What is the most stable PVR solution out there?

General talk about ARGUS TV
dvgeek
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:40 pm

Re: What is the most stable PVR solution out there?

Post by dvgeek » Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:36 pm

Well - almost a month since I last posted. Here's the story..

I've been a long time user of ArgusTV (mid 2013), and was very happy. I had initially started with a MePo frontend but moved to multiple XBMC/Kodi front ends. My only ongoing issue was with subtitle support in XBMC/Kodi - nothing to do with ArgusTV - which was as stable as could be on a windows platform. My program guide was populated with WebGrab+ and everything was stable. Even upgraded the backend to Windows10 when it came out and all was still stable. I had three SiliconDust HDHomeRun OTA devices - giving me a total of six tuners. Unfortunately weather started playing it's tricks and I would lose recordings / have dropouts in recordings whenever it became cloudy or rained.

I had no choice for an ISP other than Comcast, and for 10 bucks more they gave me basic cable without a box. Bought a 3 tuner HDHomeRun and put in the required cablecard for a buck more. While this HDHomeRun tuner works perfectly with it's software plus with Windows Media Player and NextPVR - there is no support for this in ArgusTV. This CableCard tuner does not even show up in Argus.

So now I had two choices - keep my existing OTA setup on Argus and have a different setup for CableCard on NextPVR, or move everything over to NextPVR. I had to choose Windows as a platform (even though I am a Linux person), because I could not get the same flexibility and ease of operations with MythTV or TVHeadEnd.

I did the migration - moved everything over - and while the NextPVR interface, etc. is not as slick as ArgusTV - it has proven itself to be stable this last month.

It did take a little bit of research and digging in NextPVR forums to get all the patches and updates in, but in the end I am satisfied - I have 9 tuners - with the 3 cablecard tuners having the top priority and the priority of OTA tuners is proportional to their respective signal strength.

Ending configuration:
BackEnd - Intel Core2Duo E8400 on an Intel Q45 ITX machine with 4GB memory, 120GB SSD Boot drive, 100GB SataDrive for TimeShift, 2TB HDD for Recordings and a 4TB HDD for Archiving, housed in a headless Antec ITX case. Tested working with 9 streams being recorded simultaneously. This has 2 NIC's - one NIC for the OTA's and the other for the CableCard Tuner and streaming.

FrontEnd's - Multiple consisting of nVidia ShieldTV, Two Amazon FireTV's (1 stick & 1 box) and a RaspBerryPi 3 running OpenELEC.

Well - that's my story of how I ended up with NextPVR.

Griffo
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2014 5:41 am

Re: What is the most stable PVR solution out there?

Post by Griffo » Fri Apr 14, 2017 6:10 am

Thanks for the detailed post.

I guess many of us are in the same boat - lovers of the functionality and stability of Argus, but sadly it seems the project is pretty much abandoned.

Out of curiosity, what are you using on the nVidia Shield? Kodi or a Kodi fork like SPMC or does NextPVR have it's own client?

It seems like TVHeadend is going through a a period of mass uptake, but for me to convert my windows based NAS into Linux woudl involve major headaches, so i'm also looking for a Windows Server solution.

dvgeek
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:40 pm

Re: What is the most stable PVR solution out there?

Post by dvgeek » Sun Apr 30, 2017 9:34 am

Kodi on nVidia Shield till now.

And then my 10Yr old TV died.

Got an LG OLED 65 4K

And after that just trying out SPMC now as it's more nVidia Shield optimized (though a bit behind Kodi in release status - 16.6 vs 17.1)

i0zjh02
Posts: 43
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2014 5:35 pm

Re: What is the most stable PVR solution out there?

Post by i0zjh02 » Mon May 08, 2017 9:45 am

I Havent found anything quite as good as ArgusTV at the moment, have tried most of the other Windows PVR backends at one time or another (I originally came from SageTV and still judge all the others against that)
The best of the rest I've tried recently for me is DVBViewer, I have it installed and setup on the same box waiting for the time when ArgusTV becomes unusable (still hoping support might get picked up again) but certainly some aspects (Scheduling, timeshifting etc..) are not as good as either ArgusTV or SageTV.

Now that SageTV is opensource and being developed once more I might try that again in earnest in the future as I still miss the real client server functionality that that gave me and the ability to pickup on a video on a different PC exactly where I left off

lisag
Posts: 50
Joined: Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:43 pm

Re: What is the most stable PVR solution out there?

Post by lisag » Mon May 08, 2017 2:00 pm

i0zjh02 wrote:I still miss the real client server functionality that that gave me and the ability to pickup on a video on a different PC exactly where I left off
I think I have a solution for you for this. I run Argus TV and Plex Media Server on a standalone server machine. I share the Argus TV recorded TV folder as a 'Recorded TV' library in Plex. I then have a number of client machines throughout the house, connected to TV's or standalone on tablets / phones etc (Plex has multi platform support). You can then start watching any video on any client device, including the Argus recorded tv files, then stop it and resume it on any other client device.

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