Need help with initial setup

[mikeh49]

I most definitely needed the MPEG license for the Rpi. It struggled mightily and was essentially useless with the software decode. Works great with the hardware decode enabled. YMMV, of course.

[johnsonx42]

I'm pretty sure they send you a couple of email reminders when time is almost up.

they do

[hansolo77]

Thanks for the idea sub! I did a temp side-by-side of my local radar that has the really bad audio. I played the channel LIVE on my HTPC in WMC (and actually had a lot of grain/pixelation (I think this card and/or cable is bad)) and then compared it to the playback of the NextPVR recording. The NextPVR recording was perfect. No digital noise, not hissing between voice over pauses. Just like I remembered it. So I'm thinking then that the problem is with the Pi's decoding.

I've gone ahead and purchased both the MPEG 2 and VC-1 capabilities for my Pi 2. They tricked me though with their foreign currency conversions lol. Not only did their ~3 POUNDS translate to like ~6 Dollars, but I also get hit with about 2% currency conversion fee with my bank, then there was tax. So my total cost is something like 7 bucks lol. Oh well, it'll go a long way I'm sure. The only down side is I got an instant reply from them saying thanks, but that the "code" wouldn't be available to me until they generate it and send it to me within 72 hours. UHG, that's like 3 days. Oh well.

So if this test proved anything, it's that NextPVR is very capable at doing proper recordings. I'm absolutely thrilled at this! This means that when all is said and done, I'll have a nice quite bedroom once again. Now all I have to do is figure out where the problem is coming from on the Kodi side of things. Hopefully it really IS just the codec issue as mvallevand suggests. I'm crossing my fingers. If it's not that, what else should I try? I went ahead and uninstalled all the codecs I had previously installed on the server, and it still recorded ok.

Here's another update... It looks like I figured out the audio problem I was having. While watching some Live TV on the Pi, I looked in the various audio/video settings, and saw I had my Audio Amplification set to Max (60db). I was doing this in the hopes of getting more volume out of my AMP, before I learned I could simply reconfigure the INPUT on the AMP. So I experimented and backed it down. As I was doing so, the volume remained the same, but the static hiss disappeared! So that's gone now woo!

Now the problem I have is when I try to watch an HD recording. My cable company provides analog cable service for about 60 channels. But they also have a DIGITAL service with HD, though not in the cable-ready sense. Since it comes on the same wire I have been using my other tuner to pick up the QAM signal. I tried to use the tuner's 2nd device on the server as a QAM input. Did a quick scan because I know I have some channels available (that's how I'm using it on the WMC). Anyway, I tried to watch one that it picked up, and it works but it is very VERY slow. The audio sounds fine, but the video is very slow. I did a recording like before and played it back on the HTPC instead of the Pi, and it played back fine! So this is definitely a limitation of the Pi/Kodi. If I understand correctly, this is because the Pi2 is currently decoding the stream using software instead of hardware. The software reports (when I hit O and/or C) were showing all kinds of CPU spikes and frames dropped, etc. This should all clear up when I get the codec codes from Raspberry though right?

Oooh I'm so excited! All I'm going to need is that EPG data. How hard is it to set all that up? Is there a walkthrough like there was for the MC2XML? Sorry I'm just being lazy lol.. I'm tired!

[sub]

Yes, I'd say the RPi H/W codec will help with the playback of HD.

The general approach to setting up Schedules Direct is:
[video=youtube;nqJ7QiYS3Rk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqJ7QiYS3Rk[/video]

[hansolo77]

It worked! OMG it's awesome! I got the keys in the email today, plugged them in, and gave it a go. I'm stoked! LOL! Now to get those EPG's working.