OLD: Unofficial Kodi PVR Client for HDHomeRun DVR subscribers

[danielwlewis]

Older versions only accessed the super-fast 4 hour data for all channels and refreshed it periodically, this is more like what the in-built Kodi PVR does. Accessing the full guide data at the cost of load time was voted in by the users (this is the first complaint against it, actually!)

Any chance of adding a configuration option to choose between the two options - the super-fast 4 hour data or the full guide data?

I also see that there may have been some performance issues with the backend guide data recently, that would add time. One good thing here is that once Kodi has (fully) loaded all the guide data successfully, it only asks for what it needs moving forward in time.

When not in use, we put our Kodi clients in standby mode. When I bring it out of standby, it tries to reload the guide data. If it's only updating data going forward, I haven't noticed it. It always seems to take the same amount of time to update, and it's quite a long time - maybe a full minute. Maybe I need to change the way we have the Kodi guide options configured. How should it be configured to insure that it only updates going forward rather than the reloading all the data?

Update: My fault - I hadn't enabled the guide cache in Kodi. FWIW, I did some testing and measured an average of 0.77 seconds per channel to do a full guide update. That's compared to about 0.1 seconds per channel with MythTV as the backend. Part of that difference may be the slower performance of the cpu on my NAS server compared to the one used for the MythTV backend.

Thanks!
Dan

[djp952]

Older versions only accessed the super-fast 4 hour data for all channels and refreshed it periodically, this is more like what the in-built Kodi PVR does. Accessing the full guide data at the cost of load time was voted in by the users (this is the first complaint against it, actually!)

Any chance of adding a configuration option to choose between the two options - the super-fast 4 hour data or the full guide data?

I also see that there may have been some performance issues with the backend guide data recently, that would add time. One good thing here is that once Kodi has (fully) loaded all the guide data successfully, it only asks for what it needs moving forward in time.

When not in use, we put our Kodi clients in standby mode. When I bring it out of standby, it tries to reload the guide data. If it's only updating data going forward, I haven't noticed it. It always seems to take the same amount of time to update, and it's quite a long time - maybe a full minute. Maybe I need to change the way we have the Kodi guide options configured. How should it be configured to insure that it only updates going forward rather than the reloading all the data?

Update: My fault - I hadn't enabled the guide cache in Kodi. FWIW, I did some testing and measured an average of 0.77 seconds per channel to do a full guide update. That's compared to about 0.1 seconds per channel with MythTV as the backend. Part of that difference may be the slower performance of the cpu on my NAS server compared to the one used for the MythTV backend.

Thanks!
Dan

Glad that setting helped clean things up for you! Sadly I have zero control over how long the guide data takes to retrieve and/or load into Kodi. The HDHomeRun backend isn't really designed for this, consider their UI with the fly-outs, that only takes 1 remote query to get, and it's fast enough that you wouldn't notice browsing around that you may ultimately be making lots and lots of web calls. To pull ALL the data like we're trying to do all at once, you quickly see the backend isn't set up in a way to perform well. For most, the sacrifice of time has been worth having up to 2 weeks of EPG available.

Changing to the full guide involved a lot of modifications inside, but of course I can add something to just use the 4-hour data again as an option, it's just a matter of how ugly that will be. While it was lightning fast, it had it's own set of limitations -- most annoyingly it had to tell Kodi to refresh the data on it's own frequently and there is some glitch in there that caused a deadlock for a handful of people. It also required me to load into the guide all the episode data for any series you have a recording rule for so Kodi could display the details (driven by the EPG).

I'm happy to put it on the to-do list, but if you want to see what things were like that way and if having it back would really be useful to you, you can install version 1.0.9 of the PVR client, that was the last one prior to the EPG switchover:

https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... pton-1.0.9

Note that if you bounce back and forth between 1.0.9 and 1.1.1 you should "Clear data" in the Kodi PVR settings after installing, the different EPG methods eventually get it all jammed up No data loss, but you will have to reload the entire guide again.

[djp952]

I tried to load this on my FireTV Stick 2 with the Kodi zip file and it just locked up kodi...

The official one (v1.1.1) or this nightmare of a test version (v1.2.0)? I'm replacing the test version now, can probably be ready tomorrow morning as it's getting to be a bit late here. I'll nuke the link and delete the files now, though.

1.1.1 ... Used the android Arm (32 bit) version since the firestick is 32 bit... Havent tried the 64 bit version on my firetv 4k yet.

OK, I got Kodi 17.3 installed and working on the Fire stick. Wow, that is awful. To my credit, this PVR works better than the official Kodi one does (here, anyway), but both were completely unusable. NOTE: I'm using the test "1.2.0" version of my client.

But ... and this may be a big clue for the Shield and other android devices as well ... when I connected to the stick through ADB to check the logs and CPU%, BOOM - everything started working pretty darn well!!! It's playing an HD stream through the record engine while the guide is loading in the background, I can seek to and fro, I can change channels, I can play HD recordings. It's not perfect but it's close. Pretty impressive for a device intended to stream wimpy Internet streams

I think the power management on the stick is very aggressive. You can see this just browsing around in Kodi, if it's idle it gets very very slow then speeds up if you start doing things. When I attached with ADB I was running "top -m 20", which happens to keep the CPU active as well. When you restart Kodi, the "loading guide from database" step starts off really fast and then slows down, speeding up again if you start navigating around Kodi. I also think the flash memory is very slow, it takes Kodi way too long to build out it's databases.

I'll play around more as time allows. If you have ADB and know how to use it to connect to the stick, you can try firing it up and then running "top -m 20" from the shell. Then fire up Kodi and see if things behave any better. If so, we are definitely looking at a power management concern. You might want to wait until the guide is fully loaded, then exit Kodi and reopen it to take that out of the equation.

The good news is that the PVR code in and of itself seems to work just fine on the Gen 1 stick. Just need to figure out what we can do about it to make your stick happy. I certainly can't tell everyone to "connect with ADB and run a top command if you want to use this"

Honestly I didn't expect too much here, but once it gets it's groove on this little guy can handle it. Full HD stream and it's only hitting ~ 25% CPU.

[danielwlewis]

Two questions:

1. When I select a program from the guide and click "Add Timer", then under "type" there are two options: (1) Record Series, and (2) Record Series Rule. What's the difference?

2. When I add a Record Series Rule with the option "Record only new episodes", I can specify either that the series should be recorded on the current channel, or I can change it to allow it to record the series from "Any channel". However, I noticed that only those rules that specify a specific channel cause a future recording to be enabled and displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the home screen. It makes me wonder if "Any channel" really works. (BTW, I didn't notice this when using the MythTV backend.)

Thanks in advance for all your patience and assistance!

Dan

[numus]

The official one (v1.1.1) or this nightmare of a test version (v1.2.0)? I'm replacing the test version now, can probably be ready tomorrow morning as it's getting to be a bit late here. I'll nuke the link and delete the files now, though.

1.1.1 ... Used the android Arm (32 bit) version since the firestick is 32 bit... Havent tried the 64 bit version on my firetv 4k yet.

OK, I got Kodi 17.3 installed and working on the Fire stick. Wow, that is awful. To my credit, this PVR works better than the official Kodi one does (here, anyway), but both were completely unusable. NOTE: I'm using the test "1.2.0" version of my client.

But ... and this may be a big clue for the Shield and other android devices as well ... when I connected to the stick through ADB to check the logs and CPU%, BOOM - everything started working pretty darn well!!! It's playing an HD stream through the record engine while the guide is loading in the background, I can seek to and fro, I can change channels, I can play HD recordings. It's not perfect but it's close. Pretty impressive for a device intended to stream wimpy Internet streams

I think the power management on the stick is very aggressive. You can see this just browsing around in Kodi, if it's idle it gets very very slow then speeds up if you start doing things. When I attached with ADB I was running "top -m 20", which happens to keep the CPU active as well. When you restart Kodi, the "loading guide from database" step starts off really fast and then slows down, speeding up again if you start navigating around Kodi. I also think the flash memory is very slow, it takes Kodi way too long to build out it's databases.

I'll play around more as time allows. If you have ADB and know how to use it to connect to the stick, you can try firing it up and then running "top -m 20" from the shell. Then fire up Kodi and see if things behave any better. If so, we are definitely looking at a power management concern. You might want to wait until the guide is fully loaded, then exit Kodi and reopen it to take that out of the equation.

The good news is that the PVR code in and of itself seems to work just fine on the Gen 1 stick. Just need to figure out what we can do about it to make your stick happy. I certainly can't tell everyone to "connect with ADB and run a top command if you want to use this"

Honestly I didn't expect too much here, but once it gets it's groove on this little guy can handle it. Full HD stream and it's only hitting ~ 25% CPU.

Did you load your modified APK? I was using the stock Kodi APK and then runnning your zip file as an addon (that is what froze kodi).

[djp952]

Two questions:

1. When I select a program from the guide and click "Add Timer", then under "type" there are two options: (1) Record Series, and (2) Record Series Rule. What's the difference?

2. When I add a Record Series Rule with the option "Record only new episodes", I can specify either that the series should be recorded on the current channel, or I can change it to allow it to record the series from "Any channel". However, I noticed that only those rules that specify a specific channel cause a future recording to be enabled and displayed in the upper right-hand corner of the home screen. It makes me wonder if "Any channel" really works. (BTW, I didn't notice this when using the MythTV backend.)

Thanks in advance for all your patience and assistance!

Dan

This is a defect in Kodi 17.1 and 17.3, you should only see "Record Series" and "Record Once" from the EPG menu. "Record Series Rule" is supposed to apply when you choose a generic "Add Timer", like from the Timers area. Both set up a Series rule on the backend, the difference is "Record Series Rule" requires you to do a title match for what you're looking for, which isn't necessary from the EPG since it already knows what the title is. Any Channel should work right, at least it used to. I'll check and make sure it didn't break somewhere along the way.

I'm going to cop out at this point and refer you to the Wiki -- I've tried to explain the differences between HDHomeRun recording rules and Timers (like MythTV and Kodi use) and how I tried to make them line up as best as possible. It's important to understand the inherent limitations here, as you will end up very frustrated otherwise....

How-To: https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerundvr/wiki/How-To
Timers and Timer Rules: https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... imer-Rules

The Kodi defect itself is also documented as a Known Issue:

Known Issues: https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... imitations

For what it's worth I submitted a fix for the defect to Kodi which was accepted. If they release a 17.4 it will be resolved. Either then or in 18.0. Ironically in this case, the change that broke it was put in for the MythTV guys

I will check out Any Channel tonight and make sure it's still working. Apologies if it broke and I never noticed!!

[djp952]

Did you load your modified APK? I was using the stock Kodi APK and then runnning your zip file as an addon (that is what froze kodi).

That I did. I didn't root the Fire stick, it was essentially out-of-box. BUT: Did you by chance have ANY other "binary" addons installed and enabled? PVRs count. Kodi 17 has at least one deadlock bug that occurs when multiple binary addons are enabled, but I've only encountered it on install and uninstall scenarios. Restart Kodi and it's fine. Sounds different, just wondering if maybe that factored in.

Out of curiosity, is there a reason that you opted for the stock APK over the modified one? Technically there should be no difference regardless of installation method, just the root + copy method is so much more tedious. Is this one of the annoying devices that comes with Kodi and it can't be uninstalled all the way? I forget if the 2nd gen Fire stick fell into that category.

It was a painful experience to get working on the stick regardless, and honestly there was voodoo involved -- now I can't get the thing to work poorly. I'm going to factory reset it and start over to see if it goes back to bad. I'd love to have a better explanation, even I'm not buying the bunk I posted last night.

[numus]

Did you load your modified APK? I was using the stock Kodi APK and then runnning your zip file as an addon (that is what froze kodi).

That I did. I didn't root the Fire stick, it was essentially out-of-box. BUT: Did you by chance have ANY other "binary" addons installed and enabled? PVRs count. Kodi 17 has at least one deadlock bug that occurs when multiple binary addons are enabled, but I've only encountered it on install and uninstall scenarios. Restart Kodi and it's fine. Sounds different, just wondering if maybe that factored in.

Out of curiosity, is there a reason that you opted for the stock APK over the modified one? Technically there should be no difference regardless of installation method, just the root + copy method is so much more tedious. Is this one of the annoying devices that comes with Kodi and it can't be uninstalled all the way? I forget if the 2nd gen Fire stick fell into that category.

It was a painful experience to get working on the stick regardless, and honestly there was voodoo involved -- now I can't get the thing to work poorly. I'm going to factory reset it and start over to see if it goes back to bad. I'd love to have a better explanation, even I'm not buying the bunk I posted last night.

no root necessary.. just adb install on stock.. It should be pretty straight forward and easy!


I just uninstalled the stock kodi app and installed yours.. will edit this when i report back

Edit: OK your APK worked fine... I have it running now (it is really slow downloading the epg vs the stock HDHomerun PVR addon... not sure why such a difference). Running 1.1.1 right now

[djp952]

Edit: OK your APK worked fine... I have it running now (it is really slow downloading the epg vs the stock HDHomerun PVR addon... not sure why such a difference). Running 1.1.1 right now

Easy answer to that one, the stock addon only accesses the quick 4-hour bulk guide data. As of version 1.0.9 of this client I'm accessing the full guide data. By default you're asking for 3 days worth at 8 hours per query per channel. It's just really slow, the HDHomeRun backend guide service simply isn't designed for this type of operation.

NYPlayer has requested an option to re-enable the quick bulk guide data, which is on my todo list. Most folks wanted the full data so I just switched it over completely. There are some challenges in allowing both, but I am looking into it. The new (slow) method works much better with Kodi's idea of how the guide should work and completely avoids a deadlock bug somewhere in Kodi that was really annoying some people. Provided you have Guide caching enabled in Kodi, it should only be loading information it doesn't have already, which helps after the first (and painful) load.

You were able to copy the libhdhomerundvr.so file into the /data volume without root access?? That's both awesome and disturbing at the same time, Amazon didn't lock that volume down? I'll have to try that!

[danielwlewis]

New Issue?

Tonight I added a Record Series Rule for Frontline on KQED (PBS) cable channel 709 here in the SF Bay Area. I set it to only record new episodes. There is a new episode S35E18 (Life on Parole) first broadcast 7/18 (tonight) at 10 pm, but rebroadcast again tomorrow morning at 4 am. Timers were created for both broadcasts of this same episode. (Same problem for multiple broadcasts of the same new episodes of Suits and Jay Leno's Garage.)

I would have expected (hoped?) that it would only schedule a single non-conflicting broadcast of each new episode.

Update: When I used the SD HDHomeRun Program to delete the timer for the second broadcast, the series rule and both broadcasts were deleted. ????

Dan

[danielwlewis]

Suggestion:

Once the series is scheduled, you can then subsequently adjust the parameters of the rule (channel, new or recent only, etc.) via this PVR Client. You may want to restart Kodi after you add rules this way to have them show up immediately -- the default interval to discover them is 2 hours -- (this can be adjusted lower)

I realize that the various discovery functions run periodically so that other Kodi clients accessing the same HDHomeRun tuner(s) see any updates to the timers, guide, etc. I think it would be helpful, however, to see an immediate update on the client where the change was made. E.g., if I create a timer or a timer rule, having it immediately update the guide to show that corresponding programs have been scheduled to record provides a visual confirmation. Is there a way to immediately trigger execution of the relevant discovery function on the client where the change is made rather than simply waiting for the next scheduled execution of the function?

Dan

[numus]

Edit: OK your APK worked fine... I have it running now (it is really slow downloading the epg vs the stock HDHomerun PVR addon... not sure why such a difference). Running 1.1.1 right now

Easy answer to that one, the stock addon only accesses the quick 4-hour bulk guide data. As of version 1.0.9 of this client I'm accessing the full guide data. By default you're asking for 3 days worth at 8 hours per query per channel. It's just really slow, the HDHomeRun backend guide service simply isn't designed for this type of operation.

NYPlayer has requested an option to re-enable the quick bulk guide data, which is on my todo list. Most folks wanted the full data so I just switched it over completely. There are some challenges in allowing both, but I am looking into it. The new (slow) method works much better with Kodi's idea of how the guide should work and completely avoids a deadlock bug somewhere in Kodi that was really annoying some people. Provided you have Guide caching enabled in Kodi, it should only be loading information it doesn't have already, which helps after the first (and painful) load.

You were able to copy the libhdhomerundvr.so file into the /data volume without root access?? That's both awesome and disturbing at the same time, Amazon didn't lock that volume down? I'll have to try that!

If you replace libhdhomerundvr.so in /data that may have been where the lock up was occurring. The stock Kodi apk from Kodi.tv includes all the pvr addons already loaded so all you have to do is install the apk on a non-rooted system and it installs everything (just like your apk). I haven't tried to ssh into the firetv and see if I can modify anything in /data (isn't something i really want to do if not necessary) but I can tell you both the stock and your APK install fine on the firetv 4k and firestick 2 without root access.

New Issue?

Tonight I added a Record Series Rule for Frontline on KQED (PBS) cable channel 709 here in the SF Bay Area. I set it to only record new episodes. There is a new episode S35E18 (Life on Parole) first broadcast 7/18 (tonight) at 10 pm, but rebroadcast again tomorrow morning at 4 am. Timers were created for both broadcasts of this same episode. (Same problem for multiple broadcasts of the same new episodes of Suits and Jay Leno's Garage.)

I would have expected (hoped?) that it would only schedule a single non-conflicting broadcast of each new episode.

Update: When I used the SD HDHomeRun Program to delete the timer for the second broadcast, the series rule and both broadcasts were deleted. ????

Dan

I believe this isn't a bug but normal HDHomeRun operation. I would double check it but apparently I dont record any shows that have a rebroadcast within the time frame that the EPG data goes to. BUT I can tell you that I have 3 channels that are the same (1 SD and 2 HD or 2 SD and 1 HD... not sure why Fios duplicates the HD channel sometimes on 2 different numbers but it does) and when I setup a recording it will create a timer for all 3 channels at the same time but it will only record one of the HD channels and not record the other 2 channels (even if one of those channels is also HD). I am not sure of the time (I think it is something like 30 or 60 days?) but HDHomeRun treats all episodes released within this time frame as a first run (so that if you start a task after the first episode but it is rebroadcast the dvr will still record that episode when it rebroadcasts) and I don't believe it stores that show as "recorded" in the database and treats all rebroadcasts as rebroadcasts until it actually records that episode. After it records the first episode it should automatically remove the timer for all rebroadcasts of that episode.

Edit: I just checked "Cutthroat kitchen" and the HDHomeRun shows S14E10 as playing on Wed. at 9:00 pm and Thur. at 12:00 am and both are marked as "record" eventho I have HDHomeRun set to "recent". Once the first run records (Wed. at 9:00 pm) it will automatically delete the task for the Thur. at 12:00 am...

This is in the stock Windows 10 app so it explains why you are seeing 2 timers.

[NYPlayer]

If you replace libhdhomerundvr.so in /data that may have been where the lock up was occurring. The stock Kodi apk from Kodi.tv includes all the pvr addons already loaded so all you have to do is install the apk on a non-rooted system and it installs everything (just like your apk

This does not work on the Shield it cannot load that library.

PS I went back to 1.1.1.6397 even though it does not play some of my channels some of the time it is the most stable. The beta builds killed my Shield ... my whole Shield got Sluggish even the home menu. Had to factory reset.

[danielwlewis]

Just ran into another problem (maybe something others have seen?): Some of my channels suddenly stopped playing in Kodi. They were playing, but not anymore. Other channels continue to work. When I try to play the problem channel, the progress indicator in the lower right-hand corner of the screen spins for a while and then quits without starting the playback. I've tried stopping and starting the HDHomeRun RECORD engine, tried rebooting Kodi, tried clearing the guide data - nothing seems to fix it.

I checked my.hdhomerun.com, and it indicates that the channel is streaming, and the HDHomeRun record engine's log indicates that it *IS* streaming to the Kodi Client.

I can play the problematic channel without any problems using the SD HDHomeRun program.

One more thing: Once this problem appears on one of my Kodi clients, *ALL* of my Kodi clients have the same problem. I.e., the bug seems to be affecting the HDHomeRun RECORD engine (despite what I said in the previous paragraph).

Does your PVR create a log file anywhere that would be useful? (I'm assuming that the log file created by the record engine isn't relevant since I can play the station using the SD program.)

Dan

[NYPlayer]

Just ran into another problem (maybe something others have seen?): Some of my channels suddenly stopped playing in Kodi. They were playing, but not anymore. Other channels continue to work. When I try to play the problem channel, the progress indicator in the lower right-hand corner of the screen spins for a while and then quits without starting the playback. I've tried stopping and starting the HDHomeRun RECORD engine, tried rebooting Kodi, tried clearing the guide data - nothing seems to fix it. But I can play the channel using the SD HDHomeRun program.

Does your PVR create a log file anywhere that would be useful? (I'm assuming that the log file created by the record engine isn't relevant since I can play the station using the SD program.)

Dan

That is a known problem I have the same Problem are you using Android ? I have that problem on my Shieldtv sometimes channels will not play.