Unified PVR frontend (DVR/HTPC client GUI with EPG) and Addons API for PVR backends?

Ok.

It's a matter of taste and how much one can achieve with less $$.
To my needs, a server with two tuner cards, a cardreader or two and low end hardware (like my server/main xbmc) makes it, including HD content.

I do agree that for the average user, configuring all this vs connecting to a dreambox with a fancy add-on is an easy choice. Add-on always hands down!

Again, I agree that dreamboxes are excellent live TV providers. But to me, the less boxes I have under my TV sets, the better.

It takes me less than an hour to proper configure everything I need on my server from starting ubuntu minimal install to a fully working system, including cardreaders, vdr, xbmc and a few other things.

Again, it's a matter of taste. And I really like to mess with software and hardware... but that's just me!

hudo

May be some devs or decision makers will provide an update. Ticket #10185 I opened regarding the matter was moved to Eden milestone, but it wasn't accepted or assigned (12 days), so I am beginning to wonder...

I hope my first posts with all the pros are not too deep=)

2 hudo: If you have three or more official cards, three or more clients (don't tell me you don't have TV in the bathroom), server becomes too much of a pain. For my tastes of course. Besides, once you set it up you may end up buying collocation in Ukraine to share your cards around Europe to make $$

No TV on bathroom... yet!

As for cs, I share with my 3 brothers on 3 different countries, and they share with me. But you're right! I could earn some $$ with it. I just don't want to. I'm all for earning some bucks, but I like my freedom a lot...

@tafypz
Sorry I missed your post but a rather interesting call was made today by @dteirney:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=82015
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=82017

Hope you can find what you are looking for.

hudo

Just started dabbling with XBMC and very interesting for me to follow the PVR development. I'm a big supporter of SageTV and have been using it for years and they continue to evolve the product quite nicely. It doesn't have the "polish" of XBMC but the functionality plus their HD200/HD300 extenders is hard to beat.

Now that XBMC seems to be including PVR functionality in their next major 11.0 (Eden) release, is the intent to compete directly with SageTV or is the intent to built some API that could allow integration with SageTV? Just trying to understand how this fits with SageTV, if at all.

Most TV applications have 2 parts: one that manages TV signals (back-end) and another that shows interface (front-end).

XBMC just have front-end, which means it still needs application in background that will manage TV signals and send them to XBMC.

I don't know SageTV, so i can't tell you if it's compatible.

Look on Eden roadmap to have an idea of what's planned about pvr capabilities:http://trac.xbmc.org/roadmap

As always, roadmap is a guideline to developers intention, not a compromise...

spiff will bite you if you start ranting about what it should do instead of helping with what you can.

hudo

SageTV is closed-source, but there is a very good API for interacting with it, I see no reason why there cannot be SageTV/XBMC integration. In the meantime I've been working on a SageTV add-on that works in Dharma, I have the basics working just fine (listing and playing shows, with plot/genre/etc displayed using one of the episode view types from the TV Show library).

More info here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=80868

I don't have the most recent code in the thread, I can add it later tonight or tomorrow.

Just wondering if anyone in the know would be able to provide a bit of an update on the status of the Unified PVR Front End that's been in development for a while (also known as the PVR Testing Branch).

Reason I ask is because I'm toying with the idea of integrating Slingbox support into XBMC (based on the Slingbox SDK found here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/slingboxsdk/). So I have three avenues that I can choose. Create something similar to the HDHomeRun support and integrate Slinbox into XBMC that way. Or if the PVR testing branch is far enough along create a Slingbox PVR Addon for the PVR branch. Or if the PVR branch still has lots of work left on it, just sit back and wait for all the PVR stuff to get wrapped up.

Any and all input/feedback is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Harry

Well, IANAdev, but I'd think that a PVR addon would be the way to go, since this seems to be the way things are headed. If I'm not mistaken it's pretty much a given that once the code is stable and complete enough that it'll be merged into xbmc trunk, so it would make a lot of sense to write an addon in this way.

I'd wait for input from an actual team-xbmc'er first, though. I'm just speculating.

lloydsmart Wrote:Well, IANAdev, but I'd think that a PVR addon would be the way to go, since this seems to be the way things are headed. If I'm not mistaken it's pretty much a given that once the code is stable and complete enough that it'll be merged into xbmc trunk, so it would make a lot of sense to write an addon in this way.

I'd wait for input from an actual team-xbmc'er first, though. I'm just speculating.

I wonder though, since PVR is Personal Video Recorder and the Slingbox doesn't do any recording, it's simply a video feed source, more like the HDHomeRun which as far as I can tell is currently supported as simply an extra video source when adding video sources. Hmm ....

Harry