[analogue]

Am trying some different ways to view Myth recordings lately and noticed this was updated today with support for .24, alas it works for me, excelllent contribution and much appreciated!

Few questions:
1. In the Guide, it doesn't appear possible to record a program that is currently airing. For example it's 5:05 right now and I can hit enter on any show in progress but nothing happens-- yet the new recording window comes up fine for anything in the future. Curious if a setting/something I'm missing on my part or just the current state of the add-on.

2. In Watch Recordings, I'd like to have it sorted by Date but descending with newest at the top, currently I can only get it sorted by oldest first: http://i.imgur.com/ve8rD.jpg.

3. I can't see Recordings Schedules or Upcoming Recordings: http://i.imgur.com/GkQyV.jpg though in Test Settings all seems OK: http://i.imgur.com/1nE5g.jpg (And also, likely related to this, in the Guide I can see programs highlighted so they are scheduled to record, but no matter, when I hit enter on them I just get a new recordings menu-- it's not bringing up the program's schedule info, again I'm guessing this is because Mythbox isn't reading the upcoming recording/schedule properly).

Here is the ~/mythbox.log right when I went into Upcoming Recordings: http://pastebin.com/JhjJ46Fm

Thanks a lot for any help, amazing add-on!!

(P.S. I am able to watch recordings as I tried a few and they work fine!)

1. Thats because LiveTV doesn't work with 0.24 backends at the moment. If it was working, the default behavior in the EPG is to start watching live TV for selecting any program that is currently playing or popup the New Recording Schedule dialog if it is not. I'd like to change this so that it will Edit Recording Schedule for existing schedules eventually.

2. You have to flip the arrow on the sort button to toggle ascending/descending

3a. Fixed first of two problems -- http://code.google.com/p/mythbox/source/...baf9828884
3b. Regarding this excerpt from the log, it really doesn't make sense to me unless you've got recordings schedules tied to tuners that you have deleted. Can you confirm?

Code:

tuner = self.tunersById[p.getTunerId()]
KeyError: 0

[Dobyken]

I am running Mythtv backend v0.23 on an old Pentium PC and Mythbox on a fast Windows 7 PC. I can play recorded TV fine, no issues - even HD recordings are perfectly smooth. I have trouble with some Live TV channels e.g. anything BBC or ITV plays ok for a few seconds then starts to jitter. Channel 4 play perfectly. If I try to play any HD channel live, the jitter is much worse and no sound.

I had the same issue when I tried Mythbox on my WinXP system. My myth server is a dual core so it's not the server. Using the built-in XBMC mythtv connection on the XP system gave the same results so it's not a Mythbox problem as I believe it just uses the same xbmc mythtv stream functions. My post in the Windows forum got zero replies.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=84376

[arad85]

Hi all,

I've just setup a couple of xbmcs (one dual core, one atom based) both running linux. The dual core machine has the mythtv backend running on it, the atom is a standalone machine. Both are running 10.0 Dharma. The mythtv backend is: mythtv-backend 0.23.0+fixes24158-0ubuntu2.

The really strange thing is that I can stream live video from the backend to the local xbmc, but I can't stream to the remote. It appears the local machine is using a different method of accessing the file.

15:49:44 T:3056293760 M:2838827008 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: myth://mythtv:[email protected]:6543/channels/5.ts
15:49:44 T:3056293760 M:2838827008 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player):ut MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
15:49:44 T:2770615152 M:2838827008 DEBUG: thread start, auto delete: 0
15:49:44 T:2770615152 M:2838827008 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
15:49:44 T:3053910896 M:2838827008 DEBUG: thread start, auto delete: 0
15:49:44 T:2770615152 M:2838827008 DEBUG: SetupLiveTV - recorder isn't running, let's start it

and the remote when you do the same thing is:

14:24:15 T:3078801280 M:1380745216 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: Opening: myth://mythtv:[email protected]:6543/channels/6.ts
14:24:15 T:3078801280 M:1380745216 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player):ut MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
14:24:15 T:2918943600 M:1380745216 NOTICE: Creating InputStream
14:24:17 T:2918943600 M:1380532224 ERROR: SetupLiveTV - unable to spawn live tv: Failed to setup livetv.
14:24:17 T:2918943600 M:1380532224 ERROR: CDVDPlayer::OpenInputStream - error opening [myth://mythtv:[email protected]:6543/channels/6.ts]
14:24:17 T:2918943600 M:1380532224 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit()
14:24:17 T:2918943600 M:1380532224 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::OnExit() deleting input stream
14:24:17 T:3078801280 M:1380532224 ERROR: Playlist Player: skipping unplayable item: 0, path [myth://mythtv:[email protected]:6543/channels/6.ts]
14:24:17 T:3078801280 M:1380532224 NOTICE: CDVDPlayer::CloseFile()
14:24:17 T:3078801280 M:1380532224 WARNING: CDVDMessageQueue(player):ut MSGQ_NOT_INITIALIZED
14:24:17 T:3078801280 M:1380532224 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: waiting for threads to exit
14:24:17 T:3078801280 M:1380532224 NOTICE: DVDPlayer: finished waiting
14:24:22 T:3078801280 M:1374826496 ERROR: ClearBlock: Trying to clear non existent block /home/xbmc/.xbmc/addons/script.mythbox
1

If you then go back to the server and try and play live on that again, you need to restart the backend as you start getting errors like:

No data written on writeBlock (944 errors)
2011-01-27 16:28:14.750 MythSocket(ffffffffb4b4ca08:69): writeStringList: Error, No data written on writeBlock (943 errors)
2011-01-27 16:28:15.752 MythSocket(ffffffffb4b4ca08:69): writeStringList: Error, No data written on writeBlock (946 errors)

Not sure if that can be of any help to analogue but....

[MikeFellows]

Hi

First time using mythbox but cannot get the setup to work.

When I first launch mythbox it downloads ffmpeg and then takes me to the settings screen. I complete the mysql DB section and then move onto MythTV and the master backend and master backed port are completely greyed out.

so when I try to test settings it is unable to connect to master backend at 127.0.0.1

using windows 7 32bit.

[arad85]

How do you have this configured? Master back end on a Linux machine somewhere on the network but not on your current machine or do you have a win32 build of MythTV backend? The greyed out bit is correct and mythbox seems to pick up the back end from resolving the path to the back end files. For my second Linux machine, I found I needed to export and mount locally the mythTV directory so that mythbox picked up the hostname correctly.

[nakima]

I have a few different xbmc mythbox front ends, and a single backend server. My network runs @ Gig speed, although a few clients only have 100M cards. In addition, I have a front end that speaks over a DD-WRT WiFi bridge using Wifi N. This machine sitting out in WiFi land seems to be my problem child....

This is an acer revo (atom ion) that runs win7. Using WiFi, it can playback any HD recorded streams without any issues. When I try to watch live TV, it stutters like crazy and is un-watchable.

I have taken this same problem machine and dropped a ethernet cable for direct connection. When it is hard-wired..... everything works well. Remove the hard-wire connection and live TV stutters again through mythbox front end. This same machine has an embeded WiFi-N adapter, and it acts the same as using the DD-WRT bridged router.

My connection speeds for my bridged router report around 144M. I know this number is not realistic for true bandwidth.... but I also know this connection will support streaming HD signals from a variety of other sources without issue. It seems like just the live TV in mythbox really has problems over wifi.

I tried to find an answer to how to get wifi streaming to work better, but right now I think my only option is to try to fish cables through walls.

Anyone with a tip around this? Some of these symptoms seemed like what others are reporting.... but I think (in my case at least) live TV thru mythbox seems to be very sensitive to network connection type.

[myrison]

This barely qualifies as customized, but I do find it's useful and looks good (IMHO), so I wanted to post a link here for anyone interested in doing the same thing. Basically what this mod does is replaces the PVR / TV option buried in the Transparency skin with a direct link to the script that launches MythBox. There are other ways to accomplish the same thing in the skin, but I liked this method best and wanted to share it.

Customized skin screenshot:


It is covered in a bit more detail with download links to the files in this post on my blog if anyone is interested.

NB: I posted this in the Transparency skin thread yesterday and then realized it'll probably hit a lot more interested MythBox users here, so if you happened to notice the double-post, that's why.

[adamc]

Anyone managed to get this going on ATV2 XBMC yet?

I can't seem to work out how to map either an NFS or SMB share locally:

Code:

Apple-TV:/mnt root# mount -t nfs 10.10.20.20:/recordings /mnt/recordings
mount: exec /System/Library/Filesystems/nfs.fs/Contents/Resources/mount_nfs for /mnt/recordings: No such file or directory

There's no nfs.fs directory there.

SMB libraries must be there, I have SMB video and music sources but:

Code:

Apple-TV:~ root# smbclient
-sh: smbclient: command not found
Apple-TV:~ root# apt-cache search smbclient

[arad85]

It is covered in a bit more detail with download links to the files in this post on my blog if anyone is interested.

Your download link points to a machine on your local network so we can't get at the files

[myrison]

Doh! Sorry. Thanks for posting to let me know... That's my Blog software outsmarting me with the local link vs. external. It's updated now in the original post. Direct download link here. Thanks for letting me know.

[panaman]

i've been messing with this off and on for a week now.... my video stutters when I play Live TV in mythbox. here is my setup.
I am running a ubuntu 10.10 file server with the mythtv backend and an older haughpauge PCI WinTV Go tuner card. The server is an AMD Athlon X2 4000+, 2GB of ram and 5TB of storage. My XBMC is running version 10 of XBMC live installed on the 160GB Internel HD. It has an athlon II X2 250 cpu, 2GB of ram and a Geforce 210. My network is Gbit ethernet. If i load up the mythtv frontend on the server itself the video is smooth and does not stutter. It just stutters remotely from other machines. I've also tried it on m windows 7 machine (I used MythTV player for windows) It also studdered and my Windows 7 machie is a Quad Core i7. I can't see any of these systems being underpowered..... granted my server is the slowest machine.. but its still a dualcore athlon.
Anyone else have this issue?

[arad85]

Noipe. Plays fine for me as far as I can tell... Server E8400 based machine, client Atom/Ion based machine running xbmc connected via gbit... What happens if you play the files that stutter locally on the client?

[nakima]

@panaman -
Did you try the myth:// source outside of the mythbox plugin? Does that work any better?

My setup stutters with both methods, and just on wifi. It is strange, my server is single core atom (no video card) and client is dual core with ion. I know the single core ion as a server can be concerning.... but I can record four shows at a time without a problem (to be watched later).

My hunch is still some type of networking issue is going on. Something to do with live TV flushing to file, and the client not getting the updated file contents quick enough across the network. This is not a CPU or memory bound activity - this is an IO bound issue. (The above opinions are my own uneducated hunch).

[panaman]

@panaman -
Did you try the myth:// source outside of the mythbox plugin? Does that work any better?

My setup stutters with both methods, and just on wifi. It is strange, my server is single core atom (no video card) and client is dual core with ion. I know the single core ion as a server can be concerning.... but I can record four shows at a time without a problem (to be watched later).

My hunch is still some type of networking issue is going on. Something to do with live TV flushing to file, and the client not getting the updated file contents quick enough across the network. This is not a CPU or memory bound activity - this is an IO bound issue. (The above opinions are my own uneducated hunch).

yeah i tried it outside the mythbox plugin and its the same result... I also then installed mythtv frontend on my netbook to see if maybe it was something to do with xbmc.... and i got the same result.. stuttering video...
I am starting to think that it has something to do with the PCI bus... since basically the card is PCI and then the GB ethernet is PCI express .. maybe there is somekind of bottle neck in the motherboad bus between the PCI and PCI express slot.

This is the motherboard that is in my server... its a little old, but its still pretty descent board.
GIGABYTE GA-MA790FX-DS5
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6813128074

I have my WinTV Go tuner card in the PCI slot on the end.

[nakima]

Almost fix for live video playback....

After moving my router/bridge setup around, tinkering with the routers cpu settings (recommended in DD-WRT forums), and changing the wifi channels..... I can almost playback live video over a pair of bridged WRT320N routers. Live video directly from HDHomerun tuners always works fine, recorded TV always works fine, other HD formats work fine.... just the live TV is the problem (albeit very close to working now with less stuttering).

I know I might be sounding like a shill, but I still suspect network issues in some of these cases. Check you QOS settings on the router, look for voip / skype /vpn devices. I would do whatever you can to isolate your myth server and front end, and if that starts working.... add devices back to the mix slowly to find the problem.

I have given up on wireless working, and will be running a cable soon .