Login at Kodi Home

bruddha · 2018-11-01, 09:59

I'd rather like to see "epg event playback" than seeking across EPG boundaries in IPTV simple as long as seeking in EPG boundaries works as well. So a combination of both would probably be ideal.
Btw, there is somebody who implemented recording in IPTV Simple. This could probably also be used for for an implementation with a real timeshifting buffer.
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=326896

The Coolest · 2018-11-01, 10:20

I saw that project.
What I'm after is implementing seek without being bound to a local buffer. I can tell you from personal experience, once you get to experience just seeking where you want in the timeline without any limits, you just won't want to go back to anything less than that.
It's just a great viewing experience. A local record buffer can't give you that. It can let you seek back a little with a finer granularity, but you don't get the freedom to just switch to what you want to watch with a few clicks on the remote.
And to extend on the above, it would be extremely useful to be able to play an EPG tag in "timeshift" mode instead of as a "video" like it's done right now.

But for starters we need to figure out how to at the very least fix the current EPG playback not showing any times. (see screenshot on previous page)

**ksooo** · 2018-11-01, 10:27

This is all a bit confusing, sorry. Let's do a step back and please tell me:

@The Coolest @ultraman Are you two guys work on the same code or is everybody doing his own stuff? If the latter is the case, I do not want to battle at multiple fronts here. Let's discuss a solution first, then start hacking.

What are the problems to solve from my perspective?

1) Get epg event playback to work for pvr.iptvsimple: This means, select an epg event that started in the past in the epg grid and play it. Playback stops automatically at end of event. Seeking within the event works. IMO, we have everything for this in PVR core. Other addons implemented it, for example pvr.zattoo. No core/API extensions/changes needed. You can just go ahead and implement this.

2) Get epg event playback across event boundaries working for pvr.iptvsimple: Like 1), but additionally seeking before/after playing epg event is working. Playback of previous/next epg event will start automatically when seeking across boundaries. This (and only this) is what we're discussing here as for that we most probably need to extend Kodi core/API.

Overall goal is to contribute the new features to official pvr.iptvsimple

Are we on the same page?

The Coolest · 2018-11-01, 11:12

We are both working on the same idea, but I don't think it's the same code.

1) With my IPTV service and the changes I pushed to iptvsimple, EPG playback starts and plays, but as you can see from the screenshot on the previous page, time information is missing and the seek controls are disabled.
And it's being played as a "video", so it suggests there's a start and an end to that program. That makes sense for VOD, but I don't think it makes much sense when we're talking about TV. In reality, the stream will play until you stop it, it doesn't have an end.
I think there should be an option to play a program from EPG as if you started Live TV playback and timeshifted back to the point when the selected EPG event started.
Again, we're working with realtime streams. So if we ignore the possibility of a locally stored buffer for a minute, you can't seek within the stream like you can with Zattoo. To "seek" you need to close the current stream and open a new stream with a different timestamp in the URL.

2) With TV it's very important not to be constrained by the EPG event bounds, because a program can often start earlier or end after the EPG event bounds. That's why we added the "hack" in Kodi to allow to play an EPG tag in Live TV mode, the way it works from a user's perspective is just awesome.
The hacks we made to Kodi in my CoreELEC PR were mainly required because the InputStream and Demuxer Kodi uses with my IPTV channels do not poll the addon for anything, not times, not length, not the possibility to seek, and of course there was no way to seek and restart the stream. But I utilized Kodi's timeshift support, and it worked great. It allows the user to seamlessly seek "down"/"up" across EPG events using the 'simulated' timeshift buffer.

ultraman · 2018-11-01, 11:23

(2018-11-01, 10:27)ksooo Wrote: Are we on the same page?

No. Because you guys still don't understand the main problem we (@The Coolest t and I) have: Seeking is the main problem and it doesn't work for us! Why? Because we can't seek realtime stream.
For example let's start with playing one tv channel. We have URL in M3U8 file for that and Kodi starts playing. And after few seconds we decide we would like to seek back for 1 hour. For this to work we are closing current stream, create new URL with time argument at the end of the URL like &t=2018-11-01-10-12-20 and Kodi opens this new stream.
No PVR client is using something like that. So we are trying to implement some new functionality.
Is it now little more clear.

**ksooo** · 2018-11-01, 11:25

Sorry, @ultraman I think I understood your problem very well, even before your last post.

ultraman · 2018-11-01, 11:27

(2018-11-01, 11:25)ksooo Wrote: Sorry, @ultraman I think I understood your problem very well, even before your last post.

Then we are on the same page. I will try to record some short video what our current implementation works.

**ksooo** · 2018-11-01, 11:29

So, if this is all about seeking realtime streams with a (very large) server-side back buffer, then forget everything we discussed re EPG event playback. Just throw this idea/code away and go ahead and implement a custom demuxer and proper timeshift support. Then, you will get what you are looking for. No need to modify/extend Kodi core/API for that.

**ksooo** · 2018-11-01, 11:30

(2018-11-01, 11:27)ultraman Wrote:
(2018-11-01, 11:25)ksooo Wrote: Sorry, @ultraman I think I understood your problem very well, even before your last post.
Then we are on the same page. I will try to record some short video what our current implementation works.

Thanks, but no need for that. I understand this without "pictures".

ultraman · 2018-11-01, 11:33

To bad then. Maybe @The Coolest will write that Wink

The Coolest · (This post was last modified: 2018-11-01, 11:39 by The Coolest.)

@ksooo Ok, but does it mean we'll need a complete "copy" of DVDDemuxFFmpeg with some modifications to allow us to achieve this, or is there an easier way?
Is there a way to somehow leverage the demuxers from Kodi? Would we still be able to call it PVR IPTV Simple Client?
Sadly that's the part I'm stumped at, I don't know how to implement a proper demuxer.

And if you play a past EPG event, you still can't play it like a timeshifted live tv, it starts playing as a video.

**ksooo** · 2018-11-01, 11:47

Sorry, I'm out of ideas for the moment and do not have enough time to support this well and responsive enough.
I have to set my priorities (care about my payed job, my familiy, Kodi v18 todos, then v19 stuff).
We've got plenty of time for this stuff here as it seems it wont make it into v18 anymore.
So, as I wrote yesterday, if I have some new ideas I will share them here.

**phunkyfish** · 2018-11-01, 14:39

Trying to follow all the trains of thought here!

If you would like timeshift support (with a local buffer) in simpleIPTV just let me know.

It sounds like you need more time to design the solution before you will know this. Just tag me in a post when/if ready.

The Coolest · 2018-11-01, 15:37

@phunkyfish ksooo got my intention in post #38. What I want is to enable timeshift/seeking on realtime streams with a (very large) server-side back buffer.

**phunkyfish** · 2018-11-01, 20:18

No worries, makes sense. Do all streams provide archive capability or just some?

It might make sense to support both, should be easy enough to enable one, the other or both via the addon settings if you want.

Let me know