Kodi Community Forum

Hey guys. Please bear with me as I try to determine how to set up XBMC to be a replacement for my current SageTV setup.

I've been using SageTV for many years now and am overall happy with the product. I've always had my eye on XBMC and even had a set up on the old Xbox but I could never really integrate it with Sage so I left it alone. Last year, Sage sold their product to Google and I'm looking to XBMC to be a replacement for what will probably be another abandoned piece of software purchased by Google.

Here are the things that I currently use Sage for:

• Watch recorded tv (with automatic commercial skipping via comskip)
  
• Schedule recordings via an EPG in the gui as well as via the web interface (record by series/new episodes only/keywords,etc)
  
• Watch live tv with pause rewind controls and option to record program after during
  
• Other functions that XBMC handles (Movie collection, Music, Streaming A/V, etc)
  

I am running the Sage server but all viewing are done on 'client' set top boxes (HD200 and two Hauppauge MediaMVP's). I have six tuners (3x analog SD cable input, 3x digital clear QAM). The tuners are Hauppauge HVR-1600, HVR-2250, PVR-150, Silicondust HDHomeRun.

I would like to have a similar set up with XBMC with my current server recording programs and doing the 'grunt work' for the 'client' set top boxes. I've read up a bit and see that I should be able to set up a centralized MySQL database that will keep track of all my media and viewing bookmarks/pauses/etc. I'm still looking at client machines. I have a Raspberry Pi on order and thought it would work well but see it lacks MPEG2 decoding which hurts as most of my recordings are in that format. Perhaps the upcoming Android version will work well on Logitech Revue Google TV boxes, or maybe I'll go with an AppleTV box or even setup a machine using Openelec. I'm pretty open but for now I'm just focusing on getting XBMC PVR set up with my configuration.

With all of that said, I'm asking your help in determining the best approach on setting up XBMC PVR. I've done a bit of research and it looks like the two options I have for use with XBMC PVR under windows for tv capture are Media Portal and For The Record. Looks like FTR leans on Media Portal for analog capture. Can anyone tell me the advantage of using one over the other? Do both have the same setup in XBMC PVR? Will either/both allow me to schedule recordings via the GUI? Will either/both allow me to watch live tv with pause rewind controls and option to record program during watching?

Sorry for all the newbie questions. I have read posts relating to importing Sage recordings as well as some of XBMC PVR but the questions I'm asking are more for how I can go about getting my system transitioned from Sage to XBMC as well as ideas on how to add the client machines and questions on XBMC PVR functionality as well. I may be missing some very important posts in my searching. Your input is greatly appreciated.

I've been watching this post and am disappointed after 2 months that no one has even commented.

I am also curious if there is a commercial skipping option within XBMC (like Replay TV or comskip).

Is this just a case of no one knows?

Thanks

You can use your comskip edl files with XBMC. It removes that portion of the show so if the comskip files aren't perfect you won't be able to ff/rw into the commercial break to fix it.

Take a look at this thread for an add on that allows you to watch your sage recordings under xbmc:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=138838

Im in the same position coming from SageTV. I have a test server to work with, a hdhomerun and a minix neo x5 for an extender. Now is the software part but not sure where to begin. Any one got some pointers?

XBMC isn't really a PVR. It's a PVR front-end. You still have to pick a backend to replace SageTV. I also moved from SageTV and settled on Argus TV for my backend. There is an ArgusTV client included with XBMC, so it makes that part pretty straight forward. Once everything is up and running you can watch live TV from XBMC. You can also schedule recordings from XBMC, but the XBMC setup for timers is very rudimentary, so I do all my scheduling from the web (or the iPhone/iPad client). The last thing I did was used a supplemental tool called ForTheLibrary (named when ArgusTV was called ForTheRecord) that integrates all my recorded TV shows into my TV Show library.

All this is by no means plug and play. Getting ArgusTV setup takes a little work, and getting the guide data setup with the additional data ForTheRecord needs to work properly is definitely a complicated (but not complex) process. But with everything done I have a setup that works really well for me.

I've been eyeing a move to NextPVR lately.