XBMC with PVR Support
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Latest news: 2012-12-21/22: Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is out by today (if you're using OpenELEC, update to OpenELEC 3.0 Beta 6 to get RC2):
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| Recommendation: Due to some important fixes, additional features compared to RC1 and strongly ameliorated speeding & timing behaviour, we strongly recommend to use the latest RC2 (equiv. OpenELEC 3.0 BETA 6) or Nightly after 2012-12-21. |
Whether you're new to XBMC or an already happy user - we now generally recommend to use XBMC Frodo (12.0), instead of dealing with XBMC Eden's latest official release.
The reason is simple: Frodo is already kind of "rocksolid" and as the PVR functionality is included now (also including ARGUS TV PVR Client), it's much easier to install and get it working than XBMC 11.0 Eden. PLUS... you get more benefit out of it (like time shifting, LCN channel numbering & switching, etc.)
Stay tuned, we'll try to keep in track with Frodo development :)
Contents
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Prologue - Some words about Eden & Frodo
For those of you knowing already, what XMBC is about and for, we'd like to share some words about the upcoming XBMC 12.0 (Frodo), which is as per end of December in its After-RC2 phase - again, the XBMC developers made us a Christmas gift - as 2011 with V 11.0 (Eden).
It's always a bit of a challenge to write a Wiki article about latest builds within a development phase, as it is outdated already the day it is published. We try to keep track - therefore stay posted.
This article is not about discussion advantages or disadvantages of Eden, Frodo or even other clients, it shall give a helping hand to those of our ARGUS TV users who want to know roughly what we're talking about, how to install - knowing about hurdles and maybe restrictions.
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What you should know:
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If you're using Frodo with its nightlies or install newest PVR Client versions separately (FYI: What is a "Nightly" or "Nightly Build"? - see info box below), please watch carefully which version/build of Frodo and PVR Client the text refers to. This sixth permutation of the article refers now to Frodo Release Candidate 2 (RC2) or later with the included PVR build as per 2012-12-21 (or later). Additionally good to know: also the nightlies always contain the latest submitted ARGUS TV PVR Client. |
XBMC
XBMC is a free and open source media player application developed by the XBMC Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium.
XBMC is available for multiple operating-systems and hardware platforms, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.
(see 
XBMC Website and Wikipedia for a complete description)
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XBMC 12.0 Frodo with PVR Support
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Be aware of: Release Candidates and probably the next upcoming public versions until official release of XBMC 12.0 Frodo are still in a beta stage. The will to accept potential and still inherent errors or dysfunction for the time being is presumed. Be assured, that these potential errors are by now far less severe copared to Eden and its "artificially added PVR functionality". We don't know everything, but we made some experience - if you want to avoid some of them, please follow the steps described below. |
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PVR functionality has found entry to the "official XBMC Frodo Repository".
The even better news, that the ARGUS TV PVR Client also found its way into the standard (and thus included) repository of XBMC - this means to you much less thinking and considering... and an update will consist of Download & Run Installation - that's it.
This all means actually to us ARGUS TV users, that the PVR Client Add-on has the same basis as other PVR add-ons, too. And thus we profit out of the fundamental decision of XMBC-Team to generally support PVR functionality.
Download & Installation Instructions
Download & install of Frodo with PVR funtionality - recommended way:
Prerequisites
No more prerequisites since Frodo RC2; system has become very fast, no need anymore to overcome start-up issues.
Download & Installation
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Download |
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Installation
- Install ARGUS TV 2.0.1 or later. Check that ARGUS TV is properly configured.
- Install the downloaded Frodo (XBMC 12.0) Release Candidate or a later nightly build. Start it and wait until all databases are properly updated.
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FYI: What is a "Nightly" or "Nightly Build"? |
| "Nightlies" are builds that are run automatically during the night. All (ready-to-test) contributions or changes have before been added to the main development branch and will automatically be incorporated. The keyword is "ready to test" here. These changes normally have been tested on on a subsystem or component level and only few as an incorporated part of the whole system. Thus, every user using "Nightlies" have to be prepared, that the system may be unstable, maybe even (worst case) not run at all. |
Get it started
To configure & to activate the ARGUS TV PVR Client, respectively the PVR functionality, please follow the steps described below.
Configuration & Activation of ARGUS TV PVR Client from within Frodo
To use the PVR functionalities within XBMC, you have to configure it in two simple steps: configure the PVR add-on for ARGUS TV properly and then activate it.
If you follow the steps to first configure the PVR add-on and then activate PVR functionality it avoids you to get some (obvious) error messages. But it's of minor importance, the ARGUS TV Client plug-in starts automatically after it has been activated. If you want to stay on the safe side, exit XBMC and restart it.
Frodo: Configuration of ARGUS TV PVR add-on
Move to the PVR Clients under System / Settings / Add-ons / Installed Add-ons / PVR Clients
- Deactivate all PVR Clients except "ARGUS TV PVR Client" (if you're using XBMC with ARGUS TV only).
- Configure the ARGUS TV PVR Client to your needs:
- The most important fields to configure
- ARGUS TV Hostname: set the IP address or server name of the machine on which your ARGUS TV Core Services are running. Keep 127.0.0.1 for a single-seat installation (XBMC and ARGUS TV are running on the same machine).
You may enter also a dynamic DNS entry, if you registered a dynamic DNS service and set up dynamic DNS and NAT / port forwarding on your router (→ see also
our Wiki article Remote Access).
- ARGUS TV webserver port: set to 49943 if you used the default settings when installing ARGUS TV
- Windows User Account: set the user name of the above mentioned machine, that should be used. Usually best choice is the same user, under which ARGUS TV Core is running as well. It doesn't matter, if this user is existing on the (remote) machine on which XBMC is installed (that you configure right now), if it's a different one.
- Password: enter the password of this user that you just entered to be used on ARGUS TV Core's machine.
- ARGUS TV Hostname: set the IP address or server name of the machine on which your ARGUS TV Core Services are running. Keep 127.0.0.1 for a single-seat installation (XBMC and ARGUS TV are running on the same machine).
- Activate ARGUS TV PVR Client → see next section.
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Frodo: Activating PVR functionality
System / Settings Live TV and go to the tab General
- Activate "Enabled"
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- Adjust other settings to your needs, they're self-explanatory.
You will now see the PVR starting up, connecting to ARGUS TV, importing recordings and finally also the EPG.
You'll find now in the main menu the entry "Live TV" as shown in the pictures above.
Please keep in mind, that the PVR functionality as a whole is in beta stage. Not all functions are yet supported, but mature stability is already given.
Enjoy the combination of these two marvelous software packages: ARGUS TV & XBMC Frodo.
Frodo: Troubleshooting & Restrictions that you currently may encounter
Of course, we all may expect, that those issues & hurdles will be eliminated in the upcoming builds until release.
Nevertheless they're right now immanent and part of the beta phase. The following list may not be complete and maybe already outdated again.
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Network and connectivity problems may still cause XBMC (both, Eden & Frodo) to crash. Eden was sensitive when connectivity problem occurred while startin up PVR Client, Frodo still struggles with connectivity problems while scanning your file bases - the PVR Client solved its problems. If you encounter this, e.g. if you're connecting to remote shares or PVR server or reside in an unreliable network, you simply have to reconnect the network e.g. with any explorer appand wait until scanning is finished. |
- Thus, most troubles come from network issues:
- First check please, if ARGUS TV and XBMC both have full access to incoming and outgoing connections in your firewall
- If you installed / added XBMC already earlier and selected only some ports to be opened, add the ports 49941 through 49943 to be open as well
- Check if your port just configured in PVR Client is correct
- If you're using dynamic DNS, check
- that your dynamic DNS service is properly set up and active (check with your dynDNS service provider)
- that port forwarding or NAT is set up correctly for ALL new ports (49941 through 49943)
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If you encounter additional issues or find, that some of them have been fixed, please add your experience for other users. This ARGUS TV article or section needs your support. Please help us to create, correct or extend it. You may want to refer to "Contribute to our Wiki". |
- Experienced issues with RC or Nightlies & included PVR Client:
- Seemingly issues that are correctable (see troubleshooting Frodo Betas)
- Sometimes the start-up of the ARGUS TV PVR Client seems to hang when loading recordings from ARGUS TV core machine. If you're not tracing or using the "recorded programs" section of ARGUS TV, you may have collected maybe even thousands of entries of "recorded programs" - which even may be outdated. Delete those entries within ARGUS TV Scheduler Console by moving to "Recorded Programs" and then hit import/synchronize" - after a check of existing files, ARGUS TV will propose which programs may be deleted... do so and restart XBMC.
- Resolved issues of recent versions (subjective):
- 2012-12-15 Nightly:
- Startup of PVR Client → if you select to exit Frodo again during startup & load of the PVR it may lead to a complete freeze of XBMC and you may have to kill the task / program
- extremely sped-up starting time; this issue seems to be ameliorated a lot: startup time of PVR CLient → when you start XBMC and have the setting enabled to "Update library on start-up" in the video settings, the start of the PVR Client can take very long - we experienced startup times of upto 15 minutes instead of 1-3.
- Thus decide, if you want to use XBMC Frodo as a live TV front-end or to schedule recordings, then leave the option disabled as described above in the
Prerequisites above. If you use XBMC Frodo mainly as a media center for recorded shows, you may leave this active.
- 2012-12-15 Nightly:
2012-12-14 Nightly:
- LCN channel switching now implemented as per Nightly 2012-12-13 or later
2012-12-12 RC1 & earlier:
- Beta 2/3 & RC1 & PVR Client speed up the start & ending of the program, nevertheless, the restrictions above are still valid.
- Stuttering of live TV after a certain runtime were not experienced anymore
- PVR Client dosn't start up automatically → seems to be resolved
Differences of PVR functionality between XBMC Frodo and XBMC Eden
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Please add your information, your experience and latest news here! This ARGUS TV article or section needs your support. Please help us to create, correct or extend it. You may want to refer to "Contribute to our Wiki". |
This section shall reflect only the ARGUS TV PVR-related functionality, differences but also commonalities, enhancements and restrictions.
We must consider, that in the past, most of the ARGUS TV-related functionality is directly linked to the PVR Client plug-in, not to XBMC itself. Nevertheless, XBMC 12.0 (Frodo) since Beta 1 comes with mutual support of PVR Clients and since Beta 3 the ARGUS TV PVR Client us included - this will bring new features to us that (at least indirectly) also affect the ARGUS TV PVR Client plug-in.
Also, although Frodo runs much more smooth than Eden, we may expect far more: currently, Frodo Nightlies are build with the /DEBUG compiler switch, that means, the application still wears a lot of overhead and code that is needed for error analysis & investigation. This probably will lead to a "sudden boost" as soon as we get the XBMC Frodo release. So let's live with that for now...
Some obvious differences in Frodo / Eden behaviour
- Timeshift: Frodo now supports timeshift (pause & resume) of live TV - one of the directly usable new features. Eden wasn't.
- Channel switching: Frodo versions as per nightly of 2012-12-13 or later now support the direct input of channel numbers (plus "enter") during live TV to directly switch to another channel by LCN. Eden and Frodo including RC1 weren't.
- Channel switching times: the channel switching times of Frodo are much shorter than with Eden
- Sound quality: we encounter real HD sound of live TV thanks to the new sound engine of Frodo
Of course, this list is only a few headlines, please refer to below mentioned ARGUS TV thread and especially also to the site and forum of XBMC - please feel free to add points that are important to you, us and all our users.
XBMC 11.0 Eden with PVR Support
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Warning: If you want to have PVR support, do not use the official builds from XBMC Website, they currently do not support PVR functionality and it can't be enabled through adding add-ins. Use the prebuild packages' download link in the next section instead.
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XBMC itself can not record or stream live TV or handle TV cards in its current stable release, but as XBMC is open source and expandable through plug-ins, a development branch of XBMC emerged and is kept updated closely with all upcoming releases and betas of main XBMC development.
To use XBMC as a front-end for ARGUS TV, you will need to use this branch, called "XBMC with PVR Support". It adds Live TV & Radio streaming and a (for the time being very limited) ARGUS TV Scheduling to XBMC. Through various PVR plug-ins, it can be used with a variety of TV server software. Please note, that the PVR support is in a beta phase, although it is working already very stable. As the time of writing, client-side pause/timeshift of live streams is not yet possible and scheduling a recording is possible only in a very limited way (only one-time recordings so far).
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Downloads
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Warning: Current version is XBMC 11.0 Eden, the next version XBMC 12.0 Frodo is in an early Alpha Stage and the use of it can only be advised to experienced users who are willing to accept errors and dysfunction for the time being - if so, please read XBMC 12.0 Frodo below. |
Both of the above can freely installed over an existing Eden installation without loss of any configuration.
Vice-versa, also the Eden stable version can be installed (back) over the installed PVR (Eden) installation without any harm to move back to the main branch.
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For more information about this build and development, please visit the PVR Build section of the XBMC-forum under XBMC PVR-Forum
Eden: Configuration & Activation of the PVR
To use the PVR functionalities within XBMC, you have to configure it in two simple steps: activate it and configure the PVR add-on for ARGUS TV properly. If you follow the steps to first configure the PVR add-on and then activate PVR functionality it avoids to quit and re-start XBMC to load all ARGUS TV channels, EPG data etc. But it's of minor importance, just keep in mind to re-start XBMC once, if not.
Eden: Configuration of ARGUS TV PVR add-on
Move to the PVR Clients under System / Settings / Add-ons / Installed Add-ons / PVR Clients
- Deactivate all PVR Clients except "ARGUS TV PVR Client" (if you're using XBMC with ARGUS TV only).
- Configure the ARGUS TV PVR Client to your needs:
- The most important fields to configure
- ARGUS TV Hostname: set the IP address or server name of the machine on which your ARGUS TV Core Services are running. Keep 127.0.0.1 for a single-seat installation (XBMC and ARGUS TV are running on the same machine).
You may enter also a dynamic DNS entry, if you registered a dynamic DNS service and set up dynamic DNS and NAT / port forwarding on your router. - ARGUS TV webserver port: set to 49943 if you used the default settings when installing ARGUS TV
- Windows User Account: set the username of the above mentioned machine, that should be used. Usually best choice is the same user, under which ARGUS TV Core is running as well. It doesn't matter, if this user is existing on the (remote) machine on which XBMC is installed (that you configure right now), if it's a different one.
- Password: enter the password of this user that you just entered to be used on ARGUS TV Core's machine.
- ARGUS TV Hostname: set the IP address or server name of the machine on which your ARGUS TV Core Services are running. Keep 127.0.0.1 for a single-seat installation (XBMC and ARGUS TV are running on the same machine).
- Activate ARGUS TV PVR Client.
Eden: Activating PVR functionality
System / Settings Live TV and go to the tab General
- Activate "Enabled"
- Adjust other settings to your needs, they're self-explanatory.
You will now see the PVR starting up, connecting to ARGUS TV, importing recordings and finally also the EPG Now you will find in the main menu also the entry "Live TV" as shown in the pictures above.
Please keep in mind, that the PVR functionality as a whole is in beta stage, the ARGUS TV PVR client is even named to be in alpha stage. Not all functions are yet supported, but absolute stability is given.
Enjoy the combination of these two marvelous software packages: ARGUS TV & XBMC.
Eden: Troubleshooting
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Network and connectivity problems may cause XBMC with activated PVR Support (both, Eden & Frodo) to crash. If you encounter this, e.g. if you're connecting to remote shares or PVR server or reside in an unreliable network, temporarily disable the PVR functionality in System / Settings / Live TV |
- Thus, most troubles come from network issues:
- First check please, if ARGUS TV and XBMC both have full access to incoming and outgoing connections in your firewall
- If you installed / added XBMC already earlier and selected only some ports to be opened, add the ports 49941 through 49943 to be open as well
- Check if your port just configured in PVR Client is correct
- If you're using dynamic DNS, check
- that your dynamic DNS service is properly set up and active (check with your dynDNS service provider)
- that port forwarding or NAT is set up correctly for ALL new ports (49941 through 49943)
Tips & Tricks
- After adding / editing / moving or removing channels from the back-end, you need to reset the PVR database. (EDEN + FRODO)
- Recording lifetime settings
- 1 = keep until space needed (FRODO)
- 2-364 = keep number of days (so lifetime from 14 --> recording deteted after 14 days)
- 3 = keep forever
- Setting the "Tunedelay" to 0 in the ARGUS TV PVR Client's Addon Config screen will force a new stream on tuning. (FRODO)
This usually solves hangs on channel changes with different content channels (i.e. SD ←→ HD).
- If your EPG data is often incorrect(and correct within ARGUS TV Scheduler Console), check the "Don't save TV Guide in Database" option in the TV section. This will force a full EPG import at XBMC startup.
- If you have buffering issues / glitches on Live TV / Radio, you can try to increase the buffers to 20 for example.
You need to add this to XBMC's advancedsettings.xml:
<pvr>
<minvideocachelevel>20</minvideocachelevel>
<minaudiocachelevel>20</minaudiocachelevel>
</pvr></nowiki>
Side effect: channel switching time will be higher.
Further Information
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Please read & follow the ARGUS TV Forum |
Credits
Our credits go to the ARGUS TV-Users Margro, Red_F, Glenn 1990 and many other contributors of the ARGUS TV Forum. Argus "Argus-TV" ArgusTV ATV "A-TV" ForTheRecord 4TR "For The Record" Scheduler Recorder Console XBMC PVR Client "add-on" addon Eden Frodo 11.0 12.0 download setup installation
