(OLD) Unofficial Kodi PVR Client for HDHomeRun DVR subscribers

[djp952]

GANG -- Version 1.3.4 *does* fix (at least some) Linux/OSMC/etc crashes with corrupt streams! So far I've gone through 3 of the 5 corrupt recordings I still have from you guys on OSMC and they all work!

I am not silly enough to think this solves every single one of the problems we've seen but it's looking really good for a 'most of them' statement here. I've sent some PMs to users that have been specifically affected and sent me the file(s), forgive me if I didn't hit you specifically yet. I may have lost who the file came from, or I haven't gotten around to that file yet.

I'm both thrilled and ashamed at the same time right now. I'd really like to know if the folks having crashes, specifically those on OTA where corrupt streams are much more likely, have any better luck with v1.3.4. I'm going to hook up an antenna later and see if I can get OSMC to crash out or not.

edit: I found no immediate problems with ANY of the mpeg files I have from you guys. I hope I didn't forget what to look for - lol.

This whole event may be worthy of a commemorative v2.0 or something to celebrate. Perhaps another new thread? This one got ridiculously long again.

[riviera128]

There's nothing to be ashamed about- I think you've created the best PVR client out there for the HdHomeRun DVR service. There will always be bugs to work out, especially when you've made it available for multiple platforms.

[Chronoptic]

First off, just let me say.... THANK YOU!! You are definitely the coolest coder I've ever come across.
Now, I'm having a bit of an issue with Leia on shield tv. Sometimes when switching channels it freezes (sometimes just the video freezes) and the logs show

09:29:09.225 T:185272816880 WARNING: ActiveAE - large audio sync error: 19236390.407788

about a bazillion times. It will however re-sync and start playing normally when I hit "forward". This does not seem to happen with the default hdhomerun pvr. Any idears? (u da man!!!)

[djp952]

First off, just let me say.... THANK YOU!! You are definitely the coolest coder I've ever come across.
Now, I'm having a bit of an issue with Leia on shield tv. Sometimes when switching channels it freezes (sometimes just the video freezes) and the logs show

09:29:09.225 T:185272816880 WARNING: ActiveAE - large audio sync error: 19236390.407788

about a bazillion times. It will however re-sync and start playing normally when I hit "forward". This does not seem to happen with the default hdhomerun pvr. Any idears? (u da man!!!)

Thank you for using it - and for taking the time to let me know about your issue!

I actually see the same thing on my Shield with Leia, just happened a few minutes ago in fact. Based on the Kodi code, this happens when the decoder detects a PTS (timestamp) that is out of whack from what it was expecting on the audio stream. This could be a Leia bug that needs to be fixed, OR probably more likely, it could be the way I hacked in the timeshifting UI elements on Leia. How long have you been using Leia on the Shield with this PVR? I added that in version 1.3.2 for Leia, on 8/14/18.

I'm thinking this is probably the PVR if the official Kodi one works. I have a rather ugly "todo" in there for Leia still that says "I really don't know if this will work right", and this is evidence that it doesn't.

It's hit-and-miss for me as well, but I can definitely see the same thing. Let me know if you want to try a build without it (side effect: you won't be able to seek!!), otherwise I'll play around and see what I can figure out. I'll take the timestamp reporting out and install that on my Shield and see if I can make it happen. If I can, at least we know it's not that

edit: I'll open an Issue on GitHub to track this as well. I sometimes forget things - lol

[djp952]

First off, just let me say.... THANK YOU!! You are definitely the coolest coder I've ever come across.
Now, I'm having a bit of an issue with Leia on shield tv. Sometimes when switching channels it freezes (sometimes just the video freezes) and the logs show

09:29:09.225 T:185272816880 WARNING: ActiveAE - large audio sync error: 19236390.407788

about a bazillion times. It will however re-sync and start playing normally when I hit "forward". This does not seem to happen with the default hdhomerun pvr. Any idears? (u da man!!!)

I actually have both good and bad news for you already, and they are both the same: it's not the timeshifting/seek stuff I added to Leia Running without it has the same problem (Lifetime seems to be particularly bad - hey, don't judge - I'm testing here), and you can't get out of it since seek doesn't work. It still halts and shows a quick "100%" buffering circle repeatedly.

By setting "Stream Live TV channels directly from tuner device(s)" in the PVR advanced settings, the problem seems to go away. This more closely mimicks the Kodi HDHomeRun addon as it won't report the stream as seekable. Right now I'm leaning toward that being where to go next, I'll report FALSE for CanSeek() and see if it also goes away even when using the RECORD engine instead of hitting the tuner directly.

I can't duplicate this on Windows, which makes it hard for me to build and debug Kodi itself. We might have to ask Team Kodi for help. More as I have it....

[Ken.F]

Thanks for the update. Version 1.3.4 seems to be working well on my RPi. I deleted the Full Frontal recording that I sent you so I can't test that one but I have a different recording that was crashing Kodi on Linux that does play in 1.3.4.

Lifetime seems to be particularly bad - hey, don't judge - I'm testing here

If you must watch Lifetime (for testing purposes) be sure to check out the new series "YOU".

[Chronoptic]

I can't duplicate this on Windows, which makes it hard for me to build and debug Kodi itself. We might have to ask Team Kodi for help. More as I have it....

Thank ya! I'll keep investigating (probably won't do any good, but I can't seem to stop myself )

[djp952]

I can't duplicate this on Windows, which makes it hard for me to build and debug Kodi itself. We might have to ask Team Kodi for help. More as I have it....

Thank ya! I'll keep investigating (probably won't do any good, but I can't seem to stop myself )

Well, on this end I don't have anything useful for you. It doesn't seem to happen on Windows, but that could be more of a hardware (audio in this case) difference than a software difference. I changed the PVR around to pretend the streams coming from the RECORD engine are the same as from the tuners by ignoring the HTTP headers I key off of, and it still happened on the Shield.

The streams from the tuner and the streams from the RECORD engine are different, we learned that back in the "channel won't start" days which led to me adding the packet filter to remove the "insert commercial here" tags that were tripping up Kodi. At this point I have to shrug my shoulders and point to that difference as the most likely culprit. Something about the RECORD engine streams are tripping up aarch64 (ARM64) Android, and perhaps other non-Windows platforms too.

If I can get it to happen on Windows I can recompile Kodi and trap that warning message when it occurs. On Android my options are pretty limited to trial and error. I'll go ahead and do that anyway, recompile Kodi Leia Beta 2 and set a breakpoint on that warning and try to slam it to see if/when it occurs. I'll also play around with the audio settings on my system here to see if that makes a difference with duplicating it.

I'll also try the latest nightly Android ARM64 Leia build available on the off chance it's something Team Kodi has already addressed.

As for continuing to investigate, I always appreciate that. If not for the tips and findings and spelunking/tinkering from you guys out here, this PVR would probably barely work at all

[Hardax]

All of a sudden I’m getting lots of buffering of live tv and lip sync issue. Seems when ever the live stream buffers or it’s left playing for a good amount of time, the audio goes out of sync. If I rewind a little or stop and start again the audio will sync back up.

This only happens with live tv. Local files and streaming works fine.

[ringerlin]

Wow, THANK YOU Michael!! You pulled another magic. The latest update fixed my crash issue too. I didn't have a crash for a while until today when I was playing a recorded game from FOX. Coming back to the forum for help only to find you already provided a solution. I verified that the latest update does stop the crash when viewing the same recorded file. THANK YOU THANK YOU again!!

[djp952]

All of a sudden I’m getting lots of buffering of live tv and lip sync issue. Seems when ever the live stream buffers or it’s left playing for a good amount of time, the audio goes out of sync. If I rewind a little or stop and start again the audio will sync back up.

This only happens with live tv. Local files and streaming works fine.

What platform and version of Kodi are you running? The only thing that's changed recently is disabling the DEBUG flag for Linux, nothing of note in regard to the streaming code. I don't mean to sound flippant or dismissing, but on the surface it sounds like a local network issue. Are you on Wifi or hard-wired?

Audio sync is 100% handled by Kodi -- I don't touch the input streams (way above my pay grade), other than taking out known bad SCTE PIM (0xC0) flags, and that code has been there for over a year now.

I do apologize, but the "all of a sudden" seems fishy to me when nothing of intertest has changed??

[djp952]

Wow, THANK YOU Michael!! You pulled another magic. The latest update fixed my crash issue too. I didn't have a crash for a while until today when I was playing a recorded game from FOX. Coming back to the forum for help only to find you already provided a solution. I verified that the latest update does stop the crash when viewing the same recorded file. THANK YOU THANK YOU again!!

Setting the compiler for RELEASE definitely helps!! LOL. You may also notice some minor performance improvements here and there, but I didn't really note anything that would have added up to the point of 'noticable' Very glad we were able to squash this one with your help!!

[davidbecht01]

I was wondering if this tool, when used with the new version of kodi 18, will support playing of DRM protected channels on the Windows 10 version of Kodi? I am currently both a Kodi user and a HDHomerun DVR user and would love this feature. I do not pretend to understand the complexities of DRM playback but HDHomerun on Windows 10 already works with DRM. Is it a stretch to say that it should be able to work within kodi if the new version of kodi incorporates DRM.

Thanks,
David Becht

[Hardax]

All of a sudden I’m getting lots of buffering of live tv and lip sync issue. Seems when ever the live stream buffers or it’s left playing for a good amount of time, the audio goes out of sync. If I rewind a little or stop and start again the audio will sync back up.

This only happens with live tv. Local files and streaming works fine.

What platform and version of Kodi are you running? The only thing that's changed recently is disabling the DEBUG flag for Linux, nothing of note in regard to the streaming code. I don't mean to sound flippant or dismissing, but on the surface it sounds like a local network issue. Are you on Wifi or hard-wired?

Audio sync is 100% handled by Kodi -- I don't touch the input streams (way above my pay grade), other than taking out known bad SCTE PIM (0xC0) flags, and that code has been there for over a year now.

I do apologize, but the "all of a sudden" seems fishy to me when nothing of intertest has changed??

Its an Nvidia Shield using your latest APK. All hardwired 1000T networking. The only thing thats different on my end since this started happening is I did have AT&T fiber internet installed but its not actually plugged into my system yet. Its only running as a seperate WiFi network inside my house. I wont be integrating it until this coming weekend so let me do that and report back. I couldnt imaging that this would affect things but you never know. And never a reason to apologize. I just threw the statement out there just in case anyone else was seeing the same thing before I investigated it any more deeply and submitted logs. I know my post was not helpful at all in helping solve the issue!

[djp952]

I was wondering if this tool, when used with the new version of kodi 18, will support playing of DRM protected channels on the Windows 10 version of Kodi? I am currently both a Kodi user and a HDHomerun DVR user and would love this feature. I do not pretend to understand the complexities of DRM playback but HDHomerun on Windows 10 already works with DRM. Is it a stretch to say that it should be able to work within kodi if the new version of kodi incorporates DRM.

Thanks,
David Becht

Sadly no. DRM in Kodi is probably never going to be possible, at least not with the current approach taken by the industry. It would require many thousands of dollars in fees and testing, there is a lot of liability involved, etc. signcarver here on these forums is a good resource for the ins and outs of "why not" here.

For the foreseeable future only the HDHomeRun app, and Windows Media Center while it still works seem to be the only means to access DRM content on Windows.