Comparing PVR Options
#1
Hi all,

I've been a long time (reasonably happy) WMC user but have concluded now is the time to switch and am just trying to line up all the features I'm used to. Most are pretty easy to cover in XBMC, only LiveTV + PVR and Netflix remain a little challenging (for me anyway).

I've been surfing the forums, etc for sometime and sincere apologies if this is covered elsewhere but I'm struggling to figure out how to choose between TV server backends to work with XBMC. I see lots of comments on stability / etc, many of which are also quite dated so hopefully no longer as relevant, but I can't find much in the way of feature comparison.

What I have today:
- PVR build of XBMC on Linux and on Windows (I'm playing with both versions)
- HDHomerun tuner
- MediaPortal TV server on Windows box working with XBMC
- Considering MythTV or other linux option to test on the Linux box

I can watch and record Live TV on the Windows box but I'm leaning towards a Linux solution and what I'm hoping to find is a comparison of sorts on the TV server backend options.

Are the XBMC PVR functions pretty much the same regardless of TV server backend or can you do things (for example) with XBMC + MythTV that you can't with XBMC + MediaPortal (or vice versa)?

Does the TV server impact things like speed of channel changing or is that really down to your card? Do you expect to see different speeds on different OS + TV Server?

I didn't seem to have any ability to "pause" Live TV... is that a limitation of the XBMC PVR or the TV Server?

Any links or inputs are greatly appreciated...

Thanks in advance!

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#2
I've used TVHeadend, MythTV and right now, I'm using FortheRecord/Argus.

Overall, I had my best, most stable results while using TVHeadend. My computer room is upstairs with a Hackintosh and a Windows 7 PC. While running Ubuntu 12.04 with TVHeadend, and a PCIe TV Tuner, recording was great, channel changing was fast, it was about the best one could expect. Since I only had one PCIe slot, I had to use a crappy Netgear Wireless adapter and I constantly ran into buffering issues as more people moved into my apartment complex. (Yes, I tried all wifi channels)

So I switched back to the hackintosh and now mostly use that box as a media server.

I tried out MythTV just to see what all the fuss was about. It was a little ugly (think android style ugly) It only picked up about half of my TV channels from my antenna. ( usually can tune about 38 different channels) Overall, it worked, but it took a heck of a lot of learning, only to halfway deliver.

After going back to the Hackintosh, I only had one other computer to run a PVR backend on.... Windows 7 Home Edition. So, I popped in my PCIe tuner (I also tried my WinTV-950q with pretty good results), installed ForTheRecord and began to scan channels. I found their setup pretty confusing, but following the guide, got my channels mapped. After finding a program to import guide data from my Schedules Direct account, I ended up with 80 channels. Things were duplicated.

On the XBMC frontend (which if you're running OpenElec, will require a few interesting hoops) I have all channels duplicated. Half don't really work... the half WITH guide data. So I think there may be a few more bugs to be ironed out by the ForTheRecord crew. Sometimes channels will just flat out refuse to tune. So I have to channel up, let it tune, and then channel back down and then the original channel that I wanted will tune. Afer watching a channel for about 20 minutes, the buffer will start to freak and I'll have to channel up/channel down again to straighten it out.

If I had an extra 'server' I'd have linux for the backend. And if I didn't live in an apartment (January - when I get back into a house - cannot come soon enough for me!!!) I would use wired ethernet. I'd say TVHeadend would be the closest you'd get to a stable system.

I'd love to hear other people's stories though. I've been a Unix/Linux sysadmin for 14 years and an extremem Liinux enthusiast for years before that, so I feel very comfortable on the command line. Windows feels extremely clunky but it may just be your cup of tea.

Let us know what you decide.
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#3
The MythTV addon + modification to xbmc PVR includes experimental support for timeshifting/pausing and scheduling of series recording. Margro's windows build also includes timeshifting support although I'm not sure if he also added the latest update from my code. Channel switching is slow compared to the other addons due to the xbmc decoder (ffmpeg) and buffering of the LiveTV stream on the backend. Stability is unfortunately a bit of a hit-or-miss and installation of MythTV as MediaGeorge pointed out is not the easiest thing to accomplish (using the Mythbuntu distributions helps easing the pain though).


Libcmyth MythTV addon for xbmc-pvr [source] [forum thread]
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#4
Thanks guys, appreciate your inputs... hopefully we'll get a few more and I'm still hoping to establish some functional comparison across the backends (e.g. quickest channel changing / best support for timeshifting/pausing / etc. Looks like I better check out Margros build too.

tsp42 - are you saying that channel switching is slow with the MythTV addon compared to other addons due to the XBMC decoder or have I misunderstood? Forgive my ignorance in this area but if it's the XBMC decoder then wouldn't all backends suffer the same?

If I get enough inputs I'll try to summarise them into a format that can maybe go into the wiki... just a thought :-)
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#5
(2012-07-07, 07:14)MediaGeorge Wrote: tsp42 - are you saying that channel switching is slow with the MythTV addon compared to other addons due to the XBMC decoder or have I misunderstood? Forgive my ignorance in this area but if it's the XBMC decoder then wouldn't all backends suffer the same?

If I get enough inputs I'll try to summarise them into a format that can maybe go into the wiki... just a thought :-)
Good idea to add it to the wiki.

The xbmc ffmpeg decoder is used in different ways in the PVR addons. The MythTV addon just relays the read and seek request from xbmc to the mythtv backend so ffmpeg is responsible for demuxing the transport stream and decode the content. For some reason ffmpeg needs 3-5 MB of data to open the stream and it takes several seconds to generate this when changing the channel. The upside is that it is easy to enable timeshifting because liveTV just appears to be an ordinary file.
In TVHeaded and the MediaPortal addon LiveTV is opened as a RTSP stream. This seems to be faster despite ffmpeg is still used to decode the content.
Margros MediaPortal Addon uses TSReader instead of ffmpeg to demux the stream. This is currently the fastest way to change channels. This would be a nice thing to add to the mythtv addon when it is more mature on linux.

Libcmyth MythTV addon for xbmc-pvr [source] [forum thread]
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#6
To add to tsp42:
RTSP using ffmpeg is also really slow (10 s average on channel switching here).
The TSReader uses still ffmpeg to demux the stream. It only handles the reading from the timeshift buffer file and (optionally) RTSP stream reading using Live555 (faster than ffmpeg).
(The current TSReader code in my repository is already Linux capable).
The VDR and TVHeadend addons bypass the ffmpeg demuxing and supply their streams already demuxed to XBMC.
Developer of the MediaPortal PVR addon and retired developer of the Argus-TV PVR-addon.
http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc
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#7
(2012-07-08, 16:44)margro Wrote: To add to tsp42:
RTSP using ffmpeg is also really slow (10 s average on channel switching here).
The TSReader uses still ffmpeg to demux the stream. It only handles the reading from the timeshift buffer file and (optionally) RTSP stream reading using Live555 (faster than ffmpeg).
(The current TSReader code in my repository is already Linux capable).
The VDR and TVHeadend addons bypass the ffmpeg demuxing and supply their streams already demuxed to XBMC.

Thanks for clarifying. This means that VDR and TVHeadend have the fastest channel switching?
Libcmyth MythTV addon for xbmc-pvr [source] [forum thread]
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#8
I think so yes. Fastest I can get with MediaPortal on FTA channels is 3-4 s where most of the switching time is spend in the ffmpeg demuxer.
I hope to move the TS demuxing also to my addon to speedup the channel switching, but that will take some effort...
Developer of the MediaPortal PVR addon and retired developer of the Argus-TV PVR-addon.
http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc
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#9
(2012-07-06, 20:38)nobleach Wrote: . . . installed ForTheRecord and began to scan channels. I found their setup pretty confusing, but following the guide, got my channels mapped. After finding a program to import guide data from my Schedules Direct account, I ended up with 80 channels. Things were duplicated.

I experience the same problem. For what it's worth, For The Record 1.7.0.0 is now released. Haven't had a chance to update yet, but hopefully that will improve things for XBMC PVR using FTR.
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#10
In my experience, setting up For The Record / Angus was difficult, and channel changing is slow, but once you're sorted the channel mess out (it took me about an hour) then the end result is simply brilliant. The functionality is excellent, and with the ipad/iphone app which is being developed independently, you can see what's on, set up recordings etc. etc. I do use xml data to populate the tv guide. Again, this took some setting up, but would say overall it's worth the effort. The only issue I have now is with channel changing. As said before you have to select a channel in xbmc, let it timeout, then try again. Eventually it gets there but it is slow. I even stream the tv to different client machines around the house over an ethernet network. Quality seems pretty good, but haven't got a HD tuner so can't comment on that (though I do keep looking)...
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#11
(2012-07-09, 22:06)margro Wrote: I think so yes. Fastest I can get with MediaPortal on FTA channels is 3-4 s where most of the switching time is spend in the ffmpeg demuxer.
I hope to move the TS demuxing also to my addon to speedup the channel switching, but that will take some effort...
I would love to add the TS demuxer code to the MythTV addon too as it would improve the channel switching time here also (from what I can see in the log ffmpeg needs ~4-5 MB worth of data before starting the decoding). So I hope your code will be sufficient generic to be used in my addon.
Libcmyth MythTV addon for xbmc-pvr [source] [forum thread]
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#12
(2012-07-13, 11:57)tsp42 Wrote: I would love to add the TS demuxer code to the MythTV addon too as it would improve the channel switching time here also (from what I can see in the log ffmpeg needs ~4-5 MB worth of data before starting the decoding). So I hope your code will be sufficient generic to be used in my addon.
If there's anything code wise I can help with like the TS demuxing please let me know what your requirements are (inputs, outputs, api's that sort of thing).

I just received a letter from my cable company telling us that their analog service will be shut off in a month. Long story short I need working LiveTV and at least scheduled recording capability. 10+ second channel changes don't fly with the wife. I have a SiliconDust HDHR Prime (cablecard) and right now I can record stuff via MythWeb.
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