live tv timeshift and other changes

[KRA]

Well faster channel change/start would just be a bonus, but it's not something I'm holding my breath for, if it happens it happens. I know people like to zap through channels to see whats on, but I havn't done that in the last 10 years, ever since I started using a computer for my TV I look at tv-guide so see if anything is on.

But the ability to rewind in live-tv is something I really missed, I've had this since I started with mythtv probably over 10 years ago, the fact that full on quality timeshifting support is not in xbmc is a real bummer, and the link you provided seems it might be available for next release (1 year from now ?) I like testing new stuff but xbmc is beginning to toy with my patience, if it wasn't x-platform it would have been kicked out a long time ago.

And when they brainstorm about stuff like this, they should include people like Sub, people who have experience outside the xbmc box.

[KRA]

I just tested a basic clean xbmc git build and I'm able to rewind with this version, so I guess it's something missing in the xvba branch.

Rewind is kindo odd though, it's like it rewinds for some seconds, then play, then rewind, then play ....

[sub]

Rewind is kindo odd though, it's like it rewinds for some seconds, then play, then rewind, then play ....

Yep, rewind isn't very good. This is down to XBMC though, and not something I have control over in the addon.

[KRA]

I just let it sit for like 20 min, then I tried to rewind 16x, it didn't take long until it froze and locked up, I gave it 10 minutes to recover but nothing happened, backend was still timeshifting though, had to kill xbmc. Backend didn't stop TS though, when I try to view same channel it starts another stream, if I try another channel it says tuner not available. So I rebooted the client and then the backend stopped.

[sub]

If xbmc goes braindead, but the connection is left open, then the backend can continue the live tv session, since (to the backend) this looks exactly the same xbmc pausing the stream and not asking for more data. If you kill xbmc though, then the connection will close, and the backend will detect xbmc is gone, and free up the device.

[reven]

i suspect xbmc live tv will be changed to how the normal player works. i.e. pushing "left" jumps back 30 seconds, pushing "right" jumps forward 30 seconds etc and most people wont actually use rewind/fast forward.

xbmc pvr player currently is pretty inconsistent with the normal video player, and knowing xbmc they will want to fix this.

im hoping they implement a channel change popup like in mediaportal, where you push a specific button (in mediaportal its "ok", in xbmc it would have to be another button since ok == menu by default and for consistency) and in that popup
- lists channels with whats on now / next
- pushing left / right cycles through channel groups
the way you change channel groups with left/right now is just stupid. you change groups but have no way to change channel in that group, so you change group, it changes channel to the first channel (which is more than likely not the channel you want) then you open up the channel guide thingy and select the channel you want (or use channel up/down).

[KRA]

Reven,

there is actually i channellist popup you can use, it's not like mediaportal miniepg, but close, it only shows current program, not next.

it's the "playlist" button, I don't know what it is one keyboard, I have it mapped to my blue button on remote.

[reven]

yeah i know, i just posted a request on xbmc forums to improve this.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=144207

its basically like mediaportal, but missing the important feature to change channel groups in it. thats what makes mediaportals way of changing channels the best I've seen IMO. Not a huge fan of mediaportal, but they do have some really good featuers, and this is probably their best (also the incremental skips, where pushing left once = +15 seconds, then again = 30, then 1min, then 2min, then 5min, 10min etc, thats really nice too)

[KRA]

I was debugging problems with rewind with xbmc developer (regarding the xvba branch) and he reply

"Should work now with the new patch. You should also notify the addon authors that they should update time during rewind."


Also it seems there is a issue with changing ts buffer files, it seems if I'm far behind and it hits a filechange it skips forward to the new file.

[sub]

I'm not sure what the hell he's talking about. PVR addons can't update the time. All we can tell the XBMC PVR framework is the length in bytes.