[scarecrow420]

Hey all

Kodi 16 Series Timer Support
So as you may or may not know, Kodi 16 (currently in Alpha release stage), has introduced several PVR enhancements including "core" support for Series Recordings. These enhancements are very flexible and are done in a way to allow control by the PVR addon/backends to define our own timer types including which fields are available and what the possible values for those fields are. This means that most of the addons will be able to have a consistent Kodi interface and logic, but tailored experience for the particular backend in question.

As of the latest Kodi 16 Alpha Nightly Builds, pvr.wmc (version 0.6.5) is included, with our first cut of support for the new Kodi 16 Series Recording features

This means we have removed our previous custom implementation of homegrown series recording functionality (which involved ignoring certain fields and presenting our own custom dialogs, leading to only some skins being supported due to skins needing to include our custom dialogs) in favour of using the new Kodi implementation.

ServerWMC Beta Required
NOTE That a new ServerWMC beta (currently a manual update) is required to support the Kodi 16 features and pvr.wmc 0.6.5.
Simply install it over the top of your current ServerWMC.
This release should be safe to run for all existing clients, as the changes to support Kodi16 are 99% in new method calls, but we havent completed our normal compatibility testing for the few common areas we did touch, and since we know more changes will be coming as we fix Kodi16 bugs we decided to release this as a manual update for users who specifically wish to preview the new Kodi 16 features.
(Installing this ServerWMC version wont affect your ability to receive future auto updates)

Get Kodi16 Nightly Builds

newest ServerWMC beta version can be downloaded from this post:
ServerWMC beta

Here is some information about the pvr.wmc Kodi16 Implementation so far:

Timer Types defined by pvr.wmc in Kodi 16

- One time (manual)/Repeating (manual)
A timer manually configured for a channel for a given start and end time, either one time or repeating

- One time (guide)/Repeating (guide)
A timer created from an EPG entry in the guide, either one time or repeating

- One time (wishlist)/Repeating (wishlist)
WMC terminology for a keyword search recording is a "wishlist" - either one time or repeating (everytime the keyword is matched)
The keyword can either be Program Title only, or Generic (all fields) based on the "Fulltext search" option in Kodi

Kodi/WMC Fields Supported
The Kodi fields supported by pvr.wmc (and the WMC field they map to) are:

- Prevent duplicate episodes
This is the WMC "RunType" field with values such as New Episodes Only and Allow Reruns

- Lifetime
This is the WMC "Keep until" field, which values such as "Until space needed" "Until watched" "Until Deleted" etc

- Max Recordings
This is the WMC "Keep up to" field, with values such as "Unlimited" "Latest Episodes" and 1-7 episodes etc

- Priority
Low Normal and High

- Days of Week
Full support for any combination of days of week

- Start padding and End padding
These are now set in Kodi, so values defined in ServerWMC are ignored.
Note that ServerWMC settings for "requiring" padding and overrides for Sports programs are still used however

- Any Time and Any Channel fields

These fields are available on appropriate timer types as required. EG All timer types have lifetime and priority but only repeating timers will have Prevent duplicates and Max recordings whilst one timer timers wont.

Essentially we've been able to fully support practically all of the options WMC provides natively, including even enhancing things in some cases (eg in WMC you cant set some of the lifetime/max/priority options on a series recording until after you've created it and then edited it in the upcoming recordings section, whereas with Kodi and pvr.wmc you can set everything when creating the timer).

Current known issues
We are actively working on these and will have fixes soon.
New pvr.wmc updates in nightlies, or new ServerWMC builds will be announced in this thread.

- Editing timers doesnt work
We dont support this in Kodi 15.1 and earlier anyway, but we do actually plan to support it for Kodi 16

- Deleting parent series timers
This currently causes an error in the backend and the series timer is not deleted.

- Creating "Any Channel" recordigns
This currently causes an error as we still need the channel number even when doing AnyChannel.


Please give it a whirl
Please take the nightly Kodi16 builds and ServerWMC 1190 for a spin, and provide any feedback in this thread

[mlu3141]

Hi,
I'm very happy with my current setup with the exception of loading times for the guide. I read that v16 should improve this so I'm willing to give it a run if you can confirm we should see better load times for the guide. Otherwise, I think I'm going to stick with 15.

[scarecrow420]

Hi mlu3141,

Yes I believe there have been changes in that area, though I cant give you any kind of official confirmation since the only changes I have contributed to are the API changes for Series Recording and the pvr.wmc addon implementation of such. In my setup I only have ~20 channels so the guide loads quick already, so I cant really even give you a seat of the pants indication if it "seems" quicker or not.

Do bear in mind Kodi 16 is Alpha release so you shouldn't necessarily update all your clients to that release, but there would be no harm in downloading it and giving it a test on one client... infact that's precisely what is needed so that users can provide feedback to the devs (eg you might find your load times are improved and you could let them know, or if its still slow for you you could indicate that as well). But guide load times arent related to this thread and the Series Recording changes specifically, which is what I am seeking feedback/testing on...

[skarragallagher]

This is excellent news. Thanks for your continued development on this.

Question: has any improvements been made on the information that is available, for instance recorded date and original air date? I miss that detail from WMC

[skarragallagher]

More on topic:

Are there current/planned support for the channel options HD only, Prefer HD, SD only, etc?

I used those options frequently in WMC when configuring series recordings

[scarecrow420]

I think Kodi changes in terms of fields supported are probably not going to to change again in Kodi 16 but one interesting thing is that Kodi has 2 more fields that we so far didn't use, Recording Group and Recording Folder

So potentially with something like your hd/sd we could say these are "groups" that can define in the serverwmc backend and load on the fly into Kodi and you could select that when creating timers

Similarly if we wanted we could use recording folder to have ServerWMC copy recordings to specific folders maybe

[krustyreturns]

Version 1210 beta is released for test (see first post). It fixes the 'Any Channel' problem and has a first cut at making series and single timers editable from kodi16.

[krustyreturns]

More on topic:

Are there current/planned support for the channel options HD only, Prefer HD, SD only, etc?

I used those options frequently in WMC when configuring series recordings

I agree, I would like to see kodi be able to handle this too. But if they don't add it, we can make this a global setting in serverwmc.

[skarragallagher]

That would be great. I am excited to see contour improvements in the area of PVR