Unofficial Kodi PVR Client for HDHomeRun DVR subscribers

[Hardax]

djp952, is there a possibility of you incorporating your client into the Android SPMC 17 builds that are now available as well? I have much better luck with these builds than I do the stock Kodi Team builds on my Nvidia Sheild.

I do not have my shield rooted so unfortunately I cant go that route.

Thanks!

[Hardax]

1. Yes. The HDHomeRun RECORD engine is a service (Windows) or a daemon (Linux/NAS) and runs all the time. If you shut down the device that's running it, it will of course stop in that case. You should have one and only one device hosting the HDHomeRun RECORD engine on your network. I use my always-on NAS as the host, for example.

Im a little confused here (probably since I havent purchased the DVR add-on yet). I was under the impression that the record engine ran on the HDHomeRun itself not on a separate computer? From what I saw poking around, you go to the web interface of the unit itself to enable this feature.

Does the engine get installed on what ever storage device (in my case it would be a network drive attached to my Mac server)?

NEVERMIND! Google is your friend!!

[NYPlayer]

3. I have yet to see any recorded shows appear in the Recorded Shows section under TV (I'm running Confluence skin.) I can only see the actual file in my Recorded TV folder in explorer.

I believe that Kodi has a bug right now where you have to restart Kodi to see recorded items if Im not mistaken. There is a thread here somewhere talking about it.

Never seen that BUG with the Add on..... the PVR Addon queries for recordings. It is separate from the regular KODI libraries. In the PVR Client you can set discovery intervals.... under configuration. It sounds like something is blocking the discovery maybe firewall.

[Hardax]

Never seen that BUG with the Add on..... the PVR Addon queries for recordings. It is separate from the regular KODI libraries. In the PVR Client you can set discovery intervals.... under configuration. It sounds like something is blocking the discovery maybe firewall.

Here is the thread that I was referring to. Looks like it might be specific to NextPVR.

https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.p ... rting-Kodi

[NYPlayer]

Never seen that BUG with the Add on..... the PVR Addon queries for recordings. It is separate from the regular KODI libraries. In the PVR Client you can set discovery intervals.... under configuration. It sounds like something is blocking the discovery maybe firewall.

Here is the thread that I was referring to. Looks like it might be specific to NextPVR.

https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.p ... rting-Kodi

Yeah I remember that from my NEXTPVR days ...

[fab4272]

Don't know what's happened, but come home today, crank up Kodi on my Android TV box and lo and behold, TV logo's are appearing in the main EPG next to the show plot info and also next to the channel names.


I suspect something on SD's end? There have been server and firmware upgrades the last few days.

[Hardax]

Anyone experiencing fluctuating volume when using this plugin. Testing it out right now without a DVR subscription so just streaming directly. On some channels, I’m finding that the volume goes from barely audible to normal continuously. Watching the same channel with the Homerun view app does not experience this.

Update: This seems to be happening Kodi wide. GUI volume is very low as well. Using the modified APK on an Nvidia Shield. Exact same setup/setting on a straight Kodi install doesn’t exhibit this behavior.

[NYPlayer]

Anyone experiencing fluctuating volume when using this plugin. Testing it out right now without a DVR subscription so just streaming directly. On some channels, I’m finding that the volume goes from barely audible to normal continuously. Watching the same channel with the Homerun view app does not experience this.

It uses the KODI player ... I set my KODI to passthrough (soundBar) and do not see this problem ... check your KODI audio settings.
I believe KODI defaults to 2 channels.

[Hardax]

Anyone experiencing fluctuating volume when using this plugin. Testing it out right now without a DVR subscription so just streaming directly. On some channels, I’m finding that the volume goes from barely audible to normal continuously. Watching the same channel with the Homerun view app does not experience this.

It uses the KODI player ... I set my KODI to passthrough (soundBar) and do not see this problem ... check your KODI audio settings.

I have mine set to pass through as well. I was testing out the modified apk last night and didn’t notice this. Turned the tv on this morning and started streaming a channel and all the sudden, really low volume. Again I have SPMC installed along side this one set up exactly the same way and it’s fine.

[NYPlayer]

Anyone experiencing fluctuating volume when using this plugin. Testing it out right now without a DVR subscription so just streaming directly. On some channels, I’m finding that the volume goes from barely audible to normal continuously. Watching the same channel with the Homerun view app does not experience this.

It uses the KODI player ... I set my KODI to passthrough (soundBar) and do not see this problem ... check your KODI audio settings.

I have mine set to pass through as well. I was testing out the modified apk last night and didn’t notice this. Turned the tv on this morning and started streaming a channel and all the sudden, really low volume. Again I have SPMC installed along side this one set up exactly the same way and it’s fine.

You know what I just noticed after seeing your post and investigating further .. that using it for LIVETV it does not do pass-through.. I was wondering why the sound sounded flat. I have no problems with pass-through when playing recordings. You might be onto something.

Playing the same channel through the KODI addon and the Hdhomerun APP is like night and day ... the HDHomerun APP sounds great.

[djp952]

@djp952, do you happen to know what encryption standards/methods that SiliconDust is using for its DRM protected streams?

I'm pretty sure the HDHomeRuns use DTCP-IP to protect the DRM HTTP streams:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_T ... Protection

DTCP seems to be pretty closed to just those "in the know", but if I understand how the framework Kodi is putting in place is supposed to work, SiliconDust could potentially provide a closed-source module to handle the decryption/secure path stuff, but I fear at least here in the US CableLabs will be a stick in the mud about it.

I'm not very well versed in DRM (like not at all), but I think peak3d is going more for decryption along the lines of what Media Center does, a client-side decryption as opposed to what I think SD does, which is decrypt the source at the tuner and re-encrypt/secure it for streaming over HTTP. This would allow them to obey the DRM flags for recorded programs and watch them on the client; if you've ever used Media Center the client-side decryption ultimately locked all the content to just the computer that decrypted it. I would fear that peak3d's solution will ultimately end up with similar limitations.

If my assumptions are even close to correct, peak3d or something like it may be able to work with the low-level output from the tuner(s) and perhaps even record/playback on one machine but probably not be able to handle HTTP streaming or anything coming from the DVR engine. My assumptions are not likely to be 'close to correct', however

[djp952]

djp952, is there a possibility of you incorporating your client into the Android SPMC 17 builds that are now available as well? I have much better luck with these builds than I do the stock Kodi Team builds on my Nvidia Sheild.

I do not have my shield rooted so unfortunately I cant go that route.

Thanks!

Ummmm... yes, I guess? I would feel a little weird about this one, that's the top of a slippery slope Modding the Android APKs isn't hard (it is very time-consuming, though), it's that there are a lot of Kodi forks out there and I don't think I can be in the business of watching multiple distributions for changes and issuing builds for all of them.

Perhaps we could ask SPMC to include the client instead? They would ultimately run into the same problem that I would, we wouldn't be able to expect them to cut a build of their APK just because we fixed/changed something in the PVR client.

It's so much easier on anything other than Android. sigh. I know a lot of you guys use the Shield so it's tempting to just say yes, but right now I think I have to lean towards a no. Sorry. I'd be happy to contact SPMC to see if they would want to include the client, though. Can't promise they'd say yes, but asking doesn't hurt!

[djp952]

It uses the KODI player ... I set my KODI to passthrough (soundBar) and do not see this problem ... check your KODI audio settings.

I have mine set to pass through as well. I was testing out the modified apk last night and didn’t notice this. Turned the tv on this morning and started streaming a channel and all the sudden, really low volume. Again I have SPMC installed along side this one set up exactly the same way and it’s fine.

You know what I just noticed after seeing your post and investigating further .. that using it for LIVETV it does not do pass-through.. I was wondering why the sound sounded flat. I have no problems with pass-through when playing recordings. You might be onto something.

Playing the same channel through the KODI addon and the Hdhomerun APP is like night and day ... the HDHomerun APP sounds great.

Interesting!! My off-the-cuff guess is that it may be the de-multiplexer options Kodi is using (via ffmpeg) to select and extract the audio stream. You guys are right on target that this PVR client doesn't get involved with that, it sends the entire stream to Kodi as-is.

Sadly there isn't much I can do to help with this one specifically, but I'm betting it's common enough that it's probably discussed on the Kodi forums? I wonder if it's Android-specific as well, I don't appear to have any problems with audio on Windows, at least none that I can discern.

OK, well, yeah, I could provide a de-multiplexer in the client if that's actually where the problem is, but that's somewhat insane It took me how long to figure out and correct the bum PMT packets that Kodi didn't like? I imagine doing a full demuxer would take a very long time and be riddled with bugs...

[NYPlayer]

Same thing on Windows no Surround Sound on livetv .... get surround sound when playing recordings.

[Hardax]

djp952, is there a possibility of you incorporating your client into the Android SPMC 17 builds that are now available as well? I have much better luck with these builds than I do the stock Kodi Team builds on my Nvidia Sheild.

I do not have my shield rooted so unfortunately I cant go that route.

Thanks!

Ummmm... yes, I guess? I would feel a little weird about this one, that's the top of a slippery slope Modding the Android APKs isn't hard (it is very time-consuming, though), it's that there are a lot of Kodi forks out there and I don't think I can be in the business of watching multiple distributions for changes and issuing builds for all of them.

Perhaps we could ask SPMC to include the client instead? They would ultimately run into the same problem that I would, we wouldn't be able to expect them to cut a build of their APK just because we fixed/changed something in the PVR client.

It's so much easier on anything other than Android. sigh. I know a lot of you guys use the Shield so it's tempting to just say yes, but right now I think I have to lean towards a no. Sorry. I'd be happy to contact SPMC to see if they would want to include the client, though. Can't promise they'd say yes, but asking doesn't hurt!

Ah man that’s disappointing to hear but I completely understand. It’s just that, like you said, a lot of us are on the Shield and SPMC integrates so much nicer that stock Kodi does. I wonder also if SPMC would handle the audio issue we’ve just been discussing any differently? My issue of the fluctuating/low volume makes your build unusable sadly. Any other PVR client I’ve tried (official HDHomerun and NextPVR) don’t exhibit this behavior at all using SPMC v17 build.