[Rickenbacker]

I'm ready to install a back-end after having had an xbmc setup for more than a year, and I've experimented a little with both tvheadend and with myth. I can't make up my mind which one to use so I would like to pull on some collective wisdom.

I primarily want the backend to record TV for later viewing, live tv is a bonus but not an absolute must. I'm in the UK and I want to record DVB-T stuff (Freeview). So here is what I've found, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Myth:
-More complex to configure
+Great series support.
+If a movie can't be recorded because of schedule conflicts and it then gets re-transmitted later myth figures it out and records it then. I seem to recall from my testing (I had it running on a laptop for a month) that it would even pick it up from another channel (for example the +1 channels that show the same thing as the main channel but one hour later).
+Records multiple programs from 1 tuner if they are all on the same mux.
+I can specify a maximum amount of disk space to use and myth will delete by age to keep within the specified amount.

TVHeadend:
+Much less complexity!
+Better xbmc integration now and in the future (never actually tried this, but that is my impression from reading in the forums, am I correct?)
-Doesn't handle series very well (am I correct?)
-Can't record more than one program per tuner (am I correct?)
-I have to delete recordings manually, tvheadend doesn't handle this (granted, that could be done with some scripting and a cron job).

[tehninjo0]

Hi Rick!
I am sort of at the same point you found yourself when you posted this thread. I'd love to hear any insights you have gathered since - especially in light of the Eden release. Much appreciated.

[Quaith]

I use tvheadend myself and I can record 2 channels at once on the same mux and when I delete recordings in XBMC it also deletes the file

[dverhelst]

Hi,

I am in the process of setting it all up with tvheadend but _now_ I see that timeshifting is not possible with livetv using tvheadend.

I am using the xbmc-pvr port from the opdenkamp-port and I was wondering if xbmc looks/acts the same with a different backend and if I could pause live-tv from within xbmc with the mythbackend...

[Begall]

Timeshifting LiveTV doesn't work whatever backend you're using, as XBMC-PVR does not yet support it. As for deleting things in TVHeadend, grab the latest git build and you'll find that functionality is included.

[dverhelst]

Timeshifting LiveTV doesn't work whatever backend you're using, as XBMC-PVR does not yet support it. As for deleting things in TVHeadend, grab the latest git build and you'll find that functionality is included.

Thanks! Any idea on planning for this feature? If not, i'll google myself to utter wisdom.

[adamsutton]

Just in case people stumble across this post, I'd like to bring things up to date and point out a few mistakes

1. TVHeadend will have series link support shortly (it's in my branch), but is very dependant on upstream data providers. Currently only XMLTV dd_progid, EIT CRIDs, OpenTV and Freesat are supported. If no proper series link info is available it will attempt to fall back to title matching, which is obviously prone to errors. I DON'T try to clean up titles like MythTV, that in itself is just as prone to error in my opinion. I'd rather push that on to upstream providers.

2. If an episode/movie etc... is missed it should be re-scheduled for recording, if the link can be made, again depends a lot on upstream content. But works for most things to a point. Currently though its channel locked, however I have plans to improve DVR code in the near future.

3. It can record all services on a transponder, its not artificially limited. Think this was already noted.

4. Delete in XBMC will delete in TVH. This was already noted.

[that0n3guy]

I've been using Mythtv for years. I've done a combined frontend/backend setup (my old setup) and now I have a separate frontend/backend setup.

I don't have much experience with XBMC (besides when I used to run it on my original xbox) and am just now starting to look at it as a frontend since PVR support will be in v12.

So with that said, I can't talk about xbmc and mythtv integration, but I can say that mythtv backend setup is way easier than it used to be. Just use mythbuntu, it has some nice additions that make installing and setup easier. I don't know why people are scared of it, its not bad at all w/ mythbuntu.

The only time it gets tricky is if you have weird tv tuner. Get one that you know is supported by linux so you don't have to mess w/ weird drivers.

[calris]

My $0.02 - I have just completed a MythTV 0.25 backend + OpenELEC (latest from git) frontend. Initial setup was a little tricky (had to manually setup the MythTV MySQL database and change the configured IP address from 127.0.0.1 to the actual IP address of the Ethernet interface). But once setup, PVR functionality works perfectly (pause, rewind, fast-forward).

I would say that the next release will have a near perfect MythTV backend / XBMC frontend PVR implementation. From here on in, it will be progressive fine tuning.

I wonder what the major new features in XBMC 13 will be?

[bilbonvidia]

I think this thread needs another update from Adam on Tvheadend :-)

[adamsutton]

What would you like me to say

I think so far what is on here is a reasonable summary of the two. Personally I've not really tried Myth much so I can't really comment, but the main issue people seem to have with it is complexity of configuration. However TVH can suffer from similar problems for more complex setups (though for fairly bog standard single/dual tuner setups its usually quite straight forward).

Myth has a massive following and development team so its always going to have certain strengths that TVH does not, like a MASSIVE feature set. HOwever the flip side of that is resource requirements (and as already mentioned complexity). TVH is very well suited to the backend/frontend model since it doesn't try to involve itself in frontend issues and simply tries to do the backend bit as well as it can and with limited resources. That is why TVH is often installed as a backend on very meagre hardware.

Of course now the project has started to see some more live we are trying to add new features. I still don't believe we are trying to compete on a level playing field with Myth, I wouldn't want to because we'd jeopardise our current position by possibly becoming too bloated. For example we do now have reasonable series linking support (where upstream support is available) and will attempt to improve the pseudo series linking support in coming releases. There is experimental timeshift support in my fork (but it is just that experimental), we hope this will be available at least in a first pass in 3.4.

But ultimately I don't want to get into a my software is better than your software fight on here. Both have their pro's and con's, just be aware that TVH is no longer dormant and therefore is getting updated so both are moving targets again

Adam

[bilbonvidia]

Thanks Adam, if I compile the timeshift fork of tvh do I also need to compile your fork of xbmc to make use of it within xbmc?

[adamsutton]

I wouldn't bother at this stage, its not fit for user consumption.

The support required to properly support it does not exist in XBMC (except in my fork) nor pvr.hts (except in my fork) and even then the implementation/support is incomplete at best.

I'd give it a few weeks yet. When the code is a bit more usable I'll most probably move the branch to the main repo rather than mine.

Adam

[max_gradient]

I've been using mythtv for a couple of years, but wanted to move away from it after building my newest HTPC main reasons being:
1. no cam/softcam support
2. VAAPI playback broken
3. Live-TV very buggy and not getting much dev attention

So I tried xmbc+tvheadend. I really liked it. The Web-GUI setup is not perfect but quite easy to use, and the software itself behaved really nice - stable and fast. Adding a softcam was incredibly easy. Overall a great piece of software with lots of potential.

However, in the end I had to abandon it, since in the current version it lacks essential features that we need for our "fire&forget" PVR operation:
1. Recording Management
(i.e.: keep 200 Gigs free space on disk, delete oldest recording when below threshhold; keep 5 episodes max for this program, 10 for that)
2. Smart Scheduling
(i.e. record 1 instance of this every week at any time, using priority x, record group y, move other lower prio recordings to later etc.)

We set our favourite shows up once, and then leave the system running without any intervention regarding scheduling, recording deletion etc, myth does all that for us. tvheadend is currently not able to do that, and this is the only reason why I went back to myth. It seems the tvheadend devs have those items somewhere on the todo list so I hope to see it at some point in time, but currently it does not seem to be a priority for the next releases.

I have tried the XBMC PVR frontend beta with my myth backend yesterday and I am extremely impressed with it. A few rough edges, but wow, it worked great out of the box. Really nice work!

Summary:
I believe that mythtv backend + xmbc frontend is currently the best possible combination in terms of functionality.
If you only want to record shows manually on occasion and don't mind to bother with deletions and recording management, tvheadend should work great. And keep an eye on tvheadend, one day it could be the best backend choice.

[adamsutton]

I think that is a fair summary, I have several plans in place to significantly improve the DVR code in tvheadend. It's all a matter of time and effort. For UK users (experience elsewhere will vary) we do now have decent series link support for auto recording based on the OTA fields used by a normal STB. However doing a better job for others is something I want to work on (there actually used to be some better support but I had to remove it as it can cause problems, so it will eventually be re-introduced as an optional component).

With regards to recording management (i.e. removal etc...) this is indeed something for which TVH is not very good and I completely agree with the evaluation of this. It is definitely on my TODO list and hopefully I will find some time to get at least some improved features into 3.4 (though there is no schedule for that as yet). There is a general FR entry on redmine to cover the DVR stuff and at some point I will have to try and write some specs.

The main issue we have is limited developer time, we are still a very small project with only a handful of devs with the occasional user submitted mods. But things are beginning to take off a bit more and maybe we will be able to call on greater resources as time goes by.

Adam