OLD: Unofficial Kodi PVR Client for HDHomeRun DVR subscribers

[NYPlayer]

Still only 4 hrs of EPG from what I can see with this version.

Great add on BTW. Do you still have plans to increase the amount of EPG data that can be displayed, or has it been shelved?

Did you go into pvr/livetv settings in KODI not the Addon ... under GUIDE and set the number of days I set mine to 14 and it is working... make sure your Settings level is set to expert... then clear your guide data on the same screen. Mine goes all the way to Aug 10. The initial loading will take a while.

[djp952]

Still only 4 hrs of EPG from what I can see with this version.

Great add on BTW. Do you still have plans to increase the amount of EPG data that can be displayed, or has it been shelved?

Thanks!

To add to NYPlayer's reply ... are you a subscriber to the DVR service? You only get 4 hours of guide data unless your device(s) are registered with SiliconDust for the DVR service. How much guide data can you access if you use the official SiliconDust HDHomeRun app (if you are on Windows or Android) - can you expand the channel slice beyond about 4 hours into the future?

[NYPlayer]

Still only 4 hrs of EPG from what I can see with this version.

Great add on BTW. Do you still have plans to increase the amount of EPG data that can be displayed, or has it been shelved?

Thanks!

To add to NYPlayer's reply ... are you a subscriber to the DVR service? You only get 4 hours of guide data unless your device(s) are registered with SiliconDust for the DVR service. How much guide data can you access if you use the official SiliconDust HDHomeRun app (if you are on Windows or Android) - can you expand the channel slice beyond about 4 hours into the future?

I thought they changed this to 24 HOURS ... fab4272 if you are not a DVR Subscriber make sure you have the latest software and firmware.

Scroll down on link below it says 24 Hours
https://www.silicondust.com/live-tv/

[RockerC]

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 ).

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.

[NYPlayer]

@RockerC
You can run the DVR on many Android BOXES with USB attached ... works on all Android boxes I tested... you just need a USB drive 500GB or larger. Works on the Shield ... works on my ZID900 android box.

As long as you have a USB3 port on the Android box it should run.

[Ken.F]

OK ... posting to kodi.tv notwithstanding, let's talk through how we might envision a record-to-disk feature working Prepare for rambling!!

Have you thought about forking your add-on into a new project for the PVR features? Changing the current HDHomeRun DVR frontend into a standalone PVR would be a significant change in direction.

Have you checked out the TVJunkieMOD? That might give you some ideas on how to do the recording.

[djp952]

Alright, I really have no intention of adding recording to THIS project, and I really think it's inappropriate to get into too many more posts back and forth here since SiliconDust is our gracious host and they have their own solution available. The whole goal of this project is to share with you an alternate means of using their solution, certainly not to circumvent those services.

If you can think of another place we can discuss it further -- I suggest the "issues" section on the GitHub site???, already an open issue about this we can use -- we can continue the conversation. I'm not against working on a fork or another separate project, this just really isn't the right place, and we're not helping new users find help or information about the current project this way Besides, you all know by now typing incessantly is apparently like my favorite thing in the world - lol.

Let's take it here for now >> https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerundvr/issues

This thread has gotten REALLY long in the tooth as it is (29 pages?!?!), I think it's also time to make a clean break and start fresh, it's been pointed out to me a few times that it's become way daunting to go through, and they are right. I'll try to get a new thread started late tonight or this weekend with updated info and then ask the moderators to close this one out.

Are you guys OK with taking discussion of features that overlap with SiliconDust's DVR solution and/or forks of the project elsewhere? I hope you can understand my reasoning and respect my intentions!

[NYPlayer]

Alright, I really have no intention of adding recording to THIS project, and I really think it's inappropriate to get into too many more posts back and forth here since SiliconDust is our gracious host and they have their own solution available. The whole goal of this project is to share with you an alternate means of using their solution, certainly not to circumvent those services.

If you can think of another place we can discuss it further -- I suggest the "issues" section on the GitHub site???, already an open issue about this we can use -- we can continue the conversation. I'm not against working on a fork or another separate project, this just really isn't the right place, and we're not helping new users find help or information about the current project this way Besides, you all know by now typing incessantly is apparently like my favorite thing in the world - lol.

Let's take it here for now >> https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerundvr/issues

This thread has gotten REALLY long in the tooth as it is (29 pages?!?!), I think it's also time to make a clean break and start fresh, it's been pointed out to me a few times that it's become way daunting to go through, and they are right. I'll try to get a new thread started late tonight or this weekend with updated info and then ask the moderators to close this one out.

Are you guys OK with taking discussion of features that overlap with SiliconDust's DVR solution and/or forks of the project elsewhere? I hope you can understand my reasoning and respect my intentions!

I always thought the discussing another DVR Solution should not been on here ... the appropriate place as long as you keep supporting HDHomerun Devices is the 3rd party DVR.

Starting a new thread is great ...

PS it is working so great maybe soon you will be open to "feature requests"

[djp952]

Hmmm... it's kinda Kodi development and it's kinda 3rd party at the same time I guess. Let me ping TVJunkie198 on a PM and see what he thinks is the most appropriate forum to start the new thread.

[djp952]

PS it is working so great maybe soon you will be open to "feature requests"

Dude ... I kinda just want to actually watch the TV for a while

There are still holes that can be plugged here, channel management and improvements to timers come to mind. Timers work but need much better UI support, pointing people to the wiki all the time shows how hard it is to figure out as-is. Channel management isn't a priority, but would be nice to have. 1.2.1 will have right-click actions in the Channels area to disable and set/clear favorites, but I want to implement the whole set of Kodi functionality there if possible. Kick off the channel scans and provide the progress, show signal strength, all that fluff I also promised some manner of discovery diagnostics ...

[fab4272]

Still only 4 hrs of EPG from what I can see with this version.

Great add on BTW. Do you still have plans to increase the amount of EPG data that can be displayed, or has it been shelved?

Thanks!

To add to NYPlayer's reply ... are you a subscriber to the DVR service? You only get 4 hours of guide data unless your device(s) are registered with SiliconDust for the DVR service. How much guide data can you access if you use the official SiliconDust HDHomeRun app (if you are on Windows or Android) - can you expand the channel slice beyond about 4 hours into the future?

I thought they changed this to 24 HOURS ... fab4272 if you are not a DVR Subscriber make sure you have the latest software and firmware.

Scroll down on link below it says 24 Hours
https://www.silicondust.com/live-tv/

All good now. I am a subscriber. Exited and cleared the EPG cache after I started Kodi again and it worked.

[Ken.F]

I get an error message "Add-on couldn't be loaded" "Can't load shared library" when trying to install zuki.pvr.hdhomerundvr-windows-x64-krypton-1.2.0.6415.zip on Win7.
Last night avdp and demonrik's DVR Web UI was broken because SD changed all of the apis from ipv4-my.hdhomerun.com to api.hdhomerun.com. Maybe that has something to do with it?

[NYPlayer]

I get an error message "Add-on couldn't be loaded" "Can't load shared library" when trying to install zuki.pvr.hdhomerundvr-windows-x64-krypton-1.2.0.6415.zip on Win7.
Last night avdp and demonrik's DVR Web UI was broken because SD changed all of the apis from ipv4-my.hdhomerun.com to api.hdhomerun.com. Maybe that has something to do with it?

Isn't KODI 17.3 32 bit I used the 32 bit one and it worked ??? KODI V18 is 64 bit and 32 bit.

[Ken.F]

Isn't KODI 17.3 32 bit I used the 32 bit one and it worked ??? KODI V18 is 64 bit and 32 bit.

Yes, that was the problem. Thanks!

The guide data is loading now and it's going sloooow. It's taking about 10 seconds per channel and I have over 200 channels enabled. Is it normal for it to take a half an hour to load the guide?

Edit: Nevermind. I changed it to only download 1 day of guide data and it's going much faster now. I just want to use it for live TV and recording playback so I don't need two weeks worth of data.

[NYPlayer]

Isn't KODI 17.3 32 bit I used the 32 bit one and it worked ??? KODI V18 is 64 bit and 32 bit.

Yes, that was the problem. Thanks!

The guide data is loading now and it's going sloooow. It's taking about 10 seconds per channel and I have over 200 channels enabled. Is it normal for it to take a half an hour to load the guide?

Edit: Nevermind. I changed it to only download 1 day of guide data and it's going much faster now. I just want to use it for live TV and recording playback so I don't need two weeks worth of data.

Yeah the initial load of 14 days takes a while ... then it is much quicker.... only loads new guide data.