2012-08-13, 23:40
edit
2012-08-13, 23:55
Hi,
Have you tried asking about homerun on the tvheadend forum (lonelycoder.com) or IRC channel (#hts)?
It's true we are in transition and some of our docs are out of date but we are a pretty friendly bunch and do it best to help.
I'm not that familiar with homerun myself, but I'm going to be looking at a related config problem tomorrow if I can find some time.
Don't write off tvh just yet
I'm trying to push getting time shift added but don't have the skills myself.
Adam
Have you tried asking about homerun on the tvheadend forum (lonelycoder.com) or IRC channel (#hts)?
It's true we are in transition and some of our docs are out of date but we are a pretty friendly bunch and do it best to help.
I'm not that familiar with homerun myself, but I'm going to be looking at a related config problem tomorrow if I can find some time.
Don't write off tvh just yet
I'm trying to push getting time shift added but don't have the skills myself.
Adam
2012-08-14, 00:05
Hey Adam, thanks for the reply!
I would love to use tvh, but simply can't get the thing to recognize my tuner card (HDHomerun). MythTV recognizes everything right away.
I try following guides like this https://www.lonelycoder.com/redmine/boar...opics/3368 (they are all pretty much the same), but get hung up on this:
Install other needed stuff (dvbhdhomerun driver):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tfylliv/dvbhdhomerun
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dvbhdhomerun-dkms dvbhdhomerun-utils
sudo service dvbhdhomerun-utils start
I can add that repository just fine, but when I run an update on Ubuntu 12.04, I get a 404 not found error. When i try running the install for dvbhdhomerun-dkms and dvbhomerun-utils, it tells me that the packages don't exist.
Any thoughts?
I would love to use tvh, but simply can't get the thing to recognize my tuner card (HDHomerun). MythTV recognizes everything right away.
I try following guides like this https://www.lonelycoder.com/redmine/boar...opics/3368 (they are all pretty much the same), but get hung up on this:
Install other needed stuff (dvbhdhomerun driver):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tfylliv/dvbhdhomerun
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dvbhdhomerun-dkms dvbhdhomerun-utils
sudo service dvbhdhomerun-utils start
I can add that repository just fine, but when I run an update on Ubuntu 12.04, I get a 404 not found error. When i try running the install for dvbhdhomerun-dkms and dvbhomerun-utils, it tells me that the packages don't exist.
Any thoughts?
2012-08-14, 00:33
Hi, I've been fiddling with MythTV and THVeadend for a few years now, and definately started down the line that you are heading. A dedicated cheap PC that I turned into a HTPC. I swapped between mythtv and tvheadend a few times, but generally ended back with MythTV as it had all the features and was a mature product.
Every now and then I would get sick of the crappy MythTV interface (especially MythMusic) and be drawn into the land of XBMC. XBMC is just too nice to look at! XBMC never really had the native interface to MythTV that I was after. I didnt really go for the MythBox plugin, and at the time the PVR addon for MythTV was still in development. There was (and possibly still is?) a couple of addons, but I am still following the most promising/active by tsp42 (in these forums). But with the old PC HTPC, I always went back to the stability and featureset of MythTV.
What has changed recently for me, is that I went down the NAS path, and again started with MythTV. It was a monster to install, a large footprint on a small device. It worked fine, just you couldnt do transcoding due to the processor size on the QNAP NAS. Due to the complexity of compiling and patching for MytHTV on the NAS, I started looking for alternatives. Then I found a chap called virtualdj on the QNAP forums was building TVHeadend and HDHomerun QPKGs for the QNAP. I dropped MythTV, and had another run at TVHeadend.
After a few months of use, I'm really happy with TVHeadend and how it works. It has less features (EPG recording options, timeshifting, transcoding etc), but if you want to just record something, and play it back in XBMC then it works great.
The backend MythTV can timeshift, while TVHeadend can not. I dont think any of the XBMC PVR addons are currently able to provide real LiveTV timeshitfing anyway. But, I would guess that the XBMC MythTV Addon will get there first, as the ability exists in the current MythTV backend service.
Enough of my story... here's a couple of comments
1) To get your HDHomeruns recognised in TVHeadend you will need the dvbhdhomerun libraries installed. They basically create native DVB devices on the TVHeadend server, so TVHeadend thinks that there is a card plugged into the system. I have them installed on the NAS courtesy of the package from virtualdj from QNAP forums. Another point is that you need to ensure there is a /etc/dvbhdhomerun file that is basically an ini file outlining the hdhomerun devices to go look for on startup.
2) I think you can tune your "auto expire" settings, but as far as i know the recording to disk while watching livetv is normal for any tv server (mythtv, mediaportal, fortherecord, tvheadend). I think to support the timeshift (in the future), this is a requirement.
3) I think you are right in your assessment, that MythTV is a beast to configure. If you expect a lot from your TVServer, then MythTV is probably for you. It's just the XBMC addon isnt 100% finished.
4) Not sure whats going on with your SMB shares, i can copy files across SMB and NFS and the names stay the same. I tend to use FileZilla and copy over ssh/scp as you have more control over the transfer. It might be worth trying?
Anyway, theres a brain dump for you, hopefully there is something in there that might assist.
Cheers Nathan
Every now and then I would get sick of the crappy MythTV interface (especially MythMusic) and be drawn into the land of XBMC. XBMC is just too nice to look at! XBMC never really had the native interface to MythTV that I was after. I didnt really go for the MythBox plugin, and at the time the PVR addon for MythTV was still in development. There was (and possibly still is?) a couple of addons, but I am still following the most promising/active by tsp42 (in these forums). But with the old PC HTPC, I always went back to the stability and featureset of MythTV.
What has changed recently for me, is that I went down the NAS path, and again started with MythTV. It was a monster to install, a large footprint on a small device. It worked fine, just you couldnt do transcoding due to the processor size on the QNAP NAS. Due to the complexity of compiling and patching for MytHTV on the NAS, I started looking for alternatives. Then I found a chap called virtualdj on the QNAP forums was building TVHeadend and HDHomerun QPKGs for the QNAP. I dropped MythTV, and had another run at TVHeadend.
After a few months of use, I'm really happy with TVHeadend and how it works. It has less features (EPG recording options, timeshifting, transcoding etc), but if you want to just record something, and play it back in XBMC then it works great.
The backend MythTV can timeshift, while TVHeadend can not. I dont think any of the XBMC PVR addons are currently able to provide real LiveTV timeshitfing anyway. But, I would guess that the XBMC MythTV Addon will get there first, as the ability exists in the current MythTV backend service.
Enough of my story... here's a couple of comments
1) To get your HDHomeruns recognised in TVHeadend you will need the dvbhdhomerun libraries installed. They basically create native DVB devices on the TVHeadend server, so TVHeadend thinks that there is a card plugged into the system. I have them installed on the NAS courtesy of the package from virtualdj from QNAP forums. Another point is that you need to ensure there is a /etc/dvbhdhomerun file that is basically an ini file outlining the hdhomerun devices to go look for on startup.
2) I think you can tune your "auto expire" settings, but as far as i know the recording to disk while watching livetv is normal for any tv server (mythtv, mediaportal, fortherecord, tvheadend). I think to support the timeshift (in the future), this is a requirement.
3) I think you are right in your assessment, that MythTV is a beast to configure. If you expect a lot from your TVServer, then MythTV is probably for you. It's just the XBMC addon isnt 100% finished.
4) Not sure whats going on with your SMB shares, i can copy files across SMB and NFS and the names stay the same. I tend to use FileZilla and copy over ssh/scp as you have more control over the transfer. It might be worth trying?
Anyway, theres a brain dump for you, hopefully there is something in there that might assist.
Cheers Nathan
2012-08-14, 01:06
(2012-08-13, 23:40)XBMCUser4657 Wrote: 2. MythTV appears to utilize this 'Auto-Expire' concept, which is somewhat confusing to me. It looks to me like MythTV constantly writes gigantic files to my NAS even as I simply watch TV. This means that just turning on Jeopardy for 1/2 hour results in a 3.5GB file, which doesn't go away when I stop watching the channel. Instead, it looks like MythTV wants to fill up the entirety of the space that I've given, and will 'auto-expire' the oldest live TV streams when it needs additional space. It feels like I'm doing an awful lot of writing to my discs which isn't necessary (I don't want those programs recorded...I just want to watch them).
Like previously noted, Myth does this so you can timeshift what you are watching.
This can be used to tune to a live TV show, pause it, go do something else for a 15-20 minutes, come back and jump past the commercials.
I do run MythTV with a HDHomerun Prime (cablecard) on Comcast, and it works fine for me.. But, again, I also have 20+ years of Linux experience..
I also have found the version of Myth and Distribution your trying to use makes a HUGE difference. I use Fedora with rpmfusion, and found that many things are configured out of the box for you, and you can simply keep hitting the enter key and moving on.
Last, MythTV support in the RELEASED versions can only with upto 0.24; if your newer (ie, I'm on 0.25.2) then you'll need either:
1) run the tsp cmyth based pvr version (git, compile, and run..)
2) patch Eden for the mythtv 0.25 fixes, run Mythbox, (again, git, compile, and run)
3) simply use the myth frontend for TV viewing, and switch back and forth (which is what I'm currently doing) (irexec configuration to switch the two, and a Harmony 650..)
2012-08-14, 04:27
On the dvbhdhomerun, it seems you are right that the ppa isnt up-to-date, but i googled, and found someone who worked around by installing the prerequisites and then the debs directly. I cant vouch for its currency or if it works, but it's worth a look.
http://moofi.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.as...yCount=215
On the mythtv recordings having different names, are you sure you are looking at the same folders? Way back when I was using myth, i remember that the recording was always in sourceChannel_date format, and that there was a "pretty" process that made "human readable" symlinks or folders to the real recordings. That way you could hookup SMB to the "pretty" folders from outside the mythTV server and have some meaningful naming convention. I remember it was configurable, and quite good at it's job. Cheers Nathan
http://moofi.woot.com/Forums/ViewPost.as...yCount=215
Code:
download:
https://launchpad.net/~tfylliv/+archive/dvbhdhomerun/+files/dvbhdhomerun-dkms_0.0.9-2_all.deb
https://launchpad.net/~tfylliv/+archive/dvbhdhomerun/+files/dvbhdhomerun-utils_0.0.9-2_amd64.deb or https://launchpad.net/~tfylliv/+archive/dvbhdhomerun/+files/dvbhdhomerun-utils_0.0.9-2_i386.deb
install prereqs:
sudo apt-get install debhelper dkms libhdhomerun1
install debian packages:
sudo dpkg -i dvbhdhomerun*.debOn the mythtv recordings having different names, are you sure you are looking at the same folders? Way back when I was using myth, i remember that the recording was always in sourceChannel_date format, and that there was a "pretty" process that made "human readable" symlinks or folders to the real recordings. That way you could hookup SMB to the "pretty" folders from outside the mythTV server and have some meaningful naming convention. I remember it was configurable, and quite good at it's job. Cheers Nathan
2012-08-14, 11:54
(2012-08-14, 00:33)nmcaullay Wrote: ...With the newest TVHeadend EPG options are improved and with this version: https://github.com/john-tornblom/tvheadend you can have transcoding with TVHeadend(works great on my Android device)
After a few months of use, I'm really happy with TVHeadend and how it works. It has less features (EPG recording options, timeshifting, transcoding etc), but if you want to just record something, and play it back in XBMC then it works great.
...
The stange thing is that i can pause and play live TV on my android device!(i can't really timeshift)
2012-08-15, 00:04
(2012-08-14, 02:30)XBMCUser4657 Wrote: As far as the timeshifting goes - I was expecting it to work more like ForTheRecord. FTR has a timeshifting directory which contains nothing until you actually pause your live TV stream....then it starts writing. Once you stop the stream, it deletes the file (s).
I actually can see the value in beginning to record immediately when you tune to a station - what if you want to rewind and you hadn't paused? That's pretty killer actually. What's weird is that it leaves all these files on the server and never cleans them up until you run out of space. What advantage could that have? Maybe I will get used to it. I could always just create a new share for timeshifting and limit its capacity from the NAS.
Actually, MythTV 0.25 keeps the LiveTV recordings around for 24hrs.. After that, they are automatically culled out. So, no, they don't take up disk space waiting to be deleted.
