Development progress

[Red_F]

I will continue the previous XBMC Add-on for ARGUS TV development progess in this thread.

The old one was getting really, really large anyway!

[glenn 1990]

Small suggestion:

It would be nice if the channel name can be added to the title (in recording screen) in case that the channel don't have a channel logo.
This is how it works in the MP client.

So if there is no channel logo:
title = [Channelname] + title.

Also, my channelnames, logos and descriptions are totally wrong for many channels.

[Red_F]

.....
Also, my channelnames, logos and descriptions are totally wrong for many channels.

Go to the System / Live-TV / General. Choose "Reset the PVR database" (the bottom option).

This may be caused by changes you make on the back-end in naming, ordering, grouping, installing a new version of the Add-on or XBMC and many other items. It has been discussed at length before that there is an almost 100% mismatch between the way XBMC identifies channels, groups etc. and the way that ForTheRecord identifies them.

Until the XBMC Team decides to provide additional support for GUID's in their data structures this will remain an issue. And matching will remain a best effort attempt by the Add-on.

It happens on my systems too. But very infrequently, and mostly after changes made setup (newer versions). So most stable setups are unlikely to encounter this.

Also, you can enable detailed debug logging as described here: http://www.4therecord.eu/forum/viewtopi ... 28&start=6. Then, with debug logging active, reset the PVR database and everything retrieved from ForTheRecord will be accurately logged so you can find out where the information presented in XBMC is different from what was returned by ForTheRecord.

[BitHelp]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the great plugin. Works almost perfectly, better than I could imagine when I started researching about integrating my satellite system into my HTPC .

I do have a suggestion and a question.

1) The suggestion is that if XBMC + FTR could somehow be able to pre-select the correct audio stream when switching to a channel. For example if the video that I am playing contains two audio streams, i.e. English + Other, I want xmbc to automatically select the Other audio stream first since this will most likely be in my native language.

2) The question is that if there is a way to force each xbmc client to import the correct order of channels within the groups from the FTR backend. I have two channels groups, "All Channels" and "Favorites" and so far no matter what the ordering is on the backend the ordering on the xbmc comes alphabetically. I am running xbmc+pvr margo eden beta 2 and I have tried all the combinations in the xbmc's settings but with no luck.

Again thanks a lot for your effort and work,

BitHelp

[Red_F]

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the great plugin. Works almost perfectly, better than I could imagine when I started researching about integrating my satellite system into my HTPC .

I do have a suggestion and a question.

1) The suggestion is that if XBMC + FTR could somehow be able to pre-select the correct audio stream when switching to a channel. For example if the video that I am playing contains two audio streams, i.e. English + Other, I want xmbc to automatically select the Other audio stream first since this will most likely be in my native language.

2) The question is that if there is a way to force each xbmc client to import the correct order of channels within the groups from the FTR backend. I have two channels groups, "All Channels" and "Favorites" and so far no matter what the ordering is on the backend the ordering on the xbmc comes alphabetically. I am running xbmc+pvr margo eden beta 2 and I have tried all the combinations in the xbmc's settings but with no luck.

Again thanks a lot for your effort and work,

BitHelp

1. Bithelp, the live TV data stream is currently read by the XBMC CorePlayer (DVDPlayer) without interference from the Add-on. So perhaps there are settings for that player that let you pre-select defaults for audio/data/video streams. Sadly I still have too little knowledge about using XBMC , too busy writing and testing code for the Add-on.
2. The ordering issue. I have written before about the mismatch between the internal visions of channel between XBMC and ForTheRecord. I do not understand why your listings always come out alphabetically. As you can see here, mine are definitely not alphatically (and in effect, exactly like the ordering on the PVR server). Again, maybe there is some context menu available for sorting within XBMC, that I'm not aware of.
   
   

I would appreciate it if any of the 'true users' of XBMC could dive into the available PVR menu's / commands and make a short post about this for everyone.

Cheers,
Fred

[Red_F]

These last weeks I have been (almost obsessively) busy with the ATV2.

I really was frustrated by the fact that whatever I did in the Add-on, Live-TV was unacceptably bad to look at.

So I (once again) stripped more code from the TsReader classes and have now arrived at a bare minimum, just enough to process the datastream progressing forward in a linear way only. This has lead to some success. I'm now able to view Live-TV without pausing, stuttering and buffering issues. But only for datastreams with moderate bitrates!. And of course only SD content, as the ATV2 will not do HD.

This version is now being tested and, if it works for more people then just me, I will put up a link to download it the upcoming week.

I will try to analyse at roughly how high a datarate the problems do start, and provide feedback about that.

Cheers,
Fred

[PD]

Hi Fred

Can I say very impressed with the work you and margro have done to support FTR, i'm testing Eden beta3 atm, and besides limited remote support (even with the MCE remote add-on), which is not related to your work, recordings seems to be working very well despite being limited on options, keep up the good work.

Ray\PD
Team MediaPortal

[kra]

I have set up argus and xbmc in a multiseat enviroment now, I run win7 with argus and beta3-pvr frontend. And I have a Revo3610 ION running beta3 xbmcbuntu with beta2-pvr xbmc.

These are my findings.

on the linux I have problem with live-tv SD, audio is fine but video is not smooth. If I start recording the channel I'm watching and playback from recordings rather than live-tv, then playback is fine! HD is allways fine, but needs buffering because of wifi.

On the windows with argus and the beta3-pvr I do not have the playback issues. I do however have another issue, channel change doesn't work, it simply stops, and starting a channel again may need 2 tries. On linux channel change is perfect and fast.

if only one could have dxva playback of SD content, the SD renderer isn't very impressive for tv.

EDIT
It seems the windows channelchange issue was argus problem, tv-cards where set to handle 2 cams, changing it to 1 seems to resolve the issue, the fact that this didn't happen on the linux client is odd

[kra]

Also I notice the notifications are behaving badly, don't know if that is ftr or plugin related. When resuming my linux client from suspend today it reported deleting all my scheduled recordings. Fortunately it didn't happen thou.

I have a question, the ftr/argus has some really nice features, and especially when it comes to scheduling recordings, creating advanced recording options and filters. Will we be able to use these features from inside xbmc ? If I understand correctly the PVR features of xbmc is "hardcoded" and the pvr plugins is simply a backend and cannot add extra features to the gui ?

But I have to say, great work on the plugin !

I've been using mediaportal since 2005, I've tried FTR several times and xbmc-pvr several times, it has come a long way now, and I think I'm finally ready to replace tv-server with argus, and possibly replace mediaportal for xbmc, kudos to your work.

[BitHelp]

Re: Development progress


BitHelp wrote:
Hi,

Thanks a lot for the great plugin. Works almost perfectly, better than I could imagine when I started researching about integrating my satellite system into my HTPC .

I do have a suggestion and a question.

1) The suggestion is that if XBMC + FTR could somehow be able to pre-select the correct audio stream when switching to a channel. For example if the video that I am playing contains two audio streams, i.e. English + Other, I want xmbc to automatically select the Other audio stream first since this will most likely be in my native language.

2) The question is that if there is a way to force each xbmc client to import the correct order of channels within the groups from the FTR backend. I have two channels groups, "All Channels" and "Favorites" and so far no matter what the ordering is on the backend the ordering on the xbmc comes alphabetically. I am running xbmc+pvr margo eden beta 2 and I have tried all the combinations in the xbmc's settings but with no luck.

Again thanks a lot for your effort and work,

BitHelp




Bithelp, the live TV data stream is currently read by the XBMC CorePlayer (DVDPlayer) without interference from the Add-on. So perhaps there are settings for that player that let you pre-select defaults for audio/data/video streams. Sadly I still have too little knowledge about using XBMC , too busy writing and testing code for the Add-on.
The ordering issue. I have written before about the mismatch between the internal visions of channel between XBMC and ForTheRecord. I do not understand why your listings always come out alphabetically. As you can see here, mine are definitely not alphatically (and in effect, exactly like the ordering on the PVR server). Again, maybe there is some context menu available for sorting within XBMC, that I'm not aware of.

Image


I would appreciate it if any of the 'true users' of XBMC could dive into the available PVR menu's / commands and make a short post about this for everyone.

Cheers,
Fred

Hi Fred and thanks for replying. Is there a special guide about how to sort the channels in xbmc the way they come in for the record? Since yours are sorted correctly and mine is alphabetically maybe I am doing something wrong here.

Regards,

BitHelp