Moving to NPVR/NMT to NPVR+Fire TV/XBMC

[jt25741]

Hi All,

As an long user of NPVR/NMT --- I may have finally found a solid move here. So far FireTV+XBMC Gotham seems functional/fast and smooth. Most importantly, FireTV/XBMC Gotham seems to decode the MPEG2 captured broadcast streams without issue -- unlike most HW based media players. Perhaps this is because MPEG2 decode is done in SW on this unit? If so, it has enough CPU to handle the job. With the recent sale price of $69 for a FireTV I couldn't pass it up and so far so good.

NPVR plugin functions well.

Only significant issue I have is that when viewing my recordings via XMBC video library, I lose the valuable show metadata NPVR lays down from the EPG. When using the native NPVR client, or NMT extender -- show meta data (what the episode was about) -- appears in the UI. Is there anyway to get this same information to display through XBMC?

Even in the "Recordings" view of the NPVR add-on, I do not see this metadata/show info.

Thanks a bunch for your help and ideas....I am pretty new to the XBMC world so maybe missing something I should be doing.

Jim

[mvallevand]

There's a huge issue for me with the FTV, it doesn't do deinterlacing so mine is gathering dust.

To use the XBMC/Kodi Libraries you need to name them properly so they can be scanned. The PVR Add On does do metadata though.

Martin

[jt25741]

Hi Martin,

I watched a 1.5hour 1080i MPEG2 broadcast of CBS Sunday morning....it looked really sharp, didnt seem to miss a frame. What types of issues did you find with it visually? I found that I had to disable mediacodec and only enable libstragefreight before anything worked well. Plus this is only the Gotham build. The difference in performance then was night and day on the codec choice.

Is it that when a scene is panned left-to right or right-to-left it isnt as smooth as it can be for you Martin?

"To use the XBMC/Kodi Libraries you need to name them properly so they can be scanned" --- can you please give me a bit more info here... I would greatly appreciate it --- would like to get that metadata

Huge thanks again!

Thanks so much.

[mvallevand]

First, I'm glad it doesn't bother you and there are a lot of people that don't mind. Panning and all motion really annoy me maybe because of the I watch sports and action movies. I just turned it off and this is a capture with of 1080i interlacing on the Miami player running.

There's a lot of info on renaming for Kodi/XBMC around. I've been using my utility imageGrabLite for years to rename files to XBMC standards and there are a a couple of other utilities here that do renaming.

Martin

[jt25741]

I have not watched sports on it.... I generally watch those live decoded on the actual TV. But I think it would bother me too. But give that codec a try...maybe it will help a bit if you didnt try it already?

I will research the topic of metadata..... where does NPVR hide this stuff? For instance, If I move a recording from the recordings directory to any other directory....NPVR istelf seems to remember the file name and pull in the EPG metadata when viewing from NPVR client regardless where the file is. I am just not aware of the mechanics on how it does this and where the metadata is actually stored.

[mvallevand]

Sorry I thought I responded, but I must not have clicked Post. NextPVR's metadata doesn't matter, XBMC/Kodi must scan the libraries and get them and it does this based on the filename meeting standard naming conventions.

Martin

[jt25741]

Thanks Martin,

NextPVR native client doesnt seem to care what the filename is.... for instance....it creates a filename called "CBS News Sunday Morning_20140817_07000830" for that show I recorded. If I click on the file within NPVR native client within the Recordings section, it shows me what the episode was about on the right pane. Even if I move the file into the Videos section --- the name brings in the metadata in the right pane.

Within XBMC/Kodi the NextPVR add-on doesn't display this information when I select the same file within its Recordings section. However, when browsing the EPG guide within the add-on all this information is clearly displayed there. Why not both places?

So is this as designed, and the only way I can look at my past recordings and know what they are about (EPG metadata no episode) is to rename all my files somehow to a format that the scapers in XBMC understand and generate new metadata? If so--- ugh.

On the de-interlace point --- I did a test on your MVPMCX2 on some action MPEG2 files --- and it is noticeably smoother. But ever since you helped me a while back in using this method, I have not found another player that decodes malformed broadcast streams without crashing or behaving badly. The NMT has been the most solid -- but even that has had some issues more than rarely. The XBMC hasnt had any issues yet on FTV with these same broadcast streawms--- so I guess it is sacrificing fidelity for stability a bit I am wondering if the Adreno 320 GPU in the Snapdragon is capable of 1080i MPEG2 HW deinterlacing and just the android platform hasn't implemented it yet? Or the drivers have not? Or is it really a HW limitation? I could not find out this information. Hopefully it is a software maturity thing and eventually your FTV will be more usable for you and mine will work even better.

Thanks for your help as always.

Jim

[mvallevand]

There does seem to be a problem with your setup, sub's PVR addon in Recordings does show metatext in both xbmc and kodi on files. in kodi you can in theory get metaart too . What skin and what version of the PVR Addon is it running?

There's no real player development for the FTV and stick they just use the h/w features that Amazon exposes. Android offers the two media foundations so it would be up to Amazon to change that. Frankly I won't hold my breath, the big players Apple and Roku never showed any concern for 1080i and they've sold millions. The PVR crowd is a niche market. Most consumers think 1080p means it does everything and don't know any better when they watch 1080i.

Martin

[jt25741]

Hi Martin,

I am using the default Confluence skin, and Add-On 1.9.8 -- which is the version from the XBMC menus where I installed from Program Add-ins. If there is a later version I should be using -- I am not sure how to pull that in.

Thanks for your help

[jt25741]

Hi Martin,

FYI...I upgraded NPVR backend to the latest and metadata appears in the metadata pane of XBMC.

Thanks for your help as always.

Jim