[funkhouser]

Why does Kodi shit itself so badly when it comes to Live TV issues? For software that otherwise works brilliantly I keep having to tediously work Kodi through unshitting itself when it comes to Live TV problems.

This is across various add ons, backends, varieties, versions of Kodi. It's not one specific issue. It's Kodi. I've had it on OSMC, Librelec & Linux.

By shitting itself I mean a few things. Kodi crashes when enabling and disabling PVR add ons (addons restart are required for config changes but Kodi can't handle it, why was the option to disable Live TV removed?). One PVR not starting correctly (even with something like a server IP change) stops the other correctly configured addons being accessed via Live TV, just says PVR Manager is starting. This is crazy. Another issue is that Kodi can't reset TV data when a PVR hasn't started correctly, stalls at 10%, yet another reboot scenario. You can't even gracefully disable TV anymore while you change PVR add on settings or change backends/addons. Also, there is no error reporting on screen. Eg when the Kodi log gives you a 401 on an IPTV add on why not tell the user that on screen?

Again, this is not a criticism of Kodi as such. I'm not ungrateful and I do donate. Kodi works flawlessly for me except when it comes to handling even small issues with Live TV. Which is why this is so frustrating. Is this a general experience, are there changes coming or am I just unlucky?

Thanks.

[Martijn]

Unlucky cause mine works fine. Install v18 to start with

[rpcameron]

Part of the root of these issues has to do with the maturity of the PVR subsystem. For a long time it was mostly neglected, and only within the past 2 years has it become usable as a true STB replacement. These issues are probably going to persist until the code base and feature set attains a level of stability.

[ksooo]

Why does Kodi shit itself so badly when it comes to Live TV issues? For software that otherwise works brilliantly I keep having to tediously work Kodi through unshitting itself when it comes to Live TV problems.

This is across various add ons, backends, varieties, versions of Kodi. It's not one specific issue. It's Kodi. I've had it on OSMC, Librelec & Linux.

By shitting itself I mean a few things. Kodi crashes when enabling and disabling PVR add ons (addons restart are required for config changes but Kodi can't handle it, why was the option to disable Live TV removed?). One PVR not starting correctly (even with something like a server IP change) stops the other correctly configured addons being accessed via Live TV, just says PVR Manager is starting. This is crazy. Another issue is that Kodi can't reset TV data when a PVR hasn't started correctly, stalls at 10%, yet another reboot scenario. You can't even gracefully disable TV anymore while you change PVR add on settings or change backends/addons. Also, there is no error reporting on screen. Eg when the Kodi log gives you a 401 on an IPTV add on why not tell the user that on screen?

Again, this is not a criticism of Kodi as such. I'm not ungrateful and I do donate. Kodi works flawlessly for me except when it comes to handling even small issues with Live TV. Which is why this is so frustrating. Is this a general experience, are there changes coming or am I just unlucky?

Thanks.

We are constantly working on improving PVR. For more than three years I was basically the only Kodi PVR core developer and I spend hundreds of hours of my free time to make Kodi PVR better. Sorry, but I don't have more time!

Assuming you are talking about v17 I suggest to give v18 a try. Though not final yet, it runs very stable for many people and PVR was greatly improved. But please do not expect it to be 'perfect'. There is still some work to do...

Fort instance, I fixed many things in the area of enabling/disabling add-ons and support for simultaneous use of multiple pvr add-ons was improved and fixed.

BTW: I understand that error handling is important, but why don't you just try to get a stable setup as a "workaround" for the shitty error handling you encounter?

[AshG]

We are constantly working on improving PVR. For more than three years I was basically the only Kodi PVR core developer and I spend hundreds of hours of my free time to make Kodi PVR better. Sorry, but I don't have more time! 

Ahhh it's all about me me  me ! how dare you have a life!
 @funkhouser  I can definitely recommend V18, it's very stable for an Alpha, I've been using it for the last 2 months as my main living room TV, it withstand the test of two kids, a wife and the occasional dog sitting on the remote compared that to 2 years ago its a very different story and that's very much thanks to the gentleman in the above post who's put the hard work in.

But I also do think it very much depends on the TV server/PVR addon that you use as well.

[ksooo]

We are constantly working on improving PVR. For more than three years I was basically the only Kodi PVR core developer and I spend hundreds of hours of my free time to make Kodi PVR better. Sorry, but I don't have more time! 

Ahhh it's all about me me  me ! how dare you have a life!

Yeah. Shame on me. ;-)

[Atreyu]

I have not had one soiled diper using Kodi pvr backends. My experience has been quite the opposite. I have been surprised repeately over the growing number of features and improvements and easecof configuration.

I have enjoyed the pvr experience and am truly thankful for all the work put into it, especially by ksooo.

I think you might need to read up on pvr some more, because it sounds like the bulk of your troubles are user errors.

Good luck!

[tjay260476]

For me, the only time Kodi soils itself is when I do a reboot, it freezes and looses connection to the pvr, but this has also happened to the MySQL shared database, v17.6 here, but nothing a reboot can’t handle. TVH is the backend on an Ubuntu VM.

[Doktor-X]

My issue is playback of tvheadend recordings that are buffering and stuttering if i try to playback video from kodi itself using htsp protocol but if i use TVHClient app on android and send http url its working just fine

[nickr]

I find mythtv backend with pvr.mythtv in 17.6 to be very stable. Thanks for your efforts ksooo (and janbar).

[bbcaddict]

I found this thread searching "kodi 18 pvr problems".
I just installed kodi 18 on a raspberry pi zero w  and I find it worse than kodi 17 (in fact I'm switching back right after posting this):

• I press the ok button and I don't see the information and guide icons that where there in kodi 17 (only the channels, teletext and options icons)
  
• up and down don't change the channel but show the current epg of the next/previous channel and I have to confirm if with the ok button, that's ok but...
  
• kodi doesn't treat the new channel as a pvr channel but as a recording, i.e. no channels icon when I press ok, up/down don't show the epg, etc.
  

Are these known issues?
I case it matters, the backend is vdr.

[ksooo]

I found this thread searching "kodi 18 pvr problems".
I just installed kodi 18 on a raspberry pi zero w  and I find it worse than kodi 17 (in fact I'm switching back right after posting this):

• I press the ok button and I don't see the information and guide icons that where there in kodi 17 (only the channels, teletext and options icons)
  
• up and down don't change the channel but show the current epg of the next/previous channel and I have to confirm if with the ok button, that's ok but...
  
• kodi doesn't treat the new channel as a pvr channel but as a recording, i.e. no channels icon when I press ok, up/down don't show the epg, etc.
  

Are these known issues?
I case it matters, the backend is vdr.

Never heard about this kind of problems. Without a log we cannot say/fix anything.

And there is a setting for "Confirm channel switch with ok".

[bbcaddict]

Never heard about this kind of problems. Without a log we cannot say/fix anything.

And there is a setting for "Confirm channel switch with ok". 

I knew about that setting, I didn't touch it while upgrading from 17 to 18, however revising it I saw it was enabled. Anyway, as I said, that's ok (but now I unchecked it).

What's not ok are the missing guide (though this time it was present)/info icons and the fact that after switching channel the new stream isn't treated as a pvr channel (i.e. no channels/info/guide icons).
The log is here https://paste.kodi.tv/ekamunaved.kodi

I selected a channel and did a channel up, I stopped the playback and repeated.

[ksooo]

Never heard about this kind of problems. Without a log we cannot say/fix anything.

And there is a setting for "Confirm channel switch with ok". 

I knew about that setting, I didn't touch it while upgrading from 17 to 18, however revising it I saw it was enabled. Anyway, as I said, that's ok (but now I unchecked it).

What's not ok are the missing guide (though this time it was present)/info icons and the fact that after switching channel the new stream isn't treated as a pvr channel (i.e. no channels/info/guide icons).
The log is here https://paste.kodi.tv/ekamunaved.kodi

I selected a channel and did a channel up, I stopped the playback and repeated.

Please activate pvr component logging, otherwise the log does not contain the info I need.

[ksooo]

15:23:30.057 T:2975613536 NOTICE: -----------------------------------------------------------------------
15:23:30.057 T:2975613536 NOTICE: Starting Kodi (18.0-BETA4 Git:20181011-5251f2f3c1-dirty). Platform: Linux ARM 32-bit
15:23:30.058 T:2975613536 NOTICE: Using Unknown Kodi x32 build (version for Raspberry Pi)

Where do you get your Kodi build from?