Unofficial Kodi HDHomeRun DVR PVR Client

[djp952]

FWIW, I checked the old API earlier today and now it's only returning 4 hours of data.

I appreciate you checking! Thanks. Even 4 hours is better than none. Would SD allow you to use the old interface for 4 hours of data for those without a subscription?

Another option, but I suspect Kodi does not make the info available to you, is the data that all channels broadcast as part of their signal. There are a number of TVs that populate a limited set of guide data for the upcoming few hours (or shows) purely from that data...but I think that is only for OTA signals and I suspect that the majority of your users are using cable with a HDHomeRun Prime (I know that is how my friends are using it) and I don't know if the cable providers forward that portion of the digital signal on or not.

I don't want to go into it (sorry), I don't know how much of what I think I know or think I heard is speculative or privileged in any way. As of right now let's say "no" but things can always change!

I'm not sure if HDHomeRun tuners strip out the metadata for OTA when streaming a single program over HTTP or not, but they might. It would likely be possible to ask the tuner for all the elementary streams on that frequency and parse that out. I think I would have to demux it on my own, which so far has been prohibitive for me but it would solve a few lingering problems with Kodi if I did.

It's ambitious! Lol.

[bzz]

Try this -- in the Kodi player, there is a little gear in the lower right corner. Click that and then "audio settings". It will show you the currently selected audio stream format, and let you change it if there is more than one. If all the channels in question only have 2-channel audio coming in, that's about that.

If it's coming in with multichannel and that's the selected audio stream, I got nuthin'. Would have to defer to the Kodi folks on that

Thank you for the suggestion & nice work on the Add-on! The Kodi Audio Settings you mention show AC3 5.1 for the Live TV stream but my receiver is only receiving 2 channel audio. Other media which show the same AC3 5.1 audio properties in Kodi are outputting 5.1 channel audio to my receiver, which is why this is so perplexing. Most of the Kodi audio settings appear to be global in nature, i.e. they apply to all media, not one setting for Recorded TV & another for Live TV.

Thanks again for the suggest & I'll continue my troubleshooting. If anyone has Dolby and / or DTS working with Live TV please reply so I know it's a possibility and not a lost cause.

[Ken.F]

If anyone has Dolby and / or DTS working with Live TV please reply so I know it's a possibility and not a lost cause.

I have DD 5.1 working on live TV. In Kodi settings> System> Audio try setting Number of channels to 2.0, Output Configuration to Best match, Allow passthrough on, Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver on, Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding on.

[djp952]

Awesome. Thank you so much for continuing to look into it!
In the meantime, what do you think about me uninstalling the record engine from the local computer that's currently running everything and installing it on the server across the house? If you're on the right track, maybe that would build in the latency or slow things down just enough? That seems to be the more common setup, right? A server or NAS running the RECORD engine...

Hi Jay! I haven't forgotten about you my friend. I set up a local RECORD instance on my Windows box today and ran through lots of Live TV and some Recorded TV from a local instance of Leia in the debugger. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything I was hoping/expecting to.

I had forgotten about the last time I refactored the streaming that pretty much made my "big ol' buffer" pointless. The latest incarnation of things barely uses the buffer at all, at no point was it ever more than about 18K full (out of 1MB), so the idea that it may be filling up and pausing too much was completely incorrect. The data comes in at the same rate whether it's local or remote, the HTTP library seems to behave identically. I was curious if there was some optimization in there if it knew the server was local, but it all looks fine.

I was able to semi-duplicate the problem one time, but it was when I stopped a Live TV stream (Live TV is still buffered on the local disk by RECORD - enables timeshifting). I got Kodi to freak out with the "stream stalled" and all the audio sync errors and eventually it locked up. The point where it locked up wasn't in the PVR code and I wasn't set up to debug Kodi itself, so I missed out on exactly where. I did have some stream debugging in place and it never noted a failure to read the data from RECORD or any zero-length reads, so that event ended up being a bust on me.

I've added this problem to the "Development Backlog" (post #3 or #4 of this thread). I'm ~90% certain based on what you've provided so far that the problem is mine to solve, and once this EPG debacle is out of the way it's my top priority. I stumble my way into finding just about everything eventually. I apologize that the next version needs to go out ASAP (tonight) and it won't have anything in it to solve your problem.

[NedS]

So, is there any way SD will consider a method to allow non-DVR subscribers to get 23 hours worth of guide data, other than via the official HDHomeRun app? If not I guess I will need to start recommending other solutions for people who do not want/need a DVR. Sad.

I can inquire, but just to let you know, the Kodi PVR add-on in the Kodi.TV add-on repo should still work, minus DVR features. The only bad thing with it is that the channel numbers don't always line up right, but it should still give you a grid guide.

[djp952]

Krypton gets a stay of it's execution, EPG data for non-DVR subscribers ... not so much

Version 3.0.0 (2019.12.14)

• Add dependency on libxml2 library v2.9.10
• Switch to incremental database schema versioning rather than tying to the addon version number
• Switch to Electronic Program Guide (EPG) XMLTV source data (available to DVR subscribers only)
• Change "Append repeat indicators to applicable episode names" setting to apply only to programs of type EP/SH
• Remove "Electronic Program Guide (EPG) Metadata" discovery intervals setting
• Remove "Trigger guide metadata discovery" PVR Client Specific setting
• Add "Trigger guide listing discovery" PVR Client Specific setting
• Fix bug in task scheduler that would allow pending tasks to execute after stop signal has been sent
• Add one-time alert message indicating that DVR authorization is required to access Electronic Program Guide data
• (Matrix) Rename "Append repeat indicators to applicable episode names" setting to "Append repeat indicators to applicable recording names"

Downloads:

• Kodi 17 "Krypton" : https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... di-Krypton
• Kodi 18 "Leia" : https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... -Kodi-Leia
• Kodi 19 "Matrix" : https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... odi-Matrix

The bolded items are the important ones. The last few pages of this thread have discussed it, but v3.0.0 no longer supports Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data without a valid HDHomeRun DVR service account. It is what it is, gang. I knew when we added "full EPG" it was going to ultimately cause SiliconDust a problem and I've always maintained the position that if they asked me to stop I would. It's stopped.

That said, the new XMLTV data for DVR subscribers allowed for some nice enhancements. Better genre granularity, faster load times, you can crank Kodi up to 14 days in PVR & Live TV / Guide without much performance penalty, good stuff. The coolest part to me is that reworking things to use this new data stream allows the EPG to actually update every day. The old way once the data was sent to Kodi it was carved in stone. The new way every 24 (or so) hours it does a full refresh, so any programming changes that have occurred will be reflected now. Very nice. For users that have the default Kodi skin or one that supports EPG colors, there are more now, you should never see the light gray "Unknown" anymore.

For non-DVR subscribers, I've put in a one-time pop up message that will say this when the addon starts. It will only show up once unless you completely uninstall/reinstall the addon:

DVR Service Subscription Required
Access to Electronic Program Guide (EPG) listings requires an active HDHomeRun DVR Service subscription.
https://www.silicondust.com/dvr-service/

One other notable, if not minor, change: I am now able to refine how the "Append repeat indicators to applicable episode names" setting works so it will never apply to Movies or Sports, and on Matrix since it has the "new" indicator in the EPG the "[R]" will only be applied in Recorded TV (LMK if you don't like that, I can still do it for EPG if you want).

The release has been pushed out for auto-update, and I asked SiliconDust to give us at least 3-4 days for that to work for people before doing anything to block the older versions of the addon from accessing EPG data.

I know this will be the last time a lot of people use this addon once they see that pop-up, so if they happen to come here and see this, I would like to sincerely thank them for using my little project and for all of the feedback (good and bad) that has been received over the past couple years. I hope that it added some value, and I also hope that a path forward for non-subscribers within the HDHomeRun ecosystem becomes available in the future for us to use. You will be missed.

For those that are sticking around -- let me know what I screwed up this time I'll be here.

[signcarver]

Just noticed that for me the grid guide isn't filling in data for any of my local channels, whether from OTA from 2 quatros or cable from primes (different numbers on cable and repeated twice (i.e. 5 and 1005)) it also isn't even showing channels below 15. The channels below 15 are present in the channel listing but not grid and many, but not all, of the local channels (both ota and cable have data in the channel listing but not on grid).

I don't use the add on much because nearly all my cable is DRM protected but also noticed I don't like the scrolling on the guide with my touchpad on my laptop but that is probably a kodi thing (to me up and down should go up and down, not left and right which I also should be able to scroll )

Edit: after 50 minutes the guide finally got those channels and 100s of timers from them... probably should add this is on an i5 windows laptop with 16GB RAM.

[clarkss12]

Working good on Android 9.

[djp952]

Just noticed that for me the grid guide isn't filling in data for any of my local channels, whether from OTA from 2 quatros or cable from primes (different numbers on cable and repeated twice (i.e. 5 and 1005)) it also isn't even showing channels below 15. The channels below 15 are present in the channel listing but not grid and many, but not all, of the local channels (both ota and cable have data in the channel listing but not on grid).

I don't use the add on much because nearly all my cable is DRM protected but also noticed I don't like the scrolling on the guide with my touchpad on my laptop but that is probably a kodi thing (to me up and down should go up and down, not left and right which I also should be able to scroll )

Edit: after 50 minutes the guide finally got those channels and 100s of timers from them... probably should add this is on an i5 windows laptop with 16GB RAM.

Thanks! Kodi seems to still have some difficulties with mapping lineup channels to EPG channels, I had to "Clear Data" on almost all of my devices to correct it. My impression is that the errors accumulate over time, but I'm also often wrong I'm very glad it cleared itself up, and I think the Kodi log will say interesting things like "zomg, this channel doesn't exist WTF?", which is a side-effect of trying to pump it full of data for channels it thinks it doesn't have.

I'm certain there are going to be some problems with v3, and I absolutely appreciate the time and effort involved with testing it. Please let me know if the problem occurs again, although 50 minutes seems like an unreasonable amount of time for automatic resolution in the first place. I'll screw around with some things to see if I can trip it up in a similar fashion.

[djp952]

Working good on Android 9.

THANK YOU! I have a grand total of zero Android 9 "Pie" devices to play with, I really appreciate the heads-up. I also appreciate all feedback in general, I was hoping to ignore this project until 2020 a couple weeks ago with the release of v2.4.1, but, you know, things happened, and now we're here.

[bzz]

I have DD 5.1 working on live TV. In Kodi settings> System> Audio try setting Number of channels to 2.0, Output Configuration to Best match, Allow passthrough on, Dolby Digital (AC3) capable receiver on, Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding on.

Thanks Ken! Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding did the trick & surround sound is now working for Live TV.

[Ken.F]

Immediately after upgrading a PVR client from the old guide system to the new one live TV timeshifting is broken. I first noticed it when testing the betas but forgot to mention it. Manually triggering device discovery in the PVR & Live TV client specific settings fixes it. Restarting Kodi might fix it too but I never tried that.

[Ken.F]

Thanks Ken! Enable Dolby Digital (AC3) transcoding did the trick & surround sound is now working for Live TV.

Glad it's working for you. I don't know why transcoding needs to be turned on. It seems to work the opposite of what the setting description says.

[Rickt1962]

I am using djp952 3.0.0 on KODI and this morning the guide is blank rebooted and still blank I dont have a subscription only need 1 day guide which I thought was free

[djp952]

I am using djp952 3.0.0 on KODI and this morning the guide is blank rebooted and still blank I dont have a subscription only need 1 day guide which I thought was free

There is going to be a lot of these for a while . I may need an auto responder!

Here's the deal my friend -- this add-on was using way too much guide so I was asked to turn it off. I believe it will be cut off soon regardless. I am truly sorry but I have to follow the rules.

You can roll back to 2.4.2 and turn off auto updates but I think it's a matter of time before v2.x gets cut off by the backend.

I know. It's a sucky way to wake up today. Sorry...