor the kodi forums that closely. Glad to hear that you got it working.
One thing to note is that I do all my scheduling of recordings in the npvr interface on the server. This gives you more options for setting favorites and recurring recordings. This is where using schedules direct helps by giving you 2 weeks worth of data.
So everything works flawlessly with regards to my NextPVR setup...until, I enable my VPN on my Kodi box. Essentially, because the set top kodi box is behind the VPN, it's IP address is "external" from my network and pointing NextPVR towards 192.168.1.127 no longer works because its an internal network address, which technically, Kodi is no longer a part of with the VPN running. I'm sure this has been covered before, I just had no idea how to search for my specific problem to be honest. I tried pointing the NextPVR client to my external public IP address but that didn't work either...maybe some sort of router config needs done to allow the external VPN address access to my PC on my network with the NAS attached? If there isn't an easy solution I'm just missing, then I'll just forget the VPN unless its needed at the time. It would be nice to have my VPN just startup when the Kodi box starts, but not if it's going to screw with my recordings. I'll just enable the VPN when needed, and leave it disabled otherwise. I REALLY hope this makes sense to someone and they have the perfect answer...thanks in advance folks.