(2016-02-07, 20:04)bash64 Wrote: xmbclinuxuser,
Thanks for the blunt honesty and the technical info. I am technically savvy, but ran out of patience when trying to do something related to TV. I can tell you get other people venting over this issue. I stopped watching TV by my teenage years. I am 51 now. There is more important stuff to do in life like work. Thus, I didn't even know what PVR was when I got one word answers from some. For now I will just leave the TV part and recording to Kaffeine media player. Currently, my elderly friend is 75 and he uses Windows media center. I am moving him over to Linux due to Microsoft forcing everyone to go windows 10 and with windows 10 forcibly spying on users for monetary reasons. Windows media center is one click easy for LiveTV thus the let down with Kodi. Once again thanks.
You're welcome. I think Microsoft really screwed the pooch when it came to Windows 10 in many ways, granted they had a system that anyone could set up and use (or so I am told, I not used Windows since Windows 2000 was the current version) but from what I have heard they have pretty much killed that off, and a lot of folks have hung onto Windows 7 or 8 as long as they could. Just FYI, Apple is no better, there are so many things that used to work in earlier versions of OS X that no longer work in El Capitan. Why software developers seem intent on breaking products that are working well (and yes, that sometimes applies to the Kodi developers too) is totally beyond me. But it is at the point where I am finding that there are things I used to be able to do in Windows and OS X that I can now only do in Linux. Just a couple days ago I found out that OS X will no longer recognize my camera when I plug it into the USB port but Ubuntu finds it with no problems whatsoever. So I understand your frustration completely.
That said, you still haven't mentioned the type of tuner you have. It is entirely possible that Kodi could at least play the live streams from it. If your friend is comfortable using Kaffeine media player that's fine, and it's certainly an option, but there may be times it would be easier to just view the local channels in Kodi. I still recommend that you (or if not you, someone with more patience and time on their hands) should think about setting him up with a PVR backend (in case anyone else hasn't figured it out, PVR stands for Personal Video Recorder, although most PVR software does much more than just record). The reason is that then he could have an on-screen guide of upcoming shows and select the ones he wants to record.
That said, if you really don't have the time and patience to set it up, watch for more companies entering this market that may have easier solutions. For example Silicon Dust (the people who make the HDHomeRun tuners) is supposed to be coming out with their own PVR soon, and there are a couple other manufacturers that make standalone PVR's for home viewers. The downside with most of them is you have to pay for a subscription to get EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data to populate the channel guide in the device. Whereas, with something like TVHeadEnd and Kodi, it is entirely possible to get EPG data free in the USA (or you can pay for it if you really want to) but again there's a bit of a learning curve on setting it up and it's entirely possible you'd get frustrated before you figure it out - I almost did.
I have to say that I completely understand where you are coming from, I hate it that everything is SO DAMN DIFFICULT, especially sometimes in the Linux world where developers still seem to labor under the impression that every Linux USER is a Linux EXPERT (hence my signature line). It's as if they think people spring from the womb as either Windows or Linux users, and if they are Windows users you have to spoon-feed them everything (and that's just accepted) but if they are Linux users they are born with a full understand of everything Linux and when they do run into something they don't understand, they want a challenge, and they want everything to be some kind of difficult puzzle! Of course that's not how it really is, but you would swear that's the mindset of some Linux developers and long-time Linux users.
