[randompunteruk]

Hi,

This is going to sound a bit strange...

I am moving from MCE to xbmc front-ends with a mediaportal TV server.

I have more than a terabyte of .wtv recordings that I would like to make available as TV recordings in xbmc. I don't want to convert these files to some other format as I may need to go back to MCE because of the WAF (she's been using MCE for 7 years or more now).

This plugin/server does a great job of making the TV recordings appear like any other recording in xbmc.

Only problem is that the server requires live TV to be setup in Media Center, which interferes with MP.

So... my feature request is to be able to run the server without Live TV enabled.

It probably sounds a bit mad - I am open to other suggestions about how to get the behaviour I want.

Ashley

[krustyreturns]

Hi,

Why not just put all the wtv files in a 'video' folder of xbmc? It has no problem with wtv files, except it doesn't read the metadata from the file and the name wmc uses are not scrapable. But there are solutions for that.

[randompunteruk]

Hi Krusty,

Thanks for the reply.

The metadata is important to us as that gives us all the information we want about the programs.

I have seen programs that rename wtv files based on the metadata. If I do this, is there some way of getting xbmc to then get metadata from somewhere else? How reliable is it? Do the videos appear as recorded TV?

Your plugin does the whole job it seems to me without needing to jump through any hoops. It's just that it requires the live TV to be set up - perhaps I am wrong that this would interfere with mediaportal, though media centre really seems to struggle trying to find any tuners.

It does seem like I want to use a sledgehammer ( from which I want to remove the handle, and possibly a large part of the head) to crack a walnut.

Btw the reason I am using mediaportal rather than your plugin for the live TV is that the boxes that I am using for a couple of the TVs are stuck on a version of xbmc that is unlikely to be updated, and run an infrequently updated linux on an arm chip that is not widely supported. It does have the mediaportal plugin built-in though...

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

Ashley

[krustyreturns]

No problem, an no explanation is necessary, I hear mediaportal works great.

Xbmc has a very good scraper, it uses websites to find the metadata.. If the files are renamed properly, I think you would get the data you need pretty reliably. The key though is the renamer programs, those I have no experience with, but I hear they work well too. The good news is that you can rename the wtv's and wmc will still be able to use them, in case you have to revert.

I did write a program once to extract the metadata from a wtv and create an xbmc friendly nfo file, I don't know where it is or what state I left it in, and I really don't need more code to support . If you are comfortable coding though I could try and find it.

So if I was you, I would go the renamer route.

[advocate99]

Krusty,

I second this request.

I have almost no use for Live TV, and would love to be able to delete the option entirely from XBMC. I realize that's probably not up to you, but if we could get the plugin or server to have an option to simply ignore those requests, that's be a great way to avoid the troubles that come from having to deal with Live TV (i.e., bugs).

[krustyreturns]

Trying not have my feelings hurt...

Just to test understanding here. You guys would like a mode of serverwmc that maintains nfo files for each wtv file, to provide metadata info. Then you would add this file as a regular video folder to xbmc. In this way, xbmc will not need to scrap the files - would just use wmc's metadata. Right?

We could do that. I suppose I could put in a option to generate nfo files for all recordings. The wmc services will just ignore it. The hardest part will be trying to find the old code... If that's what you guys want, one of us (you) should add it to the feature request sticky.

[krustyreturns]

Also on this, xbmc would still just show these files in a flat directory and wmc's metadata does not contain series and episode number

[spyder]

@randompunteruk: You can also make a video source in xbmc and point it to the upnp share of WMC. There are a few different upnp sources when doing this(All Recordings/Series/etc.). This is still limited, but it does list show names/episode title/description, I'm not sure exactly what's listed(at work). You can then go one step further and use MyLibrary to scrape that folder to add the shows to the xbmc library without having to rename/convert anything.

[advocate99]

I don't think it has to be that complicated. Just give us an option to tell ServerWMC not to respond to requests relating to LiveTV.

Trying not have my feelings hurt...

Just to test understanding here. You guys would like a mode of serverwmc that maintains nfo files for each wtv file, to provide metadata info. Then you would add this file as a regular video folder to xbmc. In this way, xbmc will not need to scrap the files - would just use wmc's metadata. Right?

We could do that. I suppose I could put in a option to generate nfo files for all recordings. The wmc services will just ignore it. The hardest part will be trying to find the old code... If that's what you guys want, one of us (you) should add it to the feature request sticky.

[scarecrow420]

So you still want to use hte LiveTV section, but only the "Recordings" part of it? So if we modified ServerWMC to not reply back with any channels etc, then XBMC would have an empty EPG and channel list, but the recordings would be there. Is that what you want? Also if you set Prestart Tuners to false, we wouldnt grab any tuners either. Assuming this is what you want, it wouldnt be too hard to have an option in ServerWMC to disable live TV. Assuming krusty gets over his hurt feelings :p (how could you!)

Also just to confirm that if you did this, you would have to be using our PVR plugin "pvr.wmc" thus precluding you from running any other XBMC PVR plugin, so this would only work if you wanted recordings in XBMC under the LiveTV area (and not Video area) and also were using a completely separate external program for live TV viewing (eg WMC).

The OP is moving to media portal but just has a back catalog of old WMC recordings. It seems like he would want to use media portal plugin and thus wouldnt be able to run our plugin (so not sure how we can provide the recordings to XBMC, apart from as krusty suggests, just decorate/rename the recordings area with NFO metadata so XBMC video library could identify them). The 2nd user requesting this, can you explain more what you would be doing? Ie is this just for back catalog purposes or for an angoing/growing collection of WMC recordings

[krustyreturns]

I am getting confused too. I think what advocate is requesting is more a skin change, i.e. nothing shows up except 'recorded tv' (no channels, no epg) - the only choice is 'recorded tv'. If that's the case, advocate, these things are all part of the skin - we don't control what views are displayed, we just provide data to xbmc.

[randompunteruk]

Hi all,

My personal use case would be to only have WMC recordings available from pvr.wmc - no channels or epg. serverwmc would be able to run without live tv set up in wmc.

This wouldn't preclude me from using livetv with the mediaportal plugin because you can have multiple pvr plugins enabled within xbmc.

I tried getting .nfo files generated or the scrapers working, and it is really hard work... pvr.wmc/serversmc just works as far as the metadata goes and neatly appears in the recorded tv section of live tv in xbmc, which is much more intuitive than having to go into videos to see the old recorded tv.

I considered using a usb tuner that i had lying around to set up live tv in WMC, deleting all but one channel and then hiding that channel in xbmc, in order to get serverwmc to work but now WMC just gets stuck trying to detect any tuners - mediaportal is probably making it get its knickers in a twist by locking the 4 main tuners I have.

Thanks for the responses so far,

Ashley

[krustyreturns]

There is a registry hack to fool wmc into thinking it has a tuner installed, as long as you don't try to use it, you should be fine.

http://experts.windows.com/frms/windows_...aspx#44135

[randompunteruk]

Cool. That worked.

The next hurdle is that WMC has no EPG contents, so serverwmc still won't start.

Any idea how I can fake a channel?

Nearly there!

Ashley

[krustyreturns]

We added an option to 'HideAllChannels', in the config.xml file. It will be in the next release.