Future of PVR in XBMC?
#61
On my desktop pc I have DVB Viewer Recording service beta 1.30.1, XMBC 13.2, DVB-S2 and I have channel switching times of 3,5 +- 0,3 seconds.
If you are interested I will check channel switching times again as soon as I install kodi 14 beta if I don't forget it.

I can record btw and it works fine.
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#62
(2014-10-28, 12:28)Gregoire Wrote:
(2014-10-20, 05:46)Disrespective Wrote: I see that the next Helix release will include PVR channel change speed increases. This is great news. I can't wait to see what else gets brewed up.

It does include channel speed increase and it works pretty good too!
Being able to record would be nice. Really nice.

What? PVR recording has been working for ages.
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#63
Hello!

Can someone of you guys post a video from a current flawless running LiveTV configuration? Where people can see how good channel switching / Timeshift / EPG etc run?
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#64
(2014-10-28, 21:06)Kapsville Wrote: Hello!

Can someone of you guys post a video from a current flawless running LiveTV configuration? Where people can see how good channel switching / Timeshift / EPG etc run?

On Helix or Gotham?

For Gotham:
Channel Switching is pretty slow to me but it's also slow on normal TV as well. The EPG is REALLY slow to appear compared to WMC. I don't understand it either since I have a 4770k. I'd feel it'd be relatively instant but it's not. Time Shift works but it's iffy and doesn't feel as smooth as WMC. Because I'm using a keyboard though sometimes I'll shit somewhere and then not really have a great sense of where I have shifted too compared to how the WMC interface looks like. I feel this is a skinning/interface issue though.

With a couple of tweaks to the PVR section it'd be really nice.

I'm interested in seeing how Helix improves on it and how skinners improve on the PVR section.
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#65
So you are still better off using a sat/cable receiver watching TV, right? I don´t know what to buy Big Grin Maybe ill take a look at the X2BMC sat receivers like mutant hd2400.
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#66
I wouldn't say you're better off with an STB. With XBMC and a backend you have way more control over your recordings and EPG, and you can customize the interface (by using a different skin) if you want to. The biggest decision is deciding what backend to use. For the fastest channel switching, tvheadend and VDR (and MythTV nowadays) are the best, but they are all Linux-only.
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#67
(2014-10-30, 15:16)negge Wrote: I wouldn't say you're better off with an STB. With XBMC and a backend you have way more control over your recordings and EPG, and you can customize the interface (by using a different skin) if you want to. The biggest decision is deciding what backend to use. For the fastest channel switching, tvheadend and VDR (and MythTV nowadays) are the best, but they are all Linux-only.

Well, there are many stbs where u have a nice UI with a nice EPG etc. BUT they dont have such nice Mediaplayers Big Grin I think i´ll get a cheaper STB for watching TV and some Android Box for streaming movies and stuff because I hate if zapping through channels is slow and laggy Big Grin
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#68
(2014-10-30, 15:16)negge Wrote: I wouldn't say you're better off with an STB. With XBMC and a backend you have way more control over your recordings and EPG, and you can customize the interface (by using a different skin) if you want to. The biggest decision is deciding what backend to use. For the fastest channel switching, tvheadend and VDR (and MythTV nowadays) are the best, but they are all Linux-only.

I got much quicker switching times on Windows when I switched from NextPVR to ArgusTV. Argus was a bit more fiddly to set up, but I find it much more stable. Channel changes are around 5 seconds compared to anything between 8-15 on NextPVR.

As an aside, since we watch such a small amount of live TV, we did get rid of our Sky box. It's been gone for over a year and I don't miss it at all (having said that, I'm not a big football fan, and I think that can be the main draw for Sky for a lot of people).

M2C
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#69
I use a WMC backend, and ServerWMC plugin on XBMC, its works great, but is very slow. The biggest issue I have is scrolling the guide.

I am using a Raspberry Pi though...

I did think that several functions which the plugin provide should be provided by the core XBMC so the experience is the same for all users, and the responsiveness / operation can be optimised

The EPG for example, and list of recorded programmes (and ideally scraping them).

From what I understand each plugin seems to do things differently.

The plugin should only do the back of house stuff...
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#70
The EPG is dependant on what channels are there etc and that comes from the backend so I dont think XBMC should be configuring the channels and scraping the EPG etc. Being a pvr backend developer I dont have a problem with the data that currently comes from the backend (recordings, timers, epg, etc). I do however agree with everybody that XBMC needs to implement more of the front end slick user experience which will win our wives and girflfriends over. Giving the PVR addons the ability to provide more folder art/images for the channel icons and recordings library, having an interface for series recordings without each addon having to add their own menu hooks or custom dialogs, providing slick experience with fields that arent required beind hidden (as mentioned earlier) etc will all go a long way to improving the usability. The github PR for series recording interface in XBMC was great but it wont be in helix since it hasnt been merged yet (I assume). I would have been happy to make whatever changes necessary in pvr.wmc to support that new series recording API extensions but for whatever reason it hast been merged and so we will go another major release with every addon having to custom roll our own series recording functions and so on. Same with the eye candy - we still cant provide images for shows/folders/heirarchy, cant do wide banners etc etc, so it will remain looking gquite bland and not eye catching (something that is important for regular users).

Channel switching time is a bit slow but not too bad on my setup. Since i have a technical understanding of what is happening behind the scenes I dont find a few seconds to change channels that unacceptable. I totally get that other wives/girlfriends etc may disagree. And certainly you cant zap up and down the channels like you can on a cable box. In our particular backend's case we've done everything we can to speed up the backend and it's typically only 2 seconds... we just need XBMC/ffmpeg to speed up their side (which currently adds another few seconds while it analyses the stream we send). Margro's build elimnated that delay that but wasnt 100% stable for all users... im not sure where we've ended up in helix regarding the fixes in that area but I dont think it is as fast as margro's. People suffering slow EPG performance etc are typically on low powered devices like rpi's and fire TV etc. My intel NUCs dont have any client side speed/performance problems. Ditto with streaming/networking - i am using GB wired network and things are rock solid. With wireless, people will have a poorer experience most likely.

PVR in XBMC is good enough for my household but I certainly am not saying that all of the issues raised in this thread and others should be ignored. I very much want it to be good looking and user friendly. IMO the next steps are a consistent series recording and better image/artwork support for the recording library.
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
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#71
Well said @Scarecrow. I am a long time mythtv user and more latterly an xbmc afficianado. I came to xbmc because I like to experiment and because I heard it would do a better job of scraping metadata (I am not talking PVR right now). When I came to XBMC it didn't have a standard PVR interface, but did have a couple of unsatisfactory methods of interfacine with mythtv.

Move on to now and XBMC's PVR is pretty good for us. I have to say that my entire family (kids 19,18,15, been living with mythtv for 6 years) don't channel surf, because they have grown to "record what you want to watch, watch when you want to watch". I know many don't agree, but it suits us fine. They can do live tv, and channel surf, but generally don't. Similarly the EPG is not that important because we tend ot set up recordings on a web browser. So channel change tme is not so important to us. Reliable series recording and duplicate recognition, and flexibility ae important, and our setup gives us all that.

Anyway, the PVR interface in XBMC has to cope with a huge variety of backends, and considering that requirement it is bloody remarkable.

As far as fanart/images etc is concerned, is that a backend function or a frontend function? I say backend (logically you don't need 6 frontends searching for artwork, when the backend can do it once). But some backends may not have that capability.
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#72
(2014-11-03, 08:32)nickr Wrote: As far as fanart/images etc is concerned, is that a backend function or a frontend function? I say backend (logically you don't need 6 frontends searching for artwork, when the backend can do it once). But some backends may not have that capability.

It's the same with any other media in XBMC every instance has to scrape new metadata unless you use a shared MySql database
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#73
(2014-11-03, 10:30)Dilligaf Wrote:
(2014-11-03, 08:32)nickr Wrote: As far as fanart/images etc is concerned, is that a backend function or a frontend function? I say backend (logically you don't need 6 frontends searching for artwork, when the backend can do it once). But some backends may not have that capability.

It's the same with any other media in XBMC every instance has to scrape new metadata unless you use a shared MySql database

Yes but here we have a ready made server-client relationship.
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#74
FWIW, i have installed Kodi beta 2 now and tested channel switching time on my PC (for configuration of my system see my last post), and can say that it didnt change from gotham 13.2. Still about 3,7 seconds.
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