[apanloco]

This guide works really well! I have a few questions for the vdr-experienced.

1. Although my two tuners are on the same card, VDR only gathers epg-data for the first. So if I record a channel, I never get any epg-data at all. Any way to fix this?

2. How do I connect xmltv to vdr? I find xmltv data to be more detailed than over the air data. And it would also solve #1.

3. Anyone knows how to get a channels.conf file for an analogue PVR-150 card?

Appreciate any help!

apan

[Swifty]

apan: Glad you found the guide useful, I only have recent experience of VDR but can try to answer your questions.

1) Afaik VDR can only scan EPG data for when the tuner is not in use, so if you have an active recording it cannot change transponders to get EPG data. You can try using the eepg plugin, this will probably give you longer EPG data depending on your source which after an inital scan could combat your problem (instructions to install are in the first post)
2) You can use xmltv2vdr plugin, this involves some manual setup for each channel so I would suggest trying eepg first.
3) I think the PVR-150 is an analogue card ? If so I have no direct experience, but found this site which mentions an analogue plugin; http://www.ko0l.de/download/vdr/analogtv/

HTH

[biggles]

I still am experiencing two problems (running build 25489):

1. The same epg data is displayed on all channels (started a week or two ago).

2. vdr keeps scanning for new channels all the time. Even if I remove them from channels.conf it keeps coming back after a while.

[Swifty]

biggles:
1) What source are you using, do you get OTA EPG?
2) Stop VDR (sudo /etc/init.d/vdr stop)
Edit the setup.conf (sudo nano /etc/vdr/setup.conf)
Find the line near the bottom named 'UpdateChannels' it currently probably = 4, change this to = 0 instead. Now 'Ctrl + X' save your changes and restart VDR.

[biggles]

1. Yes
2. Thanks! Works like a charm! Tried to find any documentation about it but probably looked in all the wrong places...

[Swifty]

Try the following for the EPG problem;
Close down XBMC and remove the MyTV.db file:-
(sudo rm ~/.xbmc/UserData/Database/MyTv.db) - The location may be slightly different, I do not have an XBMC box in front of me at the moment..
Then try installing the eepg plugin for vdr:-
(sudo apt-get install vdr-plugin-eepg)
Now reboot or restart VDR and give it a few minutes to scrape the EPG and then open XBMC.

[rdoac]

Will this work with WinTV-HVR-950Q ? What version of XBMC is in ppa ?

Yes, I use it with that card, although it will saturate the USB bus when watching an HD channel, so don't expect to record to a USB HD..

Is their any channel list for Dish Network USA ? What does DVB-S and DVB-T mean ?

DVB-S =Satellite
DVB-T =Euro Spec TV over Antenna, like ATSC but with mpeg2 audio (normally).

Note, Dish HD doesn't use a standard. You could get a Genpix adapter and get that working with VDR and an official card, but that's outside the realms of this discussion. If it works in VDR, it should work in XBMC-PVR.

[CrashX]

Yes, I use it with that card, although it will saturate the USB bus when watching an HD channel, so don't expect to record to a USB HD...

Are you using Ubuntu 9.10 ?

What do you mean by saturate the USB bus ?

Does XBMC-PVR work on windows ?

If I just want to pick up over air channels in USA ? Do I use DVB-T ?

[m.tw]

Hi!

I do not know where else I could post my encountered three problems with the pvr-testing XBMC-Version.

The simple (and not really important but annoying) problem: when I try to check the movie-infos of a recording and it does not have stored one already (or I click refresh) it does not use the directory-name as search argument (as it does with other types of videos) but it uses "client_0001" instead.

The second one is more serious: when watching a tv-channel (free), after a while it starts every now and then to freeze for 10-30 seconds and to go on after that for some seconds as if nothing had happened and to jump forward after that some seconds hopping over the 10-30 seconds. So every approx. 5 minutes there is a short break and you loose some part of the movie.

The third is really a hard one (at least for me). It is not possible to watch a movie recorded by vdr. It starts playing but after 5 to 7 Minutes it either freezes, ends the playing and goes back to movie-menu or it crashes.

So, can someone please take a hand on this problems? I will provide you with logs and other informations as much as you need, and I will also test the pvr-version very hard, if that helps you.

As a start - my configuration is:
VDR 1.7.10 on server (Gigabyte M61P-S3, AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+, 2GB memory, nVidia GeForce 6150SE, 5,5TB harddisks)

XBMC pvr-testing-15~hepi-karmic.25282 on client (ASUSTeK M3N78 PRO, AMD Athlon™ Dual Core Processor 5050e, 2GB memory, nVidia GeForce 8300, 8GB USB-stick)

The problem can't base on the fact that I have a client-server szenario, because I have the same version of XBMC also setup on the server, where I encountered the same problems.

Best regards,
Manfred

[Swifty]

It is possible some of the freezing issues you see are due to changes in the SVN, it looks like Alwin has been doing many changes in the past week so that may have introduced some problems.
As for playback of the recordings I have seen that once, you can get around the issue by adding the recordings directory into XBMC's normal 'Videos' section and enable stacking (VDR splits the recording around each GB) once I did this and played it via that method it worked fine..

Remember this branch is 'Testing' and still undergoes many changes so if something isn't working right it is probably a good idea to wait a few days then do an apt-get update to pull the latest version and see if it's been fixed.

[rdoac]

Are you using Ubuntu 9.10 ?

No I am using Gentoo. Although, before my stuff arrived in our shipping from Europe I used a laptop with Ubuntu 9.04.

What do you mean by saturate the USB bus ?

I wanted to record onto a usb drive when I had my laptop as I knew the VDR server was temporary. I couldn't use HD and record it to a USB device withough heavy packet drop.

Does XBMC-PVR work on windows ?

Yes, and no.

Yes, you can use it as a frontend, if your VDR server is on a different box, however, I had problems with ffmpeg not supporting the mpeg2 codec used by VDR and my Hauppauge PVR card (for analog cable). So have to compile XBMC myself using an older version of ffmpeg. I also find that XBMC on windows keeps stuttering on VDR playback, as though it doesn't know what to do when the buffer empties.

If I just want to pick up over air channels in USA ? Do I use DVB-T ?

No, you need an ATSC card, like the 950Q above. DVB-T is a European standard, very similar to ATSC but incompatable. (For a laugh I tried my DVB-T card here wondering if I could force an ATSC firmware etc, but no.. and it wasn't very funny either..)

You need to follow a VDR tutorial with ATSC to get it working. I also needed to adjust something in VDR to stop the audio channels being reset to 0 everytime I tuned to a channel. (As it's AC-3 audio only)..

You should find some useful info here:

http://dvbn.happysat.org/viewforum.php?f=17

You will need to register on the site before using it..

[CrashX]

It is possible some of the freezing issues you see are due to changes in the SVN, it looks like Alwin has been doing many changes in the past week so that may have introduced some problems.
As for playback of the recordings I have seen that once, you can get around the issue by adding the recordings directory into XBMC's normal 'Videos' section and enable stacking (VDR splits the recording around each GB) once I did this and played it via that method it worked fine..

Remember this branch is 'Testing' and still undergoes many changes so if something isn't working right it is probably a good idea to wait a few days then do an apt-get update to pull the latest version and see if it's been fixed.

Any ideas when it was synced with Trunk ?

[m.tw]

thanks for your very quick answer. For sure I know that it is a testing version and I did wait since wednesday last week and tried out every new version... on the other hand, maybe I can help a little bit via testing?

I tried to find where I can enable "stacking", but couldn't get it - can you help me please?

[CrashX]

Yes, you can use it as a frontend, if your VDR server is on a different box, however, I had problems with ffmpeg not supporting the mpeg2 codec used by VDR and my Hauppauge PVR card (for analog cable). So have to compile XBMC myself using an older version of ffmpeg. I also find that XBMC on windows keeps stuttering on VDR playback, as though it doesn't know what to do when the buffer empties

I believe Jezz_X is having issues with getting to work on windows as well ? Maybe you can build a windows build for us to use ?

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=62397&page=5

[rdoac]

I believe Jezz_X is having issues with getting to work on windows as well ? Maybe you can build a windows build for us to use ?

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=62397&page=5

My compilation was on linux I'm afraid. I noted the issue with ffmpeg on windows and linux, but only resolved it with linux as I didn't care enough about windows... Sorry, I don't really use it..