• 1(current)
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 24
Feature Requests
#1
Please post your favorite feature requests for the WMC backend here.
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
Reply
#2
an option to transcode on the fly both live tv and recorded tv ts streams to a format with lower resolution for lower powered devices. ideally a per client setting, but i'd happily take a server setting too. i know dvblink uses ffmpeg to achieve this and stream start up delay isn't significantly impacted

this would complete wmc pvr for me. thanks
Reply
#3
I may be confusing what the PVR client is responsible for versus the back-end, but here goes:

1. In the situation where WMC steals the tuner from a live TV viewing, can the WMC backend start up the channel on a different tuner and keep the live viewing going? Or auto-switch to the live recording?

2. I want to be able to hit pause during live TV, go watch a youtube video or maybe a movie, and then go back to live TV and continue where I left off. Could this be handled by the backend keeping the channel tuned and recording until the PVR client re-attaches to it?
Reply
#4
(2013-11-26, 19:39)st0rmcat Wrote: I may be confusing what the PVR client is responsible for versus the back-end, but here goes:

1. In the situation where WMC steals the tuner from a live TV viewing, can the WMC backend start up the channel on a different tuner and keep the live viewing going? Or auto-switch to the live recording?

2. I want to be able to hit pause during live TV, go watch a youtube video or maybe a movie, and then go back to live TV and continue where I left off. Could this be handled by the backend keeping the channel tuned and recording until the PVR client re-attaches to it?

1)
If you are watching a live tv stream but the service needs to start a scheduled recording, the service should choose a different tuner if one is available. The only exception to this is if you are watching the same channel that the scheduled recording is about to start on - then (annoyingly) wmc will choose to take the tuner you are watching. This is what you are talking about right?

For this case, I like the auto-switch to the recording idea, let me think about it.

2) You can pause the live-tv stream for as long as you want and then go back to it, but obviously if you watch something else in xbmc the live-tv stream is stopped - I guess that is what you are talking about. Its an interesting idea. The downside is disk space, the remux could be paused, but the wtv file that is storing the tuner output would keep going. There could maybe be a tuner pref to stop the tuner after some settable amount of time if it not resumed.

It would weird to go back to a 'live-tv' stream and really be watching from a couple of hours ago - but I suppose then you could hit the stop button an restart it. So you kind of want the 'pause' button to put the live-tv stream into a kind of hibernation. That's an interesting idea too.

(2013-11-26, 19:25)spaceboy Wrote: an option to transcode on the fly both live tv and recorded tv ts streams to a format with lower resolution for lower powered devices. ideally a per client setting, but i'd happily take a server setting too. i know dvblink uses ffmpeg to achieve this and stream start up delay isn't significantly impacted

this would complete wmc pvr for me. thanks

Unless a video expert comes on board, I would need to use an existing public domain transcoder. To work it would need to take a wtv file - while it is recording - and convert it. I know that ffmpeg cannot do this, I actually don't think there is one out there that can but would be happy to be proven wrong if anyone knows of one.
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
Reply
#5
I seem to remember a "Run as Service" option being requested several times in the main thread. I'm also pretty sure Scarecrow was/is working on it. Thought I'd throw it in here so it doesn't get forgotten about.
The XBMC team, plug-in devs, skinners, etc. do this for us for FREE in their spare time because they want to. Think about that for a second before you start bitching...
Reply
#6
(2013-11-26, 21:21)krustyreturns Wrote: 1)
If you are watching a live tv stream but the service needs to start a scheduled recording, the service should choose a different tuner if one is available. The only exception to this is if you are watching the same channel that the scheduled recording is about to start on - then (annoyingly) wmc will choose to take the tuner you are watching. This is what you are talking about right?

For this case, I like the auto-switch to the recording idea, let me think about it.

2) You can pause the live-tv stream for as long as you want and then go back to it, but obviously if you watch something else in xbmc the live-tv stream is stopped - I guess that is what you are talking about. Its an interesting idea. The downside is disk space, the remux could be paused, but the wtv file that is storing the tuner output would keep going. There could maybe be a tuner pref to stop the tuner after some settable amount of time if it not resumed.

It would weird to go back to a 'live-tv' stream and really be watching from a couple of hours ago - but I suppose then you could hit the stop button an restart it. So you kind of want the 'pause' button to put the live-tv stream into a kind of hibernation. That's an interesting idea too.

1) Yep, I'm talking about that situation.

2) Yes, when the live TV stream is stopped either intentionally or unintentionally. (i.e. someone randomly airplays a video to the screen). I'm not really making up these ideas as I go, I just want it to work like some of the features I like of my antiquated Comcast DVR box.

And actually I'd like to expand on my idea (in an ideal world)

I think that if you're watching live TV and stop (either explicitly or by something stealing focus), the server should continue recording on that channel on that tuner but remember the last state (whether it was paused or not). I agree with you that there should be a configurable limit to how long the WTV recording can get (i.e. 30 minutes). After the 30 minutes, it should start removing the beginning of the WTV so it always only holds the last 30 minutes of live TV for the channel. If the last state of the tuner was paused, but the remux falls behind the start of the WTV, the remux is then "pulled" along to never be earlier than that 30 minutes. Once you go back to that channel, the back-end brings back the last state, which is at most 30 minutes behind. And yeah, the UI should make it obvious you're not watching live.. but that's a separate problem. In normal situations you do not pause and then leave live TV, so resuming a stream would resume live, but you'd have an added benefit of being able to rewind up to 30 minutes. This would mimic how my Comcast DVR box handles paused TV for long periods, though.

It may be technically difficult to trim the start of the file, so maybe it would be possible to write 5 minute chunks of WTV files and continually remove the earliest chunks to keep >= 30 minutes worth of video. Of course then streaming needs to know to jump from chunk to chunk. Ugh.

Anyway, I agree there should be a pref to "give up" on a tuner after a certain amount of time of inactivity. Zero could be an option to work exactly as it does now.
Reply
#7
The option to disable the server status message that states the server is running, awaiting connections.. IDK, it annoys me.. LOL
Reply
#8
(2013-11-27, 00:08)bungee91 Wrote: The option to disable the server status message that states the server is running, awaiting connections.. IDK, it annoys me.. LOL


Do you mean the popup balloon on the task bar?

Krusty,

I can take a look, I can add it along with the episode count. Anyone know the exact message it displays? I can try it myself but I am lazy. Smile
Reply
#9
A Feature Request I have thought about before was putting in functionality for the server to detect when times of existing shows in the EPG change around, and to tell clients to refresh their EPG sooner than the XBMC cache/refresh does it.

At least here in Australia where the EPG is broadcast OTA and not downloaded over the internet, I have noticed that often the EPG will initially say shows are airing at 8:30pm-9:30pm then 9:30pm-10pm etc. However at some point this changes to more real time values such as 8:36pm-9:33pm then 9:33pm-10:01pm. It bugs me that the EPG could be several minutes out in some cases, particularly if you are using it to perform recordings and things like that.

Not sure if it's worth working on this feature though, if not everyone seems to get EPG data changing around on them as much as I seem to.

So im interested if anybody else has observed similar EPG time changes to me?
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
Reply
#10
(2013-11-27, 06:06)spinnaker Wrote:
(2013-11-27, 00:08)bungee91 Wrote: The option to disable the server status message that states the server is running, awaiting connections.. IDK, it annoys me.. LOL


Do you mean the popup balloon on the task bar?

Krusty,

I can take a look, I can add it along with the episode count. Anyone know the exact message it displays? I can try it myself but I am lazy. Smile

Look at 'InitializeTrayIcon()' in the code of mainwindow.xaml.cs. LOL, talk about a nitpick... I think you should change it to say Hello Bungee91!
Windows Media Center PVR addon (pvr.wmc) and server backend (ServerWMC)
http://bit.ly/serverwmc
Reply
#11
(2013-11-27, 07:46)krustyreturns Wrote:
(2013-11-27, 06:06)spinnaker Wrote:
(2013-11-27, 00:08)bungee91 Wrote: The option to disable the server status message that states the server is running, awaiting connections.. IDK, it annoys me.. LOL


Do you mean the popup balloon on the task bar?

Krusty,

I can take a look, I can add it along with the episode count. Anyone know the exact message it displays? I can try it myself but I am lazy. Smile

Look at 'InitializeTrayIcon()' in the code of mainwindow.xaml.cs. LOL, talk about a nitpick... I think you should change it to say Hello Bungee91!

Yep that's the one...
If I didn't know you made that change and it popped up and said that it'd be freaky!.. Confused
You asked, and it's being all pushy telling me stuff. Wink

Now if/when this becomes a service I would no longer see this message, which would be the best of both!
Reply
#12
OK, I've got a feature request that I would pay for! When you are watching a program and say you are 20 minutes into it, and you decide you want to record it, wmc will only record from the current time stamp forward. On my old time warner DVR, it would save the recording from the beginning of the show (if you were watching it from the beginning). I guess it would go back in the live TV buffer and cut it from the beginning of the show on that channel. Actually it did even more. If you were flipping back and forth between two shows via its 2 tuners, it would still do what I said above when you pressed record. You could even flip back and forth and rewind. It kept a buffer for each tuner I guess. Wmc flushes the buffer every time you change a channel. This was really nice feature that I miss.

You can watch a 2 hr program, be 1 hour into it. Knowing that wmc will only start recording from the point you tell it to, you would think you could rewind to beginning and then press record and it would create the file from that point. Sadly it doesn't. It will still only record from the point of live TV. This makes no sense.

So do you think this is an impossibility to implement with what wmc offers you as a programmer, or is this fixable with your server?

Thank you! My PayPal is standing by if you can make this happen Wink
Reply
#13
(2013-11-28, 20:26)bandook Wrote: OK, I've got a feature request that I would pay for! When you are watching a program and say you are 20 minutes into it, and you decide you want to record it, wmc will only record from the current time stamp forward. On my old time warner DVR, it would save the recording from the beginning of the show (if you were watching it from the beginning). I guess it would go back in the live TV buffer and cut it from the beginning of the show on that channel. Actually it did even more. If you were flipping back and forth between two shows via its 2 tuners, it would still do what I said above when you pressed record. You could even flip back and forth and rewind. It kept a buffer for each tuner I guess. Wmc flushes the buffer every time you change a channel. This was really nice feature that I miss.

You can watch a 2 hr program, be 1 hour into it. Knowing that wmc will only start recording from the point you tell it to, you would think you could rewind to beginning and then press record and it would create the file from that point. Sadly it doesn't. It will still only record from the point of live TV. This makes no sense.

So do you think this is an impossibility to implement with what wmc offers you as a programmer, or is this fixable with your server?

Thank you! My PayPal is standing by if you can make this happen Wink

I always disliked this limitation of WMC too. In addition, I also dislike the fact that you can't choose tuners and switch between them on the fly.

But these are limitations of the WMC PVR itself, not the XBMC WMC server. You would most likely find a PVR that has the capabilities that you want. I really like the WMC PVR despite some of it's limitations and Krusty and a few others have been able to bring WMC to XBMC to give us the best of both worlds.
Reply
#14
Krusty, someone in the Plex forums advised that ffmpeg actually *can* transcode in-progress TV recordings and that one or more of the DVBLogic apps make use of it.

It's also worth noting that a while back I had success using an older version of XBMC (Eden) to play recording-still-in-progress WTV files. There were two problems I encountered:
1) I couldn't do this successfully on the same computer that was running as my WMC server. Not sure what was happening, but XMBC would lock up or something (I forget exactly). I was able to successfully play these recording-still-in-progress files via XBMC running on my laptop.
2) The time progress bar was kind of all over the place and did not provide accurate info.

Here's my old thread on the subject, which never get any replies:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=155981

For whatever reason, even this less-than-perfect functionality under Eden broke on the XBMC release that followed Eden. I haven't tested it lately, but I'm assuming that this still does not work under the latest version of XBMC.
Reply
#15
(2013-11-28, 20:26)bandook Wrote: OK, I've got a feature request that I would pay for! When you are watching a program and say you are 20 minutes into it, and you decide you want to record it, wmc will only record from the current time stamp forward. On my old time warner DVR, it would save the recording from the beginning of the show (if you were watching it from the beginning). I guess it would go back in the live TV buffer and cut it from the beginning of the show on that channel. Actually it did even more. If you were flipping back and forth between two shows via its 2 tuners, it would still do what I said above when you pressed record. You could even flip back and forth and rewind. It kept a buffer for each tuner I guess. Wmc flushes the buffer every time you change a channel. This was really nice feature that I miss.

You can watch a 2 hr program, be 1 hour into it. Knowing that wmc will only start recording from the point you tell it to, you would think you could rewind to beginning and then press record and it would create the file from that point. Sadly it doesn't. It will still only record from the point of live TV. This makes no sense.

So do you think this is an impossibility to implement with what wmc offers you as a programmer, or is this fixable with your server?

Thank you! My PayPal is standing by if you can make this happen Wink

This plugin actually does this as of one of the more recent builds! When you "intsant record" it will record from the earliest point you have been watching that channel, until the end of the current show you are watching. Also if you press record again it will repeatedly add 15 minutes to the end of the instant recording. Is this not working for you, or you didnt know the feature was there as of the most recent or two build? I dont believe we cut it at the start of the current show (thats a bit harder for us) but at least we will record what you have been watching, which is better than WMC itself! Smile
pvr.wmc TV addon and ServerWMC Backend Development Team
http://bit.ly/ServerWMC
Reply
  • 1(current)
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 24

Logout Mark Read Team Forum Stats Members Help
Feature Requests1