Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

General talk about ARGUS TV
SQLDBA
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:55 pm

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by SQLDBA » Wed Dec 21, 2016 10:53 pm

I get that part...but Argus still works even if there's no new development on it. Or at least it does for me. If the only issue preventing it from working with Kodi v17 (*sorry, said v18 originally) is the plugin and someone is getting that part working then my point is we're not left completely out in the cold for at least a little while longer.

Infidelus
Posts: 464
Joined: Wed May 28, 2008 7:53 pm
Location: UK

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by Infidelus » Thu Dec 22, 2016 10:16 pm

You're quite right. It still works, but it looks increasingly like it's dead (from a development point) so eventually I'll have to look elsewhere, especially if I want something cross platform so I can stop running Windows boxes just for Argus TV.

As for Kodi, don't care :) I do use Kodi for watching recordings, but I hate using the scheduler in Kodi (and MediaPortal ... and probably most of the other media centre boxes). I like the Argus Scheduler Console as it's much easier to navigate from the PC than using a remote control.

jboeren
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:40 pm
Location: Netherlands

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by jboeren » Sun Dec 25, 2016 11:55 am

Me too! Kodi for watching recordings is great! For scheduling I use Argus!
Infidelus wrote:I do use Kodi for watching recordings, but I hate using the scheduler in Kodi (and MediaPortal ... and probably most of the other media centre boxes). I like the Argus Scheduler Console as it's much easier to navigate from the PC than using a remote control.

steford
Posts: 30
Joined: Mon Dec 31, 2012 8:03 pm

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by steford » Sun Jan 08, 2017 9:27 pm

SQLDBA wrote:I get that part...but Argus still works even if there's no new development on it. Or at least it does for me. If the only issue preventing it from working with Kodi v17 (*sorry, said v18 originally) is the plugin and someone is getting that part working then my point is we're not left completely out in the cold for at least a little while longer.
I installed Kodi v17 Nightly on my FireTV yesterday as v16.1 was constantly locking up, losing OSD etc. I figured that even if the Argus plugin wasn't working I would simply map my recordings folder via SMB and watch them that way (I don't watch LiveTV). The good news is that everything is working and Kodi is much slicker than before - I've always had LiveTV and TV icon issues on this box and those problems remain. Apart from that I'm glad I took the plunge and Argus TV remains absolutely fine. I've looked for replacements many time on Windows and Linux but nothing beats it still although if I had to I would go to TVHeadend on Linux.

SQLDBA
Posts: 37
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 4:55 pm

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by SQLDBA » Mon Jan 09, 2017 4:38 pm

steford wrote:I've looked for replacements many time on Windows and Linux but nothing beats it still although if I had to I would go to TVHeadend on Linux.
If I were ever going to bail on Argus for something else at this point I'd probably look at running something in a Docker image, e.g. this one for TVHeadend: https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/tvheadend/

logifuse
Posts: 234
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:17 am

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by logifuse » Wed Jan 11, 2017 12:11 am

Over the last few weeks (summer holidays here in Australia, so not much on TV) I've rebuilt & migrated my server to Server 2016 from 2012 R2 (prompted by failing drives in my RAID array) & decided it was time to find the replacement for Argus :(.

1st up was NextPVR. Got it working no problem, got it linked to my Kodi clients no problem, got the EPG working (OTA) no problem. The web interface (for scheduling) is pretty ordinary, the advanced options for series recordings are practically non-existent, but the biggest issue was that is just made poor recordings of the main channel I record from (ABC HD). You couldn't FF or skip forward in Kodi, they would drift out of sync, pretty much unwatchable. I suspect that it just doesn't compile the TS files very well.

Next was TV Headend. I have a (largely useless) Wetek Play Kodi box with a tuner in it (emphasis on 'a' - meant to be dual tuner, but it isn't). It's a horribly underpowered front end that can't smoothly deinterlace & play MPEG2 TV. As a video playback client, it just copes with 720p h.264 over the LAN, but it's sluggish. Side note, if you're after a fanless/silent front end, a Gigabyte Brix N3000 with a small, cheap SSD is the go. Anyway, I ran TV Headend on it & it worked OK as a server. The idea was that I could maybe setup Linux in a Hyper-V VM & passthrough my PCIe>USB>Quad DVB-T Tuner card (theoretically possible in Server 2016). I couldn't work out the passthrough - it's massively complicated wade through powershell commands with very little real world documentation available. Plan B was to put the Quad tuner in an old PC & run Linux on that, but I didn't really want to run an extra box (server is a Gen 8 Microserver tucked away in the garage), & TV Headend's interface is pretty Spartan anyway.

Back to Windows options, I ruled out MediaPortal - I went to MP from WMC years ago, but that was never quite stable enough & that's why I went to Argus. MP seems unwilling to address the fundamental flaws in the TV Engine & it hasn't really progressed much. I tried to get a trial of DVBLink up & running, but I just got a black screen - seems like it just won't work, even for setup, over RDP. That left me with DVBViewer. The problem with that is that while they have a trial, it's very limited, & I had the RDP problem. Despite that, I was able to tune my tuner & was satisfied that it would at least work, so I paid the 20 Euros for a license. It was through Paypal, so I figured worst case if it was a complete disaster, I'd get a refund.

DVBViewer's documentation, like most of this software, is limited & you need to use a bit of instinct to get things working. They key for it replacing Argus is the DVBViewer Recording Service, but you need to do most of the config (scanning for channels, editing channels, etc) in the DVBViewer Pro application, then start the Recorder Service & access it via its web interface. The result is very good. Scheduling a recording is similar to Argus, but you still don't have some of the advanced series record options. Still, it has enough for me.

The Kodi client is good (has most of the series record limits most PVR clients have - I use the web interface to schedule, so no biggie). It has the quickest API I have seen - the guide/timers/recordings load up when you open Kodi is so fast. Deleting a recording is instantaneous. Tune speed is quick. The recording service seems rock solid.

I had to work out a few things such as how to update the EPG more often & how to get the synopsis for TV recordings to show properly in Kodi.

The biggest omission is that DVBViewer steadfastly refuses to support LCNs. I only deal with 25 odd channels, so that's OK, but I could imagine it being a pain. I created a favourites list & use that in Kodi. There's probably a way to customise it in Kodi if I can be bothered.

All up, I'm hopeful that Argus comes back to life, but if not, I'm happy with DVBViewer as my backend.

MadibaJ
Posts: 15
Joined: Thu Jan 22, 2015 5:38 am

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by MadibaJ » Wed Jan 11, 2017 6:07 am

logifuse wrote:Over the last few weeks (summer holidays here in Australia, so not much on TV) I've rebuilt & migrated my server to Server 2016 from 2012 R2 (prompted by failing drives in my RAID array) & decided it was time to find the replacement for Argus :(.

1st up was NextPVR. Got it working no problem, got it linked to my Kodi clients no problem, got the EPG working (OTA) no problem. The web interface (for scheduling) is pretty ordinary, the advanced options for series recordings are practically non-existent, but the biggest issue was that is just made poor recordings of the main channel I record from (ABC HD). You couldn't FF or skip forward in Kodi, they would drift out of sync, pretty much unwatchable. I suspect that it just doesn't compile the TS files very well.

Next was TV Headend. I have a (largely useless) Wetek Play Kodi box with a tuner in it (emphasis on 'a' - meant to be dual tuner, but it isn't). It's a horribly underpowered front end that can't smoothly deinterlace & play MPEG2 TV. As a video playback client, it just copes with 720p h.264 over the LAN, but it's sluggish. Side note, if you're after a fanless/silent front end, a Gigabyte Brix N3000 with a small, cheap SSD is the go. Anyway, I ran TV Headend on it & it worked OK as a server. The idea was that I could maybe setup Linux in a Hyper-V VM & passthrough my PCIe>USB>Quad DVB-T Tuner card (theoretically possible in Server 2016). I couldn't work out the passthrough - it's massively complicated wade through powershell commands with very little real world documentation available. Plan B was to put the Quad tuner in an old PC & run Linux on that, but I didn't really want to run an extra box (server is a Gen 8 Microserver tucked away in the garage), & TV Headend's interface is pretty Spartan anyway.

Back to Windows options, I ruled out MediaPortal - I went to MP from WMC years ago, but that was never quite stable enough & that's why I went to Argus. MP seems unwilling to address the fundamental flaws in the TV Engine & it hasn't really progressed much. I tried to get a trial of DVBLink up & running, but I just got a black screen - seems like it just won't work, even for setup, over RDP. That left me with DVBViewer. The problem with that is that while they have a trial, it's very limited, & I had the RDP problem. Despite that, I was able to tune my tuner & was satisfied that it would at least work, so I paid the 20 Euros for a license. It was through Paypal, so I figured worst case if it was a complete disaster, I'd get a refund.

DVBViewer's documentation, like most of this software, is limited & you need to use a bit of instinct to get things working. They key for it replacing Argus is the DVBViewer Recording Service, but you need to do most of the config (scanning for channels, editing channels, etc) in the DVBViewer Pro application, then start the Recorder Service & access it via its web interface. The result is very good. Scheduling a recording is similar to Argus, but you still don't have some of the advanced series record options. Still, it has enough for me.

The Kodi client is good (has most of the series record limits most PVR clients have - I use the web interface to schedule, so no biggie). It has the quickest API I have seen - the guide/timers/recordings load up when you open Kodi is so fast. Deleting a recording is instantaneous. Tune speed is quick. The recording service seems rock solid.

I had to work out a few things such as how to update the EPG more often & how to get the synopsis for TV recordings to show properly in Kodi.

The biggest omission is that DVBViewer steadfastly refuses to support LCNs. I only deal with 25 odd channels, so that's OK, but I could imagine it being a pain. I created a favourites list & use that in Kodi. There's probably a way to customise it in Kodi if I can be bothered.

All up, I'm hopeful that Argus comes back to life, but if not, I'm happy with DVBViewer as my backend.


Good review. Thanks for that. I was thinking about nextpvr as my replacement will give dvbvirwr a looking.

chemirocha
Posts: 6
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2012 12:29 pm

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by chemirocha » Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:35 pm

logifuse wrote:Over the last few weeks (summer holidays here in Australia, so not much on TV) I've rebuilt & migrated my server to Server 2016 from 2012 R2 (prompted by failing drives in my RAID array) & decided it was time to find the replacement for Argus :(.
...
Thanks for the excellent reviews. I've just started using kodi on a Raspberry Pi3 with the argus PVR plugin but the backend is on a Windows PC using mediaportal TV engine with the scheduling controlled by Argus. May sound complicated, and it is, but it's a hangover from when I used MP for viewing as well. In truth, it works for me - I prefer the tuning and channel mapping in MP but there's nothing as good as Argus for the scheduling. The kodi plugin for Argus though is pretty poor and there is no series record so I've also been thinking of switching to something else for the backend. I'll probably wait to see how kodi goes down with the family first though - early days yet but it looks promising.

If you come across any issues with DVBViewer I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be very interested to hear about them!

Thanks again.

rudig
Posts: 254
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:21 pm

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by rudig » Wed Jan 11, 2017 8:30 pm

Anyone successfully tried media portal 2.1pre release with tve3.5?
I installed it on my win10 machine with three dvb-c tuners but couldn't get tve3.5 to start. Anyone successfull with this and how was the experience?

Benoire
Posts: 207
Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2012 8:51 am
Location: Auckland, New Zealand

Re: Argus Status - Dead/Alive/Still Parked?

Post by Benoire » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:42 pm

So from what I can tell, Dot-I is still updating parts of the code, I've seen commits to the repository (not the MP code, but the actual server) with the latest being in November 2016. Looks to be only minor changes, e.g. SQL database work and a little refactoring. He may be finding time to start some updates as it has been two years since the last commits when he released the rest API updates, and now 4 commits in Nov.

Hopefully he can start to put some more time in to his software he does for free.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests