djp952 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 2:06 pm
OK ... posting to kodi.tv notwithstanding, let's talk through how we might envision a record-to-disk feature working
Prepare for rambling!!
The record button in the Kodi player adds a timer, similar to right-clicking in the EPG and selecting 'Record'. If there is no detected RECORD engine (or we add an option or something), the code could be smart enough to decide that this is going to be a "local" recording and for simplicity's sake kicks off a new stream in the background from the tuner and writes it to disk. Seems reasonable so far, and would also allow a right-click record in the EPG to work too, for currently airing programming of course. If it's streaming in the background, how is it going to know when to stop?
Maybe have a user configuration for maximum time/size for each recoding, with a estimated default setting set. Say example defaults of 4-hours for standard manually started recordings becore the software to automatically stop recording if the user does not manually stop the active recording. If done via the EPG then gets a little more advanced as you would have to calculate the how long to leave recording on based on EPG info.
Regardsless, first I would suggest that the user would get to set a recording directory (if not system default) as well as a user allocated total limit of how many hours (based on standard bitrate) and/or maximum file-size can be used for all recordings on the system.
Similar to popular DVR boxes such TiVo where many DVR box specifications only lists how many hours the box is capable of recoding in HD and SD resolutions, and not actually how large the harddrive is or how many GigaByte of usage space is available for recording.
Standard Deffinition (480p) 1080p recordings typically consume around 1GB per hour if saving a H.264 stream. High Deffinition (1080p) recordings typically consume around 5GB per hour if saving a H.264 encoded stream. However if you are saving a MPEG-2 encoded stream then you need to double those estimates.
So if you would allow the user to just configuration recording directory and how many hours of SD or HD quality video they want to record then the software could automatically calculate and estimate how much disk-space that so and so many hours of SD and HD quality video that person could record on his choosen storage.
For timeshifting (pause Live TV) it gets a little more complicated as you then would probably want have the user allocate the number of hours he/she can timeshift to again determen estimated disk-space allocation, and then on the technical-side you would not want do the timeshifting recoding to one large file, but instead do the timeshifting recording in chunks to many smaller files (maybe only 100MB per file), as that way you can delete the older files one-by-one in order to make room for new files before you reach the allocated disk-space for timeshifting set by the users by how many hours they allow for timeshifting. (Kind of like using log-rotation methods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_rotation ).
NYPlayer wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2017 2:59 pm
Wow that was a lot ... exactly what would be the benefit of creating a DVR built in to KODI ? they already have 5 or 6 different PVR's that you can use ... I personally do not see the benefit. Is it to be able to create a free option ?
Well, for starters, the HDHomeRun DVR service not yet available in all countries that SiliconDust sell their TV-tuners to.
Cost of HDHomeRun DVR service the not the main question here, ease of setup and the amount/complexity of total devices involved is. I just like to see a less complexed recording solution for Kodi users, I can sum it up in another word for countries it available ; usability, or two other words; user-friendless.
Weather or not a solution is free or not does not matter to me personally, though I would prefer to only pay a larger fee once up-front instead of being charged a smaller monthly fee.
Imagine you wanting to recommend a Kodi media player solution with DVR capability to your less-technical friends or family-members like your mom and dad, which would otherwise probably have no problems handling a TiVo DVR, because it is user-friendly. Would you rather tell them to only buy a HDHomeRun and any Android TV box to run Kodi on and just plugin a USB-harddrive if they want to add simple DVR capability to that local USB-harddrive, or would you prefer to tell them to also buy a NAS and sign-up for HDHomeRun DVR service. In my experience most less-technical people have no problems handling Android TV or Kodi, nor do they have problems with USB-harddrive as direct-attached storage, but the same people do have problems handling a NAS.
PS: Off-topic; As for the goal of making a solution simler for end users, for recommending solution to my friends and family members I would prefer if Kodi also had a PVR client that supported direct-attached USB TV-tuners nativly on Android OS, so that I would then tell them just to buy an Android TV box and a couple of USB TV-tuners that they could plug right in and access directly from Kodi. And if that same PVR client had not only support for direct-attached USB TV-tuners nativly on Android OS but also the ability to record Live TV to a direct-attached USB-harddrive then that solution would be optimal for less-technical people.