X-NEWA or XMBC Plugin

[StevHodge]

Comment on experience so far:
Both add-ons are nice packages - congratulations, got a tiny issue with navigation in the NPVR add-on which I have put on another thread, but fundamentally everything works
Could not see any difference in playback quality
More functionality in X-NEWA, particularly around the EPG but on my systems at least it takes a long time ( 30-60 seconds or more)to fetch things like the EPG or a directory listing from the NPVR server - so much so that my users would lose patience. The EPG difference perhaps is because the the NPVR-XMBC add-on seems to get the EPG from somewhere else, don't know where. NPVR EPG version is not complete though - does not have my analogue channels on it. But obviously the live TV and recorded programmes and the directory listings come from the same server, but even with them the NPVR add-on is much quicker.
The WOL feature on the X-NEWA has me foxed too. It doesn't seem to do anything. I had hoped it would start up the NPVR server when X-NEWA started, but it doesn't seem to (I have the AdvancedWOL add-on to XMBC set to start up the server when XMBC starts - or on demand - which works fine, but I had hoped to make it automatic when X-NEWA starts and the NPVR server has gone to sleep - so as not confuse the users with more instructions)
For the moment I'll keep them both on the system but only use X-NEWA when I need to. Or is there some tweak to the server that could help things?

Steve Hodge

[mvallevand]

The purpose of x-newa is not to be the prime interface but to give you all nextpvr functionality in xbmc so it makes sense only use it when something is missing.

For speed that sounds like RPi performance which is 10x slower than my PC. In x-newa it is pulled from newa which makes it seem slower, pvr.nextpvr does a front end load and its no speed demon either. You can see it loading my data here from 0:27-1:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr6c2eknehQ and another 0:15 to load. The main difference is pvr.nextpvr is frequently polling the backend for changes, x-newa caches and then works on demand The built in approach doesn't work too well for me because I turn off the client and my backend goes to sleep so they are about equally poor (one reason I don't lik the RPi) Almost all my recording playback is from the library so I don't need the backend for that.

WOL is supposed to work on demand as you thought, it's called every time you ask it to contact the server, I'll check

You can improve things a bit on x-newa's guide if you use reduced channel groups, or reduce the hours you download to 1 or 2.

Martin

[StevHodge]

Thanks Martin. I suspected the speed difference might be due to polling and caching behaviour. I'll live with the RPi speed penalty. The RPi small (aesthetic point this) and cheap, I think I can make it much more user freindly on start-up than the PCH NMT, and its play back quality on HDMI is far far better than the PCH. Hope I can get the WOL working, but this is not a priority

Steve

[mvallevand]

I'm surprised you find the hdmi quality better on the RPi, the Sigma chip has much better video processing. The UI is so much better, the 3D graphics and eye candy in XBMC are far superior to NextPVR and especially to the NMT junk.

WOL is working here but I made a change in case it is an endianess question for the next build.

Martin

[mvallevand]

I thought I'd post a link http://youtu.be/7J1P3KQEt74 showing what the speed on a PC is to give you an idea how slow the RPi really is

-load one showing wol and the initial dashboard load of data
-load two dashboard when wol is not needed
-epg start up not cached (200 channels 3 hours data)
-epg start cached

Martin

[StevHodge]

Thanks Martin. See your point on speed. However I have an always on PC close to my main TV, so can use NEWA if I need it - very fast. On quality we are probably at cross purposes. I am comparing an RPi using HDMI to a PopcornHour A110 running your npvmxc2 using a composite video connection. So I am a reasonably happy punter