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I've finally had a chance to have a bit of a play with the Live TV (aka PVR) support in XBMC with the MythTV Addon.

Below are some suggestions for changes to the Live TV settings layout. If there is some support for these or parts of these changes I'll talk with some of the other devs to see what would need to happen for the changes to be made. So please provide feedback / other suggestions for improvement.

1) Rather than "Enabling" Live TV, I think it would be an improvement to instead have a message showing in the Live TV settings panel if a PVR addon hasn't been installed yet. Something like:

A PVR addon must be installed before Live TV settings can be configured.
A link to the list of PVR addons would be nice so they could install straight away.

2) Once there is a PVR addon installed then present the following panels.

Supported Features
This would list the features that the currently installed PVR addon supports, e.g. Timeshifting, Commercial Breaks, etc.
It would be useful if this could also link to the configuration of the addon directly rather than having to go through the Addons area.

Playback
Select the last watched channel when XBMC starts
Select the last watched channel when switching to Live TV
Start Live TV: "Minimized", "Fullscreen"
Show Live TV signal quality in OSD
----------
Confirm channel change by pressing OK: "Never", "Only when using channel number", "Only when using channel up/down", "Always"
Delay before channel is automatically selected: "No delay", "1 second", "2 seconds", etc.
Show channel information when changing channels
Delay before hiding channel information: "No delay", "1 second", "2 seconds", etc.

Live Channels
Use channel numbers from: "PVR addon", "XBMC Channel Manager"
Use channel groups from: "PVR addon", "XBMC Channel Manager"
Open XBMC Channel Manager
----------
Scan for missing channels
Scan for missing channel icons
Reload channels

Program Guide
Default view:
Number of days to display:
Show 'No information available' labels
----------
Update the guide every:
Do not update the guide while watching Live TV
----------
Store the guide in the XBMC database
Reload guide

Recording
Instant record duration
Default recording priority
Default recording lifetime
Recording margin before scheduled start
Recording margin after scheduled end
----------
Show notifications about scheduled recordings

Power Saving (I'm entirely guessing at what the existing options are actually for)
Allow shutdown only when not recording
Shutdown margin after recording ends
----------
Automatically wakeup to record
Wakeup margin before recording starts
----------
Turn on daily wakeup
Daily wakeup time
----------
Wakeup command

Parental Control (I don't know what this is this for)
Turn on parental control
Change PIN
Unlock duration

This thread got over a hundred views in the Help and Support area with no feedback. Curious as to whether people in this forum will voice any opinions...

Hi,

First i like to say what a great job you guys have done on PVR support!. I am using it with the cmyth plugin and one thing holding me back from using this for everyday use (WAF) is browsing channels up/down. My nr 1 feature wold be implementation of "Confirm channel change by pressing OK". To me it does not make sense just having a delay here.

Many thanks Dteirney, Cfetzer, Janbar and others!

This sounds perfect. The settings menu needs a clean up for sure. There are some options that are puzzling to me. The current 'power saving' option only work on Linux (as far as I'm concerned) and I'm not even sure why they appear in a windows install as it just confuses me.

Cheers.

There is an option to start livetv on boot. Maybe add the same option when the system resume. s. Anyway, i didnt see it in your post

Just as a thought an option to enable LiveTV only when a LAN/Wifi is connected would be great, I have a windows7 tablet which I run XBMC on but when its not at home it gets upset when it cant find tvheadend so I have to disable LiveTV then when I am home enable it again.

looking good to me

Quote:Confirm channel change by pressing OK: "Never", "Only when using channel number", "Only when using channel up/down", "Always"

will give this one a try after Frodo as it was my suggestion But if anybody feels like implementing it, go ahead right now!

Quote:Show channel information when changing channels
Delay before hiding channel information: "No delay", "1 second", "2 seconds", etc.

those could probably be combined? I mean, what would "no delay" do? Show and instantly hide again? I'd probably also make this a dropdown/select box like the "confirm channel change with ok" thingy, like:

Show channel information when changing channels: never, 1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, ... 10s


edit: just asked our release manager, and this settings cleanup would be ok to go in for Frodo, even once we are in beta stage (only trouble free stuff ofc) - so if we get enough feedback we might be able to at least do some of it for Frodo.

All looks like sensible stuff to me..

And I agree that;

Show channel information when changing channels
and
Delay before hiding channel information

Should both be combined into something like;

'On channel change, show channel information for'; (0sec - Never, 1sec, 2sec, 3sec etc)

One area that does need looking at (IMO) is timeline view - somehow it never seems to show that much info compared to EPG's i'm used to (titles are usually cut off etc) - plus the main problem of no 'Now' indicator, EG. a vertical bar that is at the current time overlayed on the timeline grid, which makes things 1000x easier when scanning to see what's on now - But I guess that work is outside the scope of this topic

+1 for above ^^

A virtical bar that moves with current time, to show exactly where your at in the timeline would be fantastic!!

Thinking about it, maybe these two could do with being re-shuffled too?;

Confirm channel change by pressing OK: "Never", "Only when using channel number", "Only when using channel up/down", "Always"
Delay before channel is automatically selected: "No delay", "1 second", "2 seconds", etc.

into;

Switch to channel (when entered using channel number); (On OK, After 1sec, After 2sec, After 3 Sec...etc)
Switch to channel (when using channel +/- or up/down); (On OK, After 1sec, After 2sec, After 3 Sec...etc)

Just a small question. Delay before channel change, what is it good for? Looking at most of the PVR addon discussions everybody want fast channel changes so i don't really understand the benefit of this setting?

If it is a delay when entering channel numbers, so the channel don't change before you have entered all numbers i think it is a setting that should be set to a default value, maybe 2 seconds after the last keypress. And the possibility to change this value should be moved to advancedsettings.xml. I think that settings should be kept to a minimum, only things that are really necessary should be easy to access. It is never good to expose to much settings to the user, it gets messy fast. I know, i have been using MythTV for a long time =)

The delay is set to allow OSD INFO to be shown before the channel makes a switch. So if you have a delay enabled, you are able to cycle CHANNEL OSD INFO for the channels, allowing you to see what's on before the channel makes a switch. On a lot of skins however, this does not work... Something skinners need to fix.

Hope you understand the benefit now.

Ok, then i understand. For those who don't like to press OK to change channel and just want to wait for the channel to change.

One setting that i like in MythTV is the automatic popup at the end of a recording asking if i want to delete/keep/re-record the show. Most of my recordings i only watch once and it is very convenient with this popup. But i guess this is more of a feature request since i don't think this is possible in XBMC?