X-NEWA Install observations

[stustunz]

If your TV has USB port power it off that
I don't even bother shutting rpi down I just turn off TV and walk away
Then turn TV on rpi powers up
Some say you get corruption on the SD card but I have only had this happen once after a freeze when I was first setting rpi up,so considering I have about 4 different tpis setup at ony one time used daily I say don't worry.
I have a backup image of SD card and have one ready to load if it ever does happen so it would be up and running again within minutes.

[mikeh49]

Re the NPVR menu image quality: mine is comparatively poor as well. I haven't investigated settings that might help. OTOH the videos look fine, both recordings and live. I don't need (or want) the Kodi eye candy, but would appreciate if it was closer to the native NPVR quality. I'll try to grab some images for comparison. It will be a while since I messed up the system updating OSMC to Isengard. Foolish me thinking it would "just work". I have X-NEWA 2.4.7; do I need to upgrade for Isengard?

[mvallevand]

It would be useful uploading the cached screen images from NextPVR They should be in userdata/cache

I haven't changed anything in Kodi so no 2.4.7 should be good from Gotham forward maybe earlier. It reminds me that I need to update the repo to 2.4.8 eventually.

Martin

[stustunz]

Set x-newa client
Web client
Enable high quality screens(slower)

This is set in programs/x-newa in kodi

[mikeh49]

Thanks for the input guys. It will be tomorrow before I get to it.

[jksmurf]

Wow, that has to be the most replies to one post ever in my ten years with G/NextPVR :-). Great to see.

I do use an MCE remote USB IR receiver and a Harmony remote. With my TV (a Vizio) at least, the CEC doesn't send things like the color buttons to the CEC client. So the MCE remote receiver gives many more remote buttons to use.

If I had an MCE remote and its own little USB IR receiver I would definitely be using it. Sure I could find one on eBay but it doesn't make sense to get one sent to where l live. CEC seems, as you wryly observe, somewhat limited, but personally it's more about using my familiar (almost 7-8 years) PCH remote.

Go into the Kodi | Settings | System | Input devices and select Peripherals. Then you should be able to select the CEC Adapter. In its configuration screen, there is an option labelled "When the TV is switched off". Trying changing that to "Ignore".

I ended up finding a setting hdmi_ignore_cec_init=1 which you can set from Leopolds Add-In for Config.txt. This seems to have fixed that issue.

The NMT and MVP don't ever turn off either, this is typical in embedded devices.

Martin it was less about them turning off and more about the Pi not being able to be turned back on without pulling the USB cable. When I exit the PCH and press power then the PCH is off (or as much off for me as I need, with no LEDs showing). When I press power again on the PCH remote it starts up again. The rPi doesn't do this..

The screen quality should be the same or better than the NMT ensure you have configured quality options for web client to your liking. You can't compare Kodi 3D graphics skins fonts etc to NextPVR's 2D. If you want Kodi skins sub's PVR addon might be what you are looking for.

OK I will need to figure out what is going on here then as it is not as good. Being a sort of miniPC I thought it would be able to produce screens comparable to those on the PC. I wasn't looking for it to have Kodi-like graphics and I apologize if I have given this impression.

Additionally the RPi has just an average framebuffer for graphics the NMT's Sigma Design chip was designed for STB's. Intel Kodi clients are better but everyone but me seems to want a cheap solution with the tradeoffs Martin

OK, good to know on the graphics. Your last comment here is somewhat disappointing Martin, I bought the Pi to tinker with, to run Playon via the Universe plugin, as the PCH wasn't currently able to. I was also looking at it as a PCH replacement because quite a few folks suggested it was as good as the PCH. This was never about finding the cheapest solution for me. I wanted to see for myself how it worked and how well, it was available locally and it was relatively cheap to just "give it a whirl". As per my comment above I wanted to document the process in one place, to help others out, as well as demonstrate any pitfalls or limitations. My comments on the graphics were never intended to level criticism at X-Newa.

kodi has always been much slicker than NextPVR. It come from having lots of developers and graphic artists working on the project. Have you only just noticed NextPVR isn't so fancy after using something else? )

Lol, yes there may be an element of truth in the latter statement, but as above, TBH, I just wanted it to be as good as the NMT or let's say I had even harboured a desire for it to be as good as NextPVR on the PC; but not being as good as Kodi is no great concern, NextPVRs functionality and familiarity far outweighs that of Kodi, for me.

Or is this more about the screen being more blurry / lower res in XNEWA (vs NextPVR directly on PC)? The screens are compressed to jpg images for delivery to web clients, and this does lose some quality. There is some tweakable stuff here, but higher quality generally means a little slower responsiveness (though a fast NextPVR server helps immensely)

Yes it is. Again, perhaps my expectations were too high, I just thought that 7-8 years on from the first purchase of the PCH, it must be better than the PCH, or at least as good, surely. Hence with that question in mind, I came back to the forum asking what did I miss, what have I not configured correctly?

As Martin and sub have indicated, the image quality should be very comparable to what you got on the PCH. So, your description of "the NextPVR screen looks quite crude", leads me to believe that there is something configured not quite right yet in your setup. Maybe if you could post a picture of a screen that you are seeing, it would help to figure out what might need to be changed.

Agree. See below. Maybe it's just my expectations of the last 2 (with the Pi) vs the first one (on the PC). When viewed first hand I found the graphic of 3 and 4 to be blurrier/fuzzier than the 2nd (PCH). I will admit looking at it again below, there is not a massive difference.

If your TV has USB port power it off that I don't even bother shutting rpi down I just turn off TV and walk away Then turn TV on rpi powers up Some say you get corruption on the SD card but I have only had this happen once after a freeze when I was first setting rpi up,so considering I have about 4 different pis setup at any one time used daily I say don't worry.

I have a backup image of SD card and have one ready to load if it ever does happen so it would be up and running again within minutes.

As in my original post, I don't have one unfortunately "Unfortunately my LCD Panasonic Veira doesn't have a USB Port, so I can't restart the Pi with a simple TV restart which seems to be what a lot of folks do. ". It would be a great simple solution I agree :-). I had a spare remote controlled power adapter (what the Americans call a "wall-wart" I believe, fantastic name), which works just fine for now. I am definitely going to get a spare SD card as a backup, because having configured it over the last week, I probably don't want to be duplicating the process unnecessarily. I have learned a lot though!

Set x-newa client
Web client
Enable high quality screens(slower)
This is set in programs/x-newa in kodi

stu I am sure you really know your screens, but me being a lesser mortal, the only way I found to get there was, from the Kodi Main Screen:

System/Add-Ons/My Add-ons/Program Addons/X-Newa/Configure/X-Newa Client/Web Client/Screen Resolution (mine is 1280x720) and Enable High Quality Screen Resolution (mine is on).

If there is a shorter way to get to the same screen, I would dearly love to know how.

Cheers

Screens, in order

1. NPVRonPC-TextbitBlockybutGraphicisGood
2. PopCornHour-NMT-A110
3. X-Newa-onTV-720P
4. X-Newa-onTV-DesktopRes

k.

[jcjefferies]

On the subject of Auto X-NEWA, I only installed X-NEWA on my RPi2 about three weeks ago and I couldn't find the file in the Auto X-NEWA instructions in the sticky. I have two PC clients running X-NEWA on OpenElec and don't remember any problems setting up Auto X-NEWA. In userdata on the PC version I found the autoexec.py which only contains the autostart instruction so copied it to the RPi2 which now autoboots. Is the other way now the preferred way to auto X-NEWA?

Chris

[mvallevand]

Kodi is so configurable and there are so many variations I don't think there is a prefered method. addon.xml for x-newa has a startup option commented out section but your method may be better.

Martin

[mikeh49]

I need to take back what I said about the image quality. Got the pi working today and found that the detail of the screens is by and large good, regardless of the high quality images setting. What I'm noticing is that the yellow text on the "classic" horizontal menu is kind of over-driven and seems to bleed. The white text and the orange triangles at the bottom of the recordings screens are sharp and clear. It may be just my cheap Sanyo plasma TV. As I said before, recordings are fine. For a nominal 720p TV should I use the 1260X720 resolution or the 1320X768? (These numbers might not be all correct.) Both work and I can't easily tell a difference. Mine are at least as good as jksmurf"s bottom one.

[mvallevand]

I figure network utilization is the biggest problem on the RPi but 1280x720 should be good enough.

Martin