[raptorjr]

I'm still running MythTV frontend to watch LiveTV. I would like to use Kodi and I like all the progress in the PVR section of Kodi.

But I have one question, that MythTV frontend cant handle. It is when you watch a show and decide to start recording that show. If you then want to change channel you are "stuck" on the channels that are on the same mux as the channel you are recording. Even though there are free tuners, MythTV frontend cant automatically change to one of them. The user must have knowledge of the internals of the computer you are using an know that there are free tuners and then manually change to another tuner.

I don't think that the user should have to know anything about the internals of the box. If there are a free tuner it should automatically be used when the user switches channel.

Can this be handled by Kodi and the addon automatically?

[LeKodeur]

Perhaps you have not configured your Mythbackend properly. In Kodi, if I watch a TV channel from a broadcaster (OTA), press record and change to another OTA channel then as long as I have a free tuner I can change to another broadcaster. Check the way you configured your tuners and 'inputs' in Mythbackend.

[raptorjr]

Perhaps you have not configured your Mythbackend properly. In Kodi, if I watch a TV channel from a broadcaster (OTA), press record and change to another OTA channel then as long as I have a free tuner I can change to another broadcaster. Check the way you configured your tuners and 'inputs' in Mythbackend.

Have you tried how that works in MythTV frontend for you?

Because that was my question, does it work like it should in Kodi? From your answer it seems to work right in Kodi. MythTV Frontend can not handle that. Just looking for reasons to throw out MythTV frontend and use Kodi instead. But since it does require some work to do that I just wanted to know if this thing, which is annoying in MythTV Frontend, does work in Kodi. Not worth it to put in a lot of work to make the switch and then Kodi has the same problem.

But now when RPi3 is released I'm tempted to buy one and try. Would let me experiment more with Kodi and Mythtv backend, and test things myself.

[rpcameron]

If you have multiple tuners, when you initially set up your backend it should be configured to automatically give you a second tuner when you want to switch away from an in-progress recording; this is generally done by assigned the same input to the tuners.

If you have multiple tuners, and this behavior is not happening (whether in mythfrontend or Kodi), then your problem is most likely with your backend setup. If mythfrontend is not working correctly, then it does not follow that Kodi would behave differently. You should get your backend setup, configured and tested wholly with MythTV before assigning blame to Kodi.

[raptorjr]

You should get your backend setup, configured and tested wholly with MythTV before assigning blame to Kodi.

I have never blamed Kodi.

I asked if it worked in Kodi and LeKodeur said that it did. And then I asked if he had tried it in MythTV frontend and got the same behavior. Which would have been interesting to know from someone with a working setup.

Maybe there is some configuration that is missing in my backend. But when I ask the same question on the MythTV forum/mailinglist I got the answer that I had to manually switch to a free tuner. Which made me think that MythTV frontend cant handle it automatically. Which don't surprise me since very few, maybe none, of the developers is very interested in LiveTV.

[LeKodeur]

Hi @raptorjr

Have done some testing for you using MythFrontend. I believe, as I and @cpcameron mentioned earlier, that you probably have not setup your Mythbackend cards and inputs settings correctly. In MythFrontend I recorded 2 channels from a same broadcaster (the 7-Network) and then watched another channel from a different broadcaster (9-Network) without having to manually do anything ... I also recorded that channel at the same time as the other two, and again, no manual intervention on what tuners to select was required, the free tuner selection was made automatically (I have a quad-tuner card). You can see below the results from 'Mythtv-status' and you can see that tuners 5, 7 and 8 were selected (automatically).

Code:

xbmc@xbmc-3:~$ mythtv-status

MythTV status for localhost
===========================
Status..........: 2016-03-06 16:26:48
Total Disk Space: Total space is 875.4 GB, with 193.4 GB used (22.1%)
Guide Data......: No guide data!

Encoders:
xbmc-3 (5) - Watching LiveTV
xbmc-3 (7) - Recording
xbmc-3 (8) - Recording

Recording Now:
The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (9Gem) Ends: 17:34:38
Storage Hoarders (7TWO) Ends: 16:31:35
Turtleman (7mate) Ends: 16:34:10

Scheduled Recordings:
2016-03-06 18:30:01 - I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! (TEN Digital)
2016-03-06 19:01:00 - My Kitchen Rules (7 Digital)
2016-03-06 21:22:16 - The Amazing Noughties - New (Channel 9 Brisbane)
2016-03-06 22:49:57 - The Graham Norton Show - Encore (TEN Digital)
2016-03-07 08:40:00 - French News (SBS HD)
2016-03-07 19:30:00 - I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! (TEN Digital)
2016-03-07 19:32:05 - My Kitchen Rules (7 Digital)
2016-03-07 20:42:48 - The Farmer Wants A Wife - New (9HD Brisbane)
2016-03-07 23:00:00 - Sherlock Holmes: Elementary (TEN Digital)

Hope this now answers your query in detail :-)

[raptorjr]

Hi @raptorjr

Have done some testing for you using MythFrontend. I believe, as I and @cpcameron mentioned earlier, that you probably have not setup your Mythbackend cards and inputs settings correctly. In MythFrontend I recorded 2 channels from a same broadcaster (the 7-Network) and then watched another channel from a different broadcaster (9-Network) without having to manually do anything ... I also recorded that channel at the same time as the other two, and again, no manual intervention on what tuners to select was required, the free tuner selection was made automatically (I have a quad-tuner card). You can see below the results from 'Mythtv-status' and you can see that tuners 5, 7 and 8 were selected (automatically).

Code:

xbmc@xbmc-3:~$ mythtv-status

MythTV status for localhost
===========================
Status..........: 2016-03-06 16:26:48
Total Disk Space: Total space is 875.4 GB, with 193.4 GB used (22.1%)
Guide Data......: No guide data!

Encoders:
xbmc-3 (5) - Watching LiveTV
xbmc-3 (7) - Recording
xbmc-3 (8) - Recording

Recording Now:
The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (9Gem) Ends: 17:34:38
Storage Hoarders (7TWO) Ends: 16:31:35
Turtleman (7mate) Ends: 16:34:10

Scheduled Recordings:
2016-03-06 18:30:01 - I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! (TEN Digital)
2016-03-06 19:01:00 - My Kitchen Rules (7 Digital)
2016-03-06 21:22:16 - The Amazing Noughties - New (Channel 9 Brisbane)
2016-03-06 22:49:57 - The Graham Norton Show - Encore (TEN Digital)
2016-03-07 08:40:00 - French News (SBS HD)
2016-03-07 19:30:00 - I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! (TEN Digital)
2016-03-07 19:32:05 - My Kitchen Rules (7 Digital)
2016-03-07 20:42:48 - The Farmer Wants A Wife - New (9HD Brisbane)
2016-03-07 23:00:00 - Sherlock Holmes: Elementary (TEN Digital)

Hope this now answers your query in detail :-)

Thank you for testing. But one last question, is your channels divided into MUXes by your provider?

For example:

MUX1
Channel 1
Channel 2
Channel 3

MUX2
Channel 4
Channel 5
Channel 6

I have two tuners with two virtual tuners on both, so in total 4 tuners, and all have same input. If the system starts a scheduled recording, tuners is allocated from the front, and I have no problem watching LiveTV and change channels since LiveTV choose tuner from the end of the list.

The problem is when the system does nothing and I start LiveTV on f.ex. channel 6. If I decide, when watching, that I want to record channel 6 that works fine, the systems starts to record that channel. But if I know want to change channel away from channel 6 without exit to the main menu, the only channels I can watch is channel 4-5. Channels on the same MUX and use the free virtual tuner on the same card. Even though I have a completely free tuner(card) in my system MythTV wont change to channel 1-3 without first exit to main menu or change card manually.

I'm sorry if I maybe misunderstood your test, but is this the same scenario as you tested? In that case I need to start experimenting with the backend setup, but don't really know what to do different. Could try and remove the virtual tuners and see if that make any change.

[rpcameron]

I'm not sure how MythTV works with multiple services on the same mux, but I have heard that as long as your channel is a different service on the same mux, then you can continue recording and it will switch the display to the new service without using a different tuner.

I'm in the US, and our corporate overlords have decided that DVB is too corporate unfriendly. Therefore our cable systems don't really support this type of freedom. My setup involves 2 HDHomeRun Primes, each of which has 3 tuners. In MythTV I had to mark each tuner of each device as a tuner, and I've assigned them all to the same input. MythTV automatically set it up so that when a request for a new channel occurs when a recording is in progress that it will stream the channel on a new available tuner.

(As an aside, why is it that no backend seems to be able to determine that if a tuner is already on a channel when a new client requests that channel that it cannot just stream that one tuner to multiple clients? Why does it need to allocate a secnd tuner? This would also solve the problem of allowing back-to-back recordings to have larger before and after paddings ... Oh well)

[raptorjr]

I'm not sure how MythTV works with multiple services on the same mux, but I have heard that as long as your channel is a different service on the same mux, then you can continue recording and it will switch the display to the new service without using a different tuner.

In theory, if I have one physical tuner and configure it to have 3 virtual tuners I could watch 3 different channels as long as they are on the same MUX, as shown in my example above. I'm thinking that maybe it is the virtual tuners that are giving me problem. After I start to record a LiveTV show and want to switch channels, MythTV get one of the free virtual tuners, but since the virtual tuner is part of the physical card that is doing a recording it fails when trying to tune to a channel on a different MUX. Because that requires it to actually allocate one of the free tuner that is on the other physical card.

I'll guess I'll have to live with that bug if that is the case. But I will try to remove my virtual tuners to verify if that is the problem.

[LeKodeur]

In my test above, tuners #7 and #8 (both recording at same time) are on one 'physical' tuner (i.e. #7 and #8 are 'virtual' tuners and are recording from 'same broadcaster MUX'). Then I selected a channel from a different broadcaster (different MUX) and MythTV automatically activated tuner #5 (the 1st 'virtual' tuner on a different 'physical' tuner). So my test was a little different to the one you describe (in my case I was doing 2 recordings (not just 1) before switching to another MUX) but I'm sure I have implemented your situation many times in Kodi (I don't use the Mythtv Frontend) and never had any issues like you describe.

So yes, check your backend setup, in particular:
Capture Cards: you should have x1 entry per #tuners (physical), in your case you should have something like DVB-T 0 and DVB-T 1 if you're using DVB-T tuners. In #Recordings I've set mine to 2 for each tuner entry. I have 4 tuners so that allows me to make 8 simultaneous recordings which is more than enough for me. You could try set this to 3 if you are sure that one tuner can let you do 3 simultaneous recordings from a same MUX (it's driver dependent).

check out: http://parker1.co.uk/mythtv_ubuntu.php

[LeKodeur]

Done some further testing. Setting the Max # recordings to 4, I was able to record 4 shows simultaneously from the same broadcaster MUX using one tuner only. That gives me the possibility to simultaneously record 16 shows (assuming 4 services per MUX and 4 boradcaster MUXes are available for recording at the same time) ... or combinations thereof with liveTV streams (i.e simultaneous recording of 15 services + 1 live feed or 14 recordings + 2 live feeds etc). So I have reduced that value to 3 (12 simultaneous streams max) so as not to push the HDD too far (the CPU would cope with this many recordings/live feeds but the HDD would struggle to keep-up say if I have 16 recordings going at once and I'm also watching a movie in full HD in Kodi for example). Note that the live feeds are also recorded on HDD.

Something you should consider are the 'channel priority' settings ... many people get tricked by that ... I did! By default the channel priorities are all 0 (zero). Some of my EIT broadcast services transmit the same material on SD (576) and HD (1080) services (same MUX) so I use to set the HD channels with a higher priority to make sure the material I wanted recorded was going to be sourced from the HD service. However, that has a drawback. If you decide to record any other service on that tuner that has a channel priority set lower (or set to 0 default) then this will be flagged as a "conflict" as a recording with higher priority is already active, and won't let you record these channels/services. People may be tricked in thinking that their tuners don't allow multi-ops when that happens ... resetting channel priorities to default (zero) will fix that, so need to account for these types of dependencies and not get tricked

[raptorjr]

I haven't had the time to investigate my setup yet, but it is on the todo list.

Appreciate all the testing you have done.