[Julian2403]

Hi All,

I have a HP micorserver a NL40, with 8GB of ram, 120GB SSD and 1 TB disk and a Radeon 5440 graphics card, and a blackgold Satellite tuner card. I want to turn it to a kodi player, no problems there, I've used Kodibuntu for years works like a dream, but I also want to add the TV tuner on the same box.

I've looked for any guides, but they're all based on separate machines. Has anyone done this? or seen a guide. I suspect I'm going to put on Ubuntu 14.04, even though it's end of life, and add kodi and the back end. Any suggestions on the easiest TV backend. Pausing live TV is a big deal for wife.

The reason for 14.04 is the microserver is a dual core 1.3 not enough for 16.x

Could someone offer me some guidance?

Thank you for your help

[Spirou]

Hi Julian2403,

it is absolutely possible to have PVR and kodi running on the same box. I switched from Windows MCE to kodi almost a year ago and after using openelec for a while- which, by the way, offers an easy way to install kodi including pvr backend on a broad variety of platforms - I have installed kodi on Ubuntu 14.04 with VDR backend on the same machine.

VDR is my personal favorite because it is easy to setup, running stable and offers permanent time shift (pausing live tv) in combination with vnsi server plugin and kodi vnsi pvr addon.

Since VDR is maintained by a German developer you'll find lot of support in the German speaking forums, however, it might be difficult to find your way around if you're not fluent in German.

TVHeandend is another alternative which personally I find "challenging" to configure. My experience with TVH was that it is not running as smoothly as VDR, but users are reporting it is improving constantly and some even prefer it to VDR - once you have it properly configured it gets better. The advantage is, that you'll find better support in English speaking communities.

This is just my personal recommendation. In case you'd like to try out VDR as your backend I can give you a few more details on how to set it up - beside what you'll find in the kodi forum.

[Julian2403]

Thanks Spirou, much apprechiated. Did you come across any guides in your travels?

[Spirou]

What version of Kodi are you currently running (Jarivs or Krypton)?

For Krypton you might want to use vdr 2.3.1, which you'd have to compile yourself - I can give you some guidance on that if neccessary.

For Jarvis vdr 2.2.0 from the yavdr Repository will work - Anyway starting with vdr 2.2.0 gives you a good base. vdr 2.3.1 is only required if you want to use new EPG based timers in Kodi Krypton release.

For vdr 2.2.0 install follow these steps:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:yavdr/stable-vdr
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install vdr-plugin-vnsiserver

The last command will also install vdr

In order for vnsiserver to talk to your kodi vdr vnsi clients you need to

sudo nano /var/lib/vdr/plugins/vnsiserver/allowed_hosts.conf

and make sure your localhost address (127.0.0.1) is configured - as well as your lockal subnet in case you have clients on other machines.

Reboot

This should get you up and running with live tv in a few minutes - provided you have a valid /var/lib/vdr/channels.conf and the kodi vdr vnsi client addon activated.

Depending on your location you may find yourself a channels.conf from

http://channelpedia.yavdr.com/gen/

This is just in a nutshell, but - without the bells and whistles - it should give you good base to start from. Let me know if it worked

[nickr]

Mythtv also works well on ubuntu.

[black_eagle]

As does TVHeadend......Decisions, decisions !!!!