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2014-05-11, 09:26
(This post was last modified: 2014-05-11, 09:27 by ixian.)
Hey all,
I'm looking in to switching from NPVR to WMC for some of the additional recording features but I'm curious: How fast are channel changes in XBMC using wmc.pvr?
I ask because I use two Hauppauge Colossus capture cards with NPVR and in XBMC channel changes are on the order of 5-7 seconds. I know there's a Windows-only "fast channel" build of XBMC Margro did but even that one only drops it to 2-3 seconds - not the time it takes to blast it, I mean the current channel freezes and then the new one starts several seconds later.
My experience with the NPVR client and (old) WMC client is even with a capture source channel changes are super-quick - as fast as my blaster can make them, anyway. What's the general opinion? Particularly interested in anyone using capture sources like mine instead of tuners.
It looks like I'll have to revert back to Windows 7 to do this correctly (Hauppauge silliness) so it'll be some work but if I can get faster channel changes and better series/recording buffer options I'll do it.
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Due to the way that we are interacting with WMC channel change speed is not one of the strong suits of this particular pvr addon, sorry to say. It really depends on your specific tuner response times, but assuming they are quick and you have decent HDD and gigabit wired network it will still be a few seconds in the backend plus the XBMC analyse time (this analyse time is what margro's build pretty much eliminates)
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Appreciate the response!
I've tried Margro's build but since I mostly use OpenElec boxes I guess I will wait until his changes get mainlined.
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2014-05-12, 04:10
(This post was last modified: 2014-05-12, 04:12 by scarecrow420.)
Unfortunately his changes arent going to be mainlined as they were not seen as an appropriate way to deal with the issue, by the XBMC powers that be for this ffmpeg/etc areas. I believe in some edge cases these changes did cause people issues (eg no video being displayed, since it shortened the duration allowed to analyse for streams). There is a full conversation about it, on the github pull request of margro's change, if you want to read more.
You could perhaps build your own linux version including margro's change, or see if you can convince the OpenElec builders to include margro's change in their mainline
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Got another colossus coming - will try it WMC (found the registry procedure on an internet archive cached page).
I've had "Tuner not available" errors with the NPVR client on OpenELEC (with no problems on Windows clients) so I switched to serverWMC.
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I really don't see channel change speed to be a big issue. Flipping through 40 channels or so on an old cable used to be something people did years ago. Now with 100's of channels, you scroll through the guide looking for content and play it.
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2014-05-23, 16:37
(This post was last modified: 2014-05-23, 16:38 by krustyreturns.)
Like scarecrow says, the channel time is a weakness of our approach (but what we gain is being able to play with any hardware that wmc can play with, and the ability to be able to do time shifted instant recordings). The delay is not all on us though, the margro build shows that about 50% of it is on xbmc. Btw, I think the margro build was not adopted in gotham because there are some plugins that don't play well with it (I am fuzzy on this though). Also not sure if it is going to be revisited in whatever is coming next.
Our solution works for me, because the only thing I watch live is sports. I can't understand why anybody watches anything other than sports live, but some of us are hunters - I retired from hunting long ago. You might want to look at tvheadend, I hear it has very fast channel changes.
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It varies by set up, but my change time is around 6s (not using margro).
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Just want to bump this thread... my old man finds channel switching far too slow, 5 seconds is too slow. He wants 1-2 seconds max, just like WMC. Is there anything I can do to improve channel switching performance? Using ServerWMC locally on a quadcore phenom PC with an SSD.
