(OLD) Unofficial Kodi PVR Client for HDHomeRun DVR subscribers

[djp952]

thanks, just tried it. Will not load error.
thank you

You can try the Raspbian one as well. That's armhf but compiled with different tools. If no dice I will need to go find out how LibreELEC is building for the Pi zero. Don't get distraught, it can be made to work!

I should be able to extract the LE Pi Zero image and check the binaries as well. That takes some time ...

[djp952]

thanks, just tried it. Will not load error.
thank you

You can try the Raspbian one as well. That's armhf but compiled with different tools. If no dice I will need to go find out how LibreELEC is building for the Pi zero. Don't get distraught, it can be made to work!

I should be able to extract the LE Pi Zero image and check the binaries as well. That takes some time ...

Hey, before you try another armhf, like Raspbian, do you have the Kodi log for the armel attempt? It could be the right architecture but with a missing dependency, like GCC 4.9 support. The log should have the magic words in it.

[mxlance]

thanks for the reply
Not sure if it is worth the effort.
The official addon could not play any thing at all.
I got one or two frames and the freeze.
do you think this addon would be any better?
Also i had to reinstall the os to get out of the crash loop

thank again

[djp952]

thanks for the reply
Not sure if it is worth the effort.
The official addon could not play any thing at all.
I got one or two frames and the freeze.
do you think this addon would be any better?
Also i had to reinstall the os to get out of the crash loop

thank again

I did a little digging, the Pi Zero has an ARMv6 CPU. The Linux ARM builds I produce are ARMv7. This is probably the reason it doesn't work. I can put something special together for you to try.

As for will it be any better, not sure. I think it's worth trying, though. Why not, right? How does the Zero do with DVD and/or Blu-Ray media? TV is going to be between those, bitrate-wise. If you can get smooth Blu-Ray level playback, I think TV would be fine. If DVD is unplayable, TV is likely out of the question.

Let me see about cooking up a special ARMv6 build for you. If it doesn't work out, no worries. If it does, we get a new PVR target architecture!

I'll PM ya with a link when I have something. Hold tight, it won't be for at least a couple/few hours.

[mxlance]

Wow, thank you.
i had just given up on the zero.
I did/do not have time to work on this tonight.
This is for my wife's treadmill so had to put things back so she can use the roku tonight.
I will test video playback in the morning. I do not have and blu-ray but will ry some 1080p recordings.

again thank you for the time and effort you put into this project.

[djp952]

Wow, thank you.
i had just given up on the zero.
I did/do not have time to work on this tonight.
This is for my wife's treadmill so had to put things back so she can use the roku tonight.
I will test video playback in the morning. I do not have and blu-ray but will ry some 1080p recordings.

again thank you for the time and effort you put into this project.

No worries! Turns out I can't compile for generic Linux ARMv6 (doesn't work, unsupported features), but as luck would have it - turns out the "Raspbian" builds default to ARMv6 and the correct target CPU (This explains a few things, actually)! So, I have nothing to PM you about, try the Leia "Raspbian" build on the zero next time you have time to spare:

https://github.com/djp952/pvr.hdhomerun ... 3.6982.zip

Fingers crossed here!

[mxlance]

@djp952
It is working. Thank You!
Installed the Raspbian version on the Pi Zero and it is working well.

FYI: It appears the problems with the Official Add-on are do to it not working with the Aura skin. It does work with Estuary. However the UI is very slow and clunky on the Pi Zero.
Your Unofficial add-on runs on the Aura skin and loads shows faster, faster being relative.

One last thing, It does take a minute or so for the video to settle down and play smoothly. Switching channels requires a bit of patience. In fact everything is better with a pinch of patience.

So all in all the Pi Zero is a decent ultra low cost Kodi/HDHR TV client for a third or fourth tv.

Thank you for this add-on and all your help. My wife will thank you also, when she gets to use it tonight.

Thanks again.

[djp952]

@djp952
It is working. Thank You!
Installed the Raspbian version on the Pi Zero and it is working well.

FYI: It appears the problems with the Official Add-on are do to it not working with the Aura skin. It does work with Estuary. However the UI is very slow and clunky on the Pi Zero.
Your Unofficial add-on runs on the Aura skin and loads shows faster, faster being relative.

One last thing, It does take a minute or so for the video to settle down and play smoothly. Switching channels requires a bit of patience. In fact everything is better with a pinch of patience.

So all in all the Pi Zero is a decent ultra low cost Kodi/HDHR TV client for a third or fourth tv.

Thank you for this add-on and all your help. My wife will thank you also, when she gets to use it tonight.

Thanks again.

Woohoo! I'll update the downloads page to clarify when to use the Raspbian build. Might need to rename that one to 'raspberrypi'. I appreciate your time here too, I learned what makes Raspbian special, build-wise, that was something I really never dug into, just assumed it was a Raspbian OS specific issue, turns out it's an ARMv6 one!

[jhford]

I am running 13.3 Krypton on my 2 Nexus 7 android tablets, which are running unofficial versions of android P, and I'm having 2 problems. On Kodi boot, the following message appears at the bottom of the splash screen, which I've never seen before: "Detected problem with app native libraries (please consult log detail)." Also, I'm getting so much buffering Kodi is unusable. I didn't have either problem with 13.2, as I recall.

I hope someone has fixes.

Thanks

Can you post / supply a Kodi log file for this? I am not aware of any breaking changes in Android P myself that would affect the PVR. At some point there will be, if Android ever fully removes support for native modules compiled with GCC, but if something like that were the case the PVR wouldn't load at all.

Since you are on Android Leia, you can also go into the Addons Browser and use the "Update" function for the PVR to revert back to 1.3.12 if you want to easily compare between versions. I keep at least one prior version available for you guys via this method to help with rolling back if needed.

How do I attach a file?

[djp952]

Can you post / supply a Kodi log file for this? I am not aware of any breaking changes in Android P myself that would affect the PVR. At some point there will be, if Android ever fully removes support for native modules compiled with GCC, but if something like that were the case the PVR wouldn't load at all.

Since you are on Android Leia, you can also go into the Addons Browser and use the "Update" function for the PVR to revert back to 1.3.12 if you want to easily compare between versions. I keep at least one prior version available for you guys via this method to help with rolling back if needed.

How do I attach a file?

I will PM you my e-mail address (he says like it's some kind of a secret - lol).

[Skyecairns]

A wee question/wish for djp952. The EPG usually gives the genre as Other/Unknown as the source info does not comply with some standard (European ??) that Kodi uses. For instance sitcom which is used alot gives you Other/Unknown but Comedy as a genre is ok. News is fine. Any chance to get the genres to be more useful. I find the addon and service flawless but being a fiscal conservative I can't rationalize spending $$ for less info.

[djp952]

A wee question/wish for djp952. The EPG usually gives the genre as Other/Unknown as the source info does not comply with some standard (European ??) that Kodi uses. For instance sitcom which is used alot gives you Other/Unknown but Comedy as a genre is ok. News is fine. Any chance to get the genres to be more useful. I find the addon and service flawless but being a fiscal conservative I can't rationalize spending $$ for less info.

Here I did the best I could with what we have. There seems to be a very limited number of Genres ("Filter" in the EPG data) available from the HDHomeRun backend service that I map into the Kodi genres. This mapping dates all the way back to like v1.0.0 of the PVR, and I am absolutely happy to revisit it.

I've never found an exhaustive list of what Filters (genres) are possible from the HDHomeRun guide, so what I did way back when was to use my own channels and EPG to try and discover them all. I've looked again every once in a blue moon, but never found any new ones.

Let me share what I have and what they can be mapped to, perhaps some adjustments are in order? Also, you can bypass the mapping altogether and just use the string (string(s) in Leia) from the EPG data if you want, but you lose color coding in Kodi. Not every EPG entry has the Filter string, so some will always be 'unknown'.

Anyway, here is how it's mapped out today:

Code: Select all

KODI Genre -> HDHomeRun Filter
------------------------------
UNDEFINED -> Blank / null
MOVIEDRAMA -> 'Movies'
NEWSCURRENTAFFAIRS -> 'News'
SHOW -> 'Comedy', 'Drama' *, 'Game Show', 'Talk Show'
SPORTS -> 'Sports'
CHILDRENYOUTH -> 'Kids'
MUSICBALLETDANCE -> None **
ARTSCULTURE -> None
SOCIALPOLITICALECONOMICS -> None
EDUCATIONALSCIENCE -> None
LEISUREHOBBIES -> 'Food'
SPECIAL -> None


* - I remember choosing SHOW for 'Drama' instead of MOVIEDRAMA because it made more sense.  MOVIEDRAMA gets a different color.
** - I think there is a 'Music' Filter string that could be mapped to this, I'll check that out.  Didn't have any music channels at the time this mapping was created

Per the terms of using the EPG data, I don't store that information anywhere, so there is no easy way to just execute a query against people's DVR databases to discover new Filter strings. It can be done by using SQLite to simulate the guide data load and generate a list of all the unique Filters found. I will probably go ahead and enable some music channels and do this very thing myself

[Skyecairns]

Thanks for your post and all the work you've done.

[djp952]

So gang, I've been working on the next release (will be v1.4.0 due to a database change) and wanted to let you know where things are and hopefully get some feedback as well. I think I will request this thread be locked out and start a new one at that time as well, 70+ pages is unmanageable for new users to navigate.

First off, thanks to your help it looks like we may get our resolution for audio-only streams in Kodi 18.2. Team Kodi has accepted a PR I put in and a wonderful gentleman that goes by @emveepee has also been working on this with Kodi in conjunction with the NextPVR addon and some problems he's also discovered in this regard. Fingers crossed.

The main "new" thing for v1.4 will be discovery enhancements. Primarily I've been reworking how to deal with the device authorization strings as well as reducing the number of times the PVR will go out asking for information that's almost always the same (every hour instead of every 5 minutes, for example). Thanks to some help from SD (and signcarver!) I have a way to know if any given device is authorized for DVR services now, which will allow me to block out operations that will never work, mainly working with the Recording Rules. My idea there is to not mess with things too much, but if you try to do something that can't work you'll get a popup along the lines of "HDHomeRun DVR Subscription Required". I could get really crazy with this but I don't think it's necessary. Just letting you know that either A) you don't have a subscription or B) there is something wrong with your subscription should be enough? The discovered device IDs and their DVR authorization will be logged now as well.

Stuff I'm on the fence about but kicking around are:

- Clear all device authorization codes at startup. To help users with transient network issues I don't clear/reset the device information if no devices were found. The problem here is that if it's been more than 24 hours, the stored device authorization code(s) won't work anymore, so accessing the backend will just fail. My idea is that by clearing the codes at startup I can prevent backend queries from occurring until the devices are properly refreshed, but you can still use your Live and Recorded TV based on the cached data. For 99% of everyone there would be no difference at all, it's the 1% of you that I worry about. I think if I do this I need to send device discovery into a tighter loop, like retry every minute or something until it works.

- Remove some lesser used or unused options. I'm looking at the DVR stream tuning parameters specifically here. Does anyone actually change those? If so why? In practice they make little to no difference unless you make them too small and break stuff

There's more of course, but then again there always is. I can't think of anything else I might do in this cycle that could negatively affect anyone, but if more comes up I'll run it by you.

Skyecairns: I'm going to add a temporary feature to grab and log all the "Filter" strings I get from the EPG and keep an eye out for more that aren't accommodated yet

[djp952]

Moderators: Please lock this thread. It has become entirely too long for it's own good.

New thread created here: viewtopic.php?f=88&t=71135.