[NullReference]

I don't see how recordings could be easily integrated into the library, especially since most stuff on TV isn't scrapable anyway so XBMC wouldn't find any metadata.

It is scrapable using the TV guide imo?

[negge]

Of course standard TV shows are scrapable, but your local news at 8 p.m won't be. Or that odd documentary about people with big noses.

[nickr]

1. Why scrape what is already in the backend database? Mythtv tells me what the 6.00 pm news is all about (as if I couldn't guess). It also tells me what documentaries are about - although this is of course highly dependent on the quality of the data provided to the backend's database by either EIT or xmltv or schedules direct (if I am lucky enough to be served by SD).

2. "Series Record" is actually quite complex. Do you want reruns or just the current season? Do you want to record it off a particular channel so you get the HD goodness? Or if that tuner is busy will you make do with a SD version? If you are recording reruns do you only want ones you have never recorded before, or all reruns or just season 2? Is the series named consistently or do you have to allow for Dr/Dr./Doctor Who? Do you also want shows called "Dr. Who Christmas Special"?

3. Slow at changing channels? Who cares, I don't channel surf. I rarely watch live tv. I schedule what I want to watch, I watch it when I like. But when I do watch livetv there is nothing to stop me pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding etc.

4. What is split recording? Is that where you, eg, get a movie split by the lotto draw? That's pretty hard to pick up by a computer.

5. Been discussing in another thread how to transcode mythtv recordings and put them in XBMC's video sources properly named so they will scrape. Some interesting problems...

---

Of course standard TV shows are scrapable, but your local news at 8 p.m won't be. Or that odd documentary about people with big noses.

Who are you calling big nose? Where do you come from? Nose City or something?

[archie456]

1. Why scrape what is already in the backend database? Mythtv tells me what the 6.00 pm news is all about (as if I couldn't guess). It also tells me what documentaries are about - although this is of course highly dependent on the quality of the data provided to the backend's database by either EIT or xmltv or schedules direct (if I am lucky enough to be served by SD).

Scraping would be brilliant, but all it needs to do is retain what the guide says about the recording.
This is a nice to have from my point of view.

2. "Series Record" is actually quite complex. Do you want reruns or just the current season? Do you want to record it off a particular channel so you get the HD goodness? Or if that tuner is busy will you make do with a SD version? If you are recording reruns do you only want ones you have never recorded before, or all reruns or just season 2? Is the series named consistently or do you have to allow for Dr/Dr./Doctor Who? Do you also want shows called "Dr. Who Christmas Special"?

It doesn't have to be perfect - WMC seems to get it correct enough to be acceptable to the wife.
It would rather it records more but get the series rather than nothing at all. A simple name comparison would be fine to begin with.

3. Slow at changing channels? Who cares, I don't channel surf. I rarely watch live tv. I schedule what I want to watch, I watch it when I like. But when I do watch livetv there is nothing to stop me pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding etc.

I care. Its just not acceptable to take 10 seconds to change channel - my family just wont use it.

4. What is split recording? Is that where you, eg, get a movie split by the lotto draw? That's pretty hard to pick up by a computer.

We (in the UK) get this a fair bit, a movie split up with the news. Again it just needs to be a simple name comparison rule to begin with.

5. Been discussing in another thread how to transcode mythtv recordings and put them in XBMC's video sources properly named so they will scrape. Some interesting problems...

[produno]

3. Slow at changing channels? Who cares, I don't channel surf. I rarely watch live tv. I schedule what I want to watch, I watch it when I like. But when I do watch livetv there is nothing to stop me pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding etc.

I care. Its just not acceptable to take 10 seconds to change channel - my family just wont use it.

Agreed. The TV functionality is the most important thing for me, this is to replace sky in my house and if i cant get it working better then ill have to find something else to use, or use sky again..
If it was just me then i would perservere but the g/f dont see things the same way as me.

[nickr]

Well series record works with mythtv so try that. It has many options.

[Dark_Slayer]

3. Slow at changing channels? Who cares, I don't channel surf. I rarely watch live tv. I schedule what I want to watch, I watch it when I like. But when I do watch livetv there is nothing to stop me pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding etc.

I care. Its just not acceptable to take 10 seconds to change channel - my family just wont use it.

Agreed. The TV functionality is the most important thing for me, this is to replace sky in my house and if i cant get it working better then ill have to find something else to use, or use sky again..
If it was just me then i would perservere but the g/f dont see things the same way as me.

Also agree. I care a lot. Channel Up/Down has been around since TV remotes have, and my wife and visitors don't appreciate 10 second change times or eventual freeze/lock/crash. Nor should I have to go explain to them, "Don't change channels, just stop and choose a different channel in the guide. But don't choose it before the little green light on that black box goes out"

WMC has been around for a while, and it doesn't have these problems with channel changes

2. "Series Record" is actually quite complex. Do you want reruns or just the current season? Do you want to record it off a particular channel so you get the HD goodness? Or if that tuner is busy will you make do with a SD version? If you are recording reruns do you only want ones you have never recorded before, or all reruns or just season 2? Is the series named consistently or do you have to allow for Dr/Dr./Doctor Who? Do you also want shows called "Dr. Who Christmas Special"?

It doesn't have to be perfect - WMC seems to get it correct enough to be acceptable to the wife.

I'm kind of in a waiting pattern myself, but in the interim I've added QuickWMC shortcuts to an XBMC Main Menu entry named "Live TV" and disabled the builtin Live TV option for now.

The person leading the WMC backend effort is hosting a cleaned up (by bernr) launcher for WMC items called QuickWMC in skydrive http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1334159

After installing you need to create launchers for them in Advanced Launcher. There is some discussion here where I had been trying to get the dos-prompt out of the launch, and MeMeMe figured out the appropriate advanced arg to get rid of the command prompt on each launch.

I think it's a good interim solution until the PVR backend and playback issues are a little more sorted. Each launcher gives a brief "Opening Stream" notification before launching that section of WMC. If you hit back, you are returned to XBMC. XBMC or WMC stay full screen the entire time. No more pesky "remote buttons" to inform everyone of. Just go to the menu item and hit back when finished, like everything else within XBMC

Just added this weekend, and it's already wife-approved

[Dilligaf]

Why not use the pvr.wmc? channel changes recently got sped up immensely, check it out http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1513681

[Dark_Slayer]

I'll eventually move that direction, but XBMC had a pretty good way to go last time I tried to use it as our daily PVR. We watch more live TV than recordings, so I really need quick channel tuning, channel changing, timeshifting, etc over recording management

[negge]

You have to take into account that channel change times are rarely XBMC's fault. Some backends are slower than others and some tuners are slower than others. Expensive tuners tend to switch faster than cheap ones.

---

1. Why scrape what is already in the backend database? Mythtv tells me what the 6.00 pm news is all about (as if I couldn't guess). It also tells me what documentaries are about - although this is of course highly dependent on the quality of the data provided to the backend's database by either EIT or xmltv or schedules direct (if I am lucky enough to be served by SD).

Scraping would be brilliant, but all it needs to do is retain what the guide says about the recording.
This is a nice to have from my point of view.

2. "Series Record" is actually quite complex. Do you want reruns or just the current season? Do you want to record it off a particular channel so you get the HD goodness? Or if that tuner is busy will you make do with a SD version? If you are recording reruns do you only want ones you have never recorded before, or all reruns or just season 2? Is the series named consistently or do you have to allow for Dr/Dr./Doctor Who? Do you also want shows called "Dr. Who Christmas Special"?

It doesn't have to be perfect - WMC seems to get it correct enough to be acceptable to the wife.
It would rather it records more but get the series rather than nothing at all. A simple name comparison would be fine to begin with.

3. Slow at changing channels? Who cares, I don't channel surf. I rarely watch live tv. I schedule what I want to watch, I watch it when I like. But when I do watch livetv there is nothing to stop me pausing, rewinding, fast forwarding etc.

I care. Its just not acceptable to take 10 seconds to change channel - my family just wont use it.

4. What is split recording? Is that where you, eg, get a movie split by the lotto draw? That's pretty hard to pick up by a computer.

We (in the UK) get this a fair bit, a movie split up with the news. Again it just needs to be a simple name comparison rule to begin with.

5. Been discussing in another thread how to transcode mythtv recordings and put them in XBMC's video sources properly named so they will scrape. Some interesting problems...

1. When you record something and go to Live TV -> Recordings, the description from the guide is right there.

2 and 4. Most backends (if not all) can record something based on name and channel. I can understand that it would be nice to have the option to do that integrated into XBMC, but I can't possibly understand how it can be a showstopper. Do you really schedule new recurring recordings so often that you can't just log into a web interface once in a while and set it up? All your wife has to do is say "hey could you make the computer record $SHOW?".

[Dark_Slayer]

You have to take into account that channel change times are rarely XBMC's fault. Some backends are slower than others and some tuners are slower than others. Expensive tuners tend to switch faster than cheap ones.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=150887

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1397620

https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/1757

https://github.com/FernetMenta/xbmc/comm...cf0307422d

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1504559

That's what I base my thoughts on (coupled with the fact that NPVR changes channels with the same tuner very quickly outside XBMC)

[produno]

Its already been stated many times that the extra time needed to change channel is something to do with communication, or something along those lines. So it is xbmc at fault.
As for scheduling recordings from the web, my htpc dont access the web so its easier if everything can be done within xbmc. Thats the point of an all in one solution? Hopefully these things will come in time.

[nickr]

Are you saying you don't have a lan at home?

[negge]

@Dark_Slayer: that doesn't make my statement any less valid.

[nickr]

OK I don't use livetv much but I appreciate that others want livetv as opposed to pvr functionality, so I did some testing tonight.

My setup is:

backend: mythtv 0.27 (very recently released) on a pretty inadequate server (AMD sempron le-1250, 1G RAM - don't laugh!!).

tuner: hdhomerun dvb-t, mix of HD 1080i and SD 576i channels

frontend: acer revo ion2 with mythbuntu 12.04 LTS running mythfrontend 0.27 and xbmc 12.2 frodo with the cmyth pvr addon, compiled a couple of days ago from the frodo git code.

On mythfrontend channel changes in LiveTV take about 5 seconds (this is just me counting one thousand and one, one thousand and two etc). This seems to be the case whether staying on the same mux or moving to a different one.

On XBMC the channel changes are the same speed.

So I suggest that there is nothing wrong with the XBMC code, at least in this use case. Other pvr clients may take longer or shorter, I don't know.