Unofficial Kodi HDHomeRun DVR PVR Client

[ctviggen]

Did the channel trick and this worked. The channels already have the numbers in front of them after this trick. I only have one PVR component at this time (I think I might have had Next PVR also at one time).

I have not seen whether the future recordings are OK, as I'm watching the men's final of the Australian Open tennis.

[NedS]

Existing recording tasks should be unaffected.

[Ken.F]

New Beta for you guys!

Version - v3.2.0~beta1 (February 1, 2020)

I tested linux-armhf-matrix, linux-x86_64-leia, android-aarch64-leia, android-arm-leia and windows-x64-leia and everything seems to be working fine.

[djp952]

Turns out that "Use Original Air Date timestamp for Recorded TV programs" came out of it's hole, didn't see it's shadow (it was actually dark here, but my settings clearly have weird concepts of time), and it decided to stick around ....

Version 3.2.0~beta2 (February, 2, 2020)

• Update SQLite database engine to version 3.31.1
• Update cURL library to version 7.68.0
• Use "Filename" attribute provided by HDHomeRun RECORD instead of manually generating EDL file name(s) when available
• Exclude episodes marked as "DeletedDontRerecord" from the list of reported timer instances
• Exclude episodes marked as "RecordIfNotRecorded" from the list of reported timer instances when a completed recording exists
• Prevent missing channel(s) in the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) listings from causing unncessary XMLTV reload operations
• Fix bug preventing calculation of original air date values for programs that aired prior to 1970.01.01
• Limit reporting of program year to programs of type MV (Movies) in Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and Recorded TV
• Limit reporting of program original air date to programs of type EP (Series Episode) and SH (Show) in Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
• Allow for Live TV to be streamed from any available storage engine before falling back to using a tuner device directly
• Remove "DVR stream ring buffer size" advanced option
• Restore "Use Original Air Date timestamp for Recorded TV programs" setting (different implementation)

This should be the final "beta" for v3.2.0, other than any defects and/or complaints that arise there is nothing left on the backlog. I'd still like to give this until 2/10 (third anniversary of v1.0.0!) and see if there is anything more I can learn about and/or do for Windows, which has seriously been ^%%@&^@# me off since 19H2.

There are only two new changes above and beyond Beta 1:

Remove "DVR stream ring buffer size" advanced option
This is slightly more involved than the bullet would indicate, but what changed here is that I found that when a glitch/drop-out happens Kodi may inadvertently 'supercharge' the thread that reads data from the PVR. This causes the PVR to slam the RECORD engine to grab all the data it possibly can for no good reason. To combat this I've changed the logic so it maintains a much more steady pace and won't buffer anything other than overlap from a read that contained more data than the PVR was asked for. This makes increasing the ring buffer beyond the default of 1MB completely pointless. The PVR buffer is still used to eliminate "micro-seeks" from Kodi when possible, so I left it at 1MB internally, even though it could really drop to about 64KB.

Restore "Use Original Air Date timestamp for Recorded TV programs" setting (different implementation)
I promised it would be back, but it's different now. I put it into Matrix too since my suggested PR to allow a sort by things like Original Air Date and/or Season+Episode fell flat since these are optional fields. This new implementation will not screw up timeshifting, I go into the database every time and get the proper start time instead of relying on what I had told Kodi. Since "Original Air Date" is a date, not a date/time like Kodi wants, I adjust the value based on your time zone so it will appear as "MM/DD/YYYY 12:00AM" (or "YYYY.MM.DD", of course) instead of being off based on your relative globe position to Greenwich, England. And finally, this now only applies to programs listed as "Show" or "Episode" in the data. It didn't make sense to include "Movie" again since that is often reported as just a year (related to above change "Limit reporting of program year to programs of type MV (Movies) in Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and Recorded TV"). As before, items with an original air date prior to 1/1/1970 are ignored since there is no way to convert that date into a Unix epoch value. FWIW, HDHomeRun RECORD isn't reporting dates prior to 1/1/1970 anyway, but that's a different concern, and this release has the necessary stuff in it to handle those dates properly should they become available.

THANK YOU as always to the brave folks that blindly install any random crap I happen to provide a link to, ever since I implemented auto-update changing more than one or two things at a time kinda scares me. I don't want to brick anyone, let alone a few thousand anyones

Download link for Leia/Matrix builds (OneDrive):
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgEGEEVzGNq-jIp7m_O ... w?e=9rVKiN

edit: Windows folks, I did find out that Kodi does not report itself as a Multimedia application to Windows, which can cause it to fall victim to certain CPU scheduling rules in the OS. Getting it to report properly will be a lot of work that I doubt Kodi will accept on the first (or tenth) try from me, but my tip of the day is to go into Task Manager and set kodi.exe's priority to "High". If you don't, at least on 19H2, doing anything that spikes the local CPU will cause Kodi to glitch.

[ctviggen]

This is a very impressive effort. I will have to look into setting the priority to high for Kodi.

What "front end" do people use for the DVR for Kodi? Right now, I have the "normal" Kodi front end, but the timer function does not allow me to record between two times. In other words, I want to record the local news (for the weather, mainly) between say 5am and 5:30am. I do not have the option to limit the time period, so Kodi wants to record 6+ times per day, since the local news is on multiple times per day.

- Can I limit a recording to only one time period in Kodi?

If not (or even for my own knowledge), what other front ends work?

- Next PVR?
- Emby?
- Anything else?

I originally tried Next PVR, but it seems like to get it to work, you had to use old, not recently updated software. Can Next PVR work and provide more features than Kodi?

I bought Emby, and had it working on my first installation of Kodi, with Next PVR. I then completely uninstalled and reinstalled Kodi, and now (in the short time I had last weekend before the Super Bowl) it's not working. But does Emby work and does it provide more DVR features than Kodi?

Thank you.

[signcarver]

You would probably get better responses to that in the third party section and based on the question, not sure if you meant front end as it sounds like you are talking back end... this is about use of Kodi with SD's DVR thus "nothing" to do with kodi as far as the DVR goes only that one creates the rules so they have the same restrictions as SD's DVR offering (SD does offer ChannelOnly and AfterOriginalAirdateOnly options though not apparent in their front end, unlike 3rd party tools).

Here the local news "always" adds the time to the name so SD's DVR can be set to record News at 4:30 and News at 6:00.

[ctviggen]

You would probably get better responses to that in the third party section and based on the question, not sure if you meant front end as it sounds like you are talking back end... this is about use of Kodi with SD's DVR thus "nothing" to do with kodi as far as the DVR goes only that one creates the rules so they have the same restrictions as SD's DVR offering (SD does offer ChannelOnly and AfterOriginalAirdateOnly options though not apparent in their front end, unlike 3rd party tools).

Here the local news "always" adds the time to the name so SD's DVR can be set to record News at 4:30 and News at 6:00.

Thanks. I'm not using SD's DVR. Or at least I don't think I am. My thought that this client (the one being discussed here) "simply" accessed the HD homerun Prime, while the PVR functionality (I thought of Kodi) sat "on top" of that. That's why I called the PVR functionality a "front end".

Or does this "client" (the one in this thread) provide both PVR functionality and access to the HD Homerun Prime?

[jasonl]

Kodi can act as the frontend for a variety of different DVR backends, including the HDHomeRun DVR, NextPVR, WMC, MythTV, and so on. The frontend is the part you see and interact with, the backend is the part that does the actual recordings and such. This thread is dedicated to djp952's addon that serves as the go-between for Kodi and the HDHomeRun DVR. If you want different DVR functionality that is not present in the HDHomeRun DVR, like manual recording of timeslots rather than using the guide data, you would need to use a different backend which would have its own go-between for it and Kodi, many of which are included in the Kodi repository, and you would not use the software referenced in this thread at all.

[Ken.F]

I'm having trouble on my Win7 PC using windows-x64-leia-3.2.0 beta 1 and 2. After leaving live TV play for a few minutes I hit the stop button on my CEC remote and Kodi freezes hard. I have to ctrl+alt+del to launch task manager so I can kill Kodi. It does not generate a crash log and there is nothing unusual in the regular Kodi log. I went back to 3.1.1 and that version seems to work without any issues.

[djp952]

I'm having trouble on my Win7 PC using windows-x64-leia-3.2.0 beta 1 and 2. After leaving live TV play for a few minutes I hit the stop button on my CEC remote and Kodi freezes hard. I have to ctrl+alt+del to launch task manager so I can kill Kodi. It does not generate a crash log and there is nothing unusual in the regular Kodi log. I went back to 3.1.1 and that version seems to work without any issues.

Interesting behavior to be sure. Do you see the same when pressing the STOP button in the Kodi UI? CEC input in and of itself shouldn't have any overlap with the PVR, but the proof is in the pudding here if 3.1.1 still works OK.

I may have to set up a Win 7 box somewhere to see if I can duplicate that. I did update both cURL and SQLite in 3.2 (beta), but I'm not seeing anything else that might cause something like this. There isn't much that goes on in the PVR when you stop a stream:

> Close the HTTP stream (<-- seems like most likely suspect)
> Resume the task scheduler if it was paused due to setting "Pause discovery tasks while streaming" being ON
> Trigger a recording discovery if setting "Trigger recording discovery immediately after playback" is ON

Since Kodi is locking up, we're not going to get any useful logging out of it. Would you be willing to try changing the Advanced setting "Stream Live TV channels directly from tuner devices" to ON and switching "Preferred tuner streaming protocol" to "RTP/UDP" temporarily? This will bypass all the cURL stuff involved with streaming and hopefully point me in the right direction of what's wrong this time.

Windows has been killing me here at chez djp952 since around December. I have a flash drive with x86_64 LibreELEC ready to go, I'm very near the end of my rope with Windows (10). I'm having problems regardless of the Kodi or PVR version, though. It's just been awful (which screams "bad Microsoft patch" LOL).

[Ken.F]

CEC input in and of itself shouldn't have any overlap with the PVR, but the proof is in the pudding here if 3.1.1 still works OK.

I was wrong about the remote. I'm using a Harmony 520 with Ortek VRC-1100 codes. It's the same remote that I use with CEC on everything else so I was confused. Anyway, Kodi just locked up on me using 3.1.1. There must be something else going on with this PC.

Windows has been killing me here at chez djp952 since around December. I have a flash drive with x86_64 LibreELEC ready to go, I'm very near the end of my rope with Windows (10). I'm having problems regardless of the Kodi or PVR version, though. It's just been awful (which screams "bad Microsoft patch" LOL).

I'm just about done with Windows too. Win7 is EOL and I refuse to use Windows 10. The only reason I have Windows at all is for the convenience of recording a couple of DRM shows on HBO and FX with WMC, and I could stream those shows if I wanted to.

[djp952]

I was wrong about the remote. I'm using a Harmony 520 with Ortek VRC-1100 codes. It's the same remote that I use with CEC on everything else so I was confused. Anyway, Kodi just locked up on me using 3.1.1. There must be something else going on with this PC.

No worries. I'll test on Windows 7 regardless, been a long time. I forgot how bad Windows Update had gotten on that OS ... only about 3GB more to go for round one of updates

[bzz]

@djp952 just wanted to thank you for sharing your work. It's making my transition from Win7 WMC to Win10 Kodi much easier!

[djp952]

@djp952 just wanted to thank you for sharing your work. It's making my transition from Win7 WMC to Win10 Kodi much easier!

You are quite welcome, it's been my pleasure. It does come with the cost of reading my insanely long-winded posts, of course

[djp952]

Version 3.2.0 (2020.02.07)

• Update SQLite database engine to version 3.31.1
• Update cURL library to version 7.68.0
• Use "Filename" attribute provided by HDHomeRun RECORD instead of manually generating EDL file name(s) when available
• Exclude episodes marked as "DeletedDontRerecord" from the list of reported timer instances
• Exclude episodes marked as "RecordIfNotRecorded" from the list of reported timer instances when a completed recording exists
• Prevent missing channel(s) in the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) listings from causing unncessary XMLTV reload operations
• Fix bug preventing calculation of original air date values for programs that aired prior to 1970.01.01
• Limit reporting of program year to programs of type MV (Movies) in Electronic Program Guide (EPG) and Recorded TV
• Limit reporting of program original air date to programs of type EP (Series Episode) and SH (Show) in Electronic Program Guide (EPG)
• Allow for Live TV to be streamed from any available storage engine before falling back to using a tuner device directly
• Remove "DVR stream ring buffer size" advanced option
• Restore "Use Original Air Date timestamp for Recorded TV programs" setting (different implementation)

Downloads:

• Kodi 18 "Leia" : https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... -Kodi-Leia
• Kodi 19 "Matrix" : https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... odi-Matrix

This one looks really good to me, I've put it through a lot of paces here. There isn't much to say that wasn't said above for the Beta(s), but for those just tuning in, this is pretty much just a stabilization/cleanup release. The development backlog is empty, short of something that I can't implement until it's merged into Kodi Matrix.

Feel free to ask anything about the changes, and of course let me know if you don't like them or worse something doesn't work right. As I like to say, there are plenty of version numbers left. With luck maybe this will be stable enough to last for more than a few weeks or a month Stranger things have happened.

Enjoy!

edit: The wiki is very out of date now and needs some serious updates. I've taken down the "Known Issues" page since none of them actually applied anymore. "Manual Installation on Android" should also go, it's obsolete. "How-To" is also pretty sad looking. Happy to entertain suggestions on what needs to be documented that isn't already, especially things to add to "How-To". I'd like to think I must be a pretty good developer because I clearly suck at documentation