[krustyreturns]

See below, a user is looking for advice, I don't know anything about what he is asking with regard to whether the virtual machine on home server would work, can any of you guys offer some insight into it?
---------
Like a lot of others on here, I have some questions regarding setting Live TV.

I currently have Windows Home Server 2011 running on a SUPERMICRO 1U 2x L5420 Xeon QC 2.5GHz with 8GB RAM and a 500GB HDD. I run MB3 Server and MCM on it server, and that's basically it. I also have a Synology NAS with 12 TB of storage in it. This is where all my media goes. Then I have 4 Zotac Z-Boxes connected to TVs that we watch all of our TV shows and Movies on via MB Classic.

I want to set up Live TV but would like some advice about the best way to do it. Should I get another box, like a Zbox for example, to install Win 7, WMC, and ServerWMC on? Or should I create a Virtual Machine to run under WHS 2011?

So I guess I will need to go with either a USB tuner or a network tuner. I haven't done much research into which tuner to buy, so advice on that would be helpful as well.

Thanks so much!

[TechLife]

FWIW, I could not get it to work in a VirtualBox VM on Fedora. I'll be interested to see if anyone has gotten this working on a VM.

For a network tuner, I *highly* recommend the HDHomerun Prime. I'd make sure to check the service provided has the channels marked copy-freely before jumping in or it will be all for not unless it's for off-air.

[advocate99]

I have Windows 7/WMC/ServerWMC running on VMware ESXI 5.1. I use two HDHomerun Dual (OTA).

---

Two things I should add: Until the very latest update, LiveTV would stall every once in a while. Also, if I do things that are hardware intensive on the server, streaming video coming from the Win7 VM can stutter. The only other VM running on my ESXI right now is my Asterisk phone system, and it causes zero issues. However, when I tried installing Ubuntu and Handbrake to convert media, I got some stuttering when watching Recorded TV...

[scarecrow420]

a network tuner is definitely easiest, a VM would have no trouble connecting to that since it's just an IP based network tuner. Otherwise a USB tuner COULD work, as long as the hyper visor supports passing through the USB device into the VM. ESX/vmware should support this, however Microsoft HyperV as an example does not support passing USB devices through to the guest VMs.

If you dont have any gear yet, probably getting a network tuner is the way to go. Where are you located and do you need cable card stuff or just over the air? Getting 4 tuners would be good, if you want to be able to have a couple of recordings as well as a couple of live viewing (of different channels) all simultaneously. Some countries have a 4 tuner in one device model, and others (like australia) only have 2 tuners in one, but you can of course buy two of these.

[krustyreturns]

@advocate99,

As you saying the new version of swmc (1126) has stopped the intermittent livetv fails, or is it just that you haven't had time to find out?

[heatpipe]

Other than the odd problem I've mentioned in another thread, I have HDHomerun Prime and HDHomerun OTA network tuners. The HDHomerun OTA tuner is not used as much since my provider is encrypting more and more channels. I've also had various Hauppauge analog and QAM-based PCI tuners, but nothing compares to the HDHomerun tuners. It's also nice to be able to use DLNA to connect directly to the HDHomerun. I do this using two samsung blu-ray players for live tv. Both HDHomerun tuners are amazing and have worked flawlessly for me in the past with WMC, Beyond TV (RIP), and Sage (RIP). The only things you need to worry about are network and storage throughput. With that many clients and (potentially) numerous concurrent recordings, you can easily thrash the disks in your NAS unless you're striping or have some other elaborate storage solution like ZFS with an intent log on an SSD. In any case, +1000 for the HDHomeruns!

[mboehler]

Hi everyone,

I am the guy that krustyreturns was referring to in the OP. I really appreciate the responses. There is a lot of valuable information in this thread.

I'm going to try running it in a Win 7 VM on my WHS 2011 server and see how it does. I found an inexpensive HD Homerun Dual on Amazon and I'll be connecting it to an antenna in my attic for snagging OTA broadcasts.

If the VM ends up being too sluggish, I may get a dedicated box to server live TV via ServerWMC.

Thanks again, everyone!

[mboehler]

I have Windows 7/WMC/ServerWMC running on VMware ESXI 5.1. I use two HDHomerun Dual (OTA).

---

Two things I should add: Until the very latest update, LiveTV would stall every once in a while. Also, if I do things that are hardware intensive on the server, streaming video coming from the Win7 VM can stutter. The only other VM running on my ESXI right now is my Asterisk phone system, and it causes zero issues. However, when I tried installing Ubuntu and Handbrake to convert media, I got some stuttering when watching Recorded TV...

Hi advocate99 and krustyreturns,

I'm attempting to use ServerWMC in my Win7 VirtualBox VM under WHS 2011. I currently have one HDHomerun Dual with only one tuner connected to digital cable. I managed to find 27 stations using the HDHomerun Setup, and I can watch them in HDHomeRun QuickTV. I also got the guide set up in WMC, but WMC won't play any of the stations. It just says "Video Error. Files needed to display video are not installed or are not working correctly. Restart Windows Media Center or restart the computer."

ServerWMC installed correctly and seems to be set up right. I'm using MediaBrowser 3 Server and the appropriate plug-in to connect to ServerWMC via MB3's web client. If I watch the Status screen in ServerWMC, it shows an active stream. The current one says "Streaming ClearQAM channel 6 to [MediaBrowser^3]". However, nothing shows up in the MB3 web client. It just shows a black box.

Am I missing something? Or is this an indication that it's not going to work in a VM?

Also to be noted, although I'm not sure if it matters - I'm planning to put an antenna in my attic so I can use OTA broadcasts. I plan to get rid of cable TV (keeping cable internet), but I haven't done that yet, though. At the moment, I'm just splitting my cable signal so I can try this out.

Thanks!

[scarecrow420]

Post a ServerWMC log to pastebin so we can have a look?

When ServerWMC says it is streaming, have a look in the Recorded TV share in TempSWMC directory and try to directly play the WTV and TS file that are there. If they work, then the VM is working, and your issue is more the MB3/XBMC accessing it etc. If the WTV and TS file have no video in it, then the issue would be that WMC itself is not happy (seemingly it wants video drivers or some type of thing that your VM doesnt have). Is it a clean install and a completely vanilla WMC with no mods or tweaks applied?

[krustyreturns]

he has this thread going on two diff forums. You can see his log here:
http://mediabrowser3.com/community/index...r-live-tv/

If you look at the log he is getting surprisingly far considering wmc isn't working.

[bluray]

I'm not sure this would help. I did this "post #751" for recorded/live TV...

[mboehler]

I posted this at the Media Browser Forum as well:

I apologize for taking so long to get back on here. But after much playing around (most of it caused because I convinced myself that WMC wasn't working), I think that the problem does lie with MBS and/or the ServerWMC plugin.

I am using Google Chrome to access the MB3 Web Client. If I browse to Live TV and look at the guide, it populates fine. I will click on a show and click Play, and the play window will open, but it is still black. I can tell that it is trying though.

I am using a HDHomeRun Dual tuner, and it comes with a program called HDHomeRun Config GUI. If I have this open, I can see what channel the tuner is on, the signal strength, network rate, etc. And it definitely starts up when I click Play.

I have also browsed to: \\LIVE-TV\Users\Public\Recorded TV\TempSWMC and there are files in there. I can open the .ts file with VLC and it plays fine. So I'm not really sure why it's not playing in the web client.

Here are the MB Server and ServerWMC logs from my latest attempt to play something. Where can I find the ffmpeg logs?

I am using MB Server version 3.0.5135.31685, ServerWMC version 1.0.0.24, build: 1126 on my Win7 VM, and ServerWMC plugin version 1.0.0.16.

[scarecrow420]

If you run XBMC client pointing at the ServerWMC VM does that work? That helps to confirm that it's on the MB3/plugin side

[krustyreturns]

I post over there as well, not sure where to follow this thread. In the log you posted the ts is file is not accessible by mediabrowser (see the part of the server log that says the ts file was never accessed). I assume that path \\LIVE-TV\Users\Public\Recorded TV\TempSWMC is not working from the vm share.

[mboehler]

I post over there as well, not sure where to follow this thread. In the log you posted the ts is file is not accessible by mediabrowser (see the part of the server log that says the ts file was never accessed). I assume that path \\LIVE-TV\Users\Public\Recorded TV\TempSWMC is not working from the vm share.

Yes! That did it! Once I gave the server PC access to the share on my VM, it started working fine. Thank you for that. I can't believe I didn't check to make sure it had access earlier. I had access from the PC in my office, where I do most of my work, so I didn't think to check the server's access. I feel like a such a moron. LOL

So, in conclusion, it is possible to run Win 7/WMC/ServerWMC on a Virtualbox VM under WHS2011 and have it work. I still can't play the files in WMC in the VM, but apparently you don't have to for ServerWMC to work. You just have to make sure you have the channels/guide set up correctly in WMC. And most importantly, you have to have access to the share.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out with this: krustyreturns, TechLife, advocate99, scarecrow420, heatpipe, bluray, and the guys over at my Media Browser Forum thread.