Slow to displaying xmltv show Images or incorrect images.

[nathan909]

Ok your Settings->Channels screen, is "Schedules Direct" listed as the EPG Source next to each channel?

Yes

If you'd had any incorrect artwork already downloaded in the past, that wont be corrected until you delete the old files from C:\Users\Public\NPVR-data\media\shows

Deleting these files did help, from what I can tell images are correct now 



Loading images is still really slow using SD, below is a example. 
https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/hssKsASCWI6N


I used the web GUI so there is no man in the middle "Kodi"...  and I understand that displaying images via web GUI you select the show before its even displayed, so speed isn't necessary...  but on an interface like Kodi its displayed when you surf channels/guide, so the delay you see there, plus the delay of Kodi, so it feels clunky. 
Also, there were some posters that took even longer to load than what's in the attached video.



When using Kodi, OTG Navigator, IPTV apps.... Guide is lighting fast, no delay to speak off, channel browsing feels as it should on a DVR, not clunky.

So a few questions:

1. If you are going to believe the Guide data from the XML, why would you not believe the poster in the XML?
   I understand it may be missing from an incomplete xmltv, great we cannot use a missing image, - but if it's there and we believe the guide data is right, we should trust the poster right. If SD guide is selected, we only trust SD
   
   
2. With the long delay to DL posters, I would have to think that NextPVR is snagging other images from other sources first?? It shouldn't take that long.
   also we don't need the all three images DL
   
   
3. We don't need all three images downloaded selecting a channel. It's a waste of space and resources. I understand you do when adding to sch, but not until then.
   
   
   as you can see from the example above we are downloading data that is more than 500% larger than needed when only browsing
   
   
4. You said that XMLTV guide included image was disabled, how can I reenable it?
   That seems to be the way to go for me and others that have a valid xmltv.
   
   
5. Is there a way I can edit something within NextPVR to tell it to use the xmltv images as is without caching them? They are already cached and the get purged properly automatically.
   
   
6. If not, is there a script to cache the poster images for shows within the guide
   
   
   

[nathan909]

By-the-way I have fiber, true 500/500 here, so it's not my internet.

[sub]

Loading images is still really slow using SD, below is a example. 
https://linksharing.samsungcloud.com/hssKsASCWI6N


I used the web GUI so there is no man in the middle "Kodi"...  and I understand that displaying images via web GUI you select the show before its even displayed, so speed isn't necessary...  but on an interface like Kodi its displayed when you surf channels/guide, so the delay you see there, plus the delay of Kodi, so it feels clunky. 

I assume it's only slow the first time you view artwork for a new show? ie, if you click on 2 Broke Girls again, you should see the artwork instantly? NextPVR is downloading all the types of artwork it might need - poster, landscape, and fanart, and this can take a second or so.

It wont be long before the majority of the stuff you click already has the artwork cached (and available instantly), and it's only the very occasional new show that needs new artwork to be downloaded.

So a few questions:

1. If you are going to believe the Guide data from the XML, why would you not believe the poster in the XML?
   I understand it may be missing from an incomplete xmltv, great we cannot use a missing image, - but if it's there and we believe the guide data is right, we should trust the poster right. If SD guide is selected, we only trust SD

Basically NextPVR needs three different shaped/size bits of artwork, and your xmltv file is not providing these, so it has to use other places to get it's artwork.

With the long delay to DL posters, I would have to think that NextPVR is snagging other images from other sources first?? It shouldn't take that long.
also we don't need the all three images DL

We don't need all three images downloaded selecting a channel. It's a waste of space and resources. I understand you do when adding to sch, but not until then.


as you can see from the example above we are downloading data that is more than 500% larger than needed when only browsing

That's just the way I designed it to work. Very very rarely would we ever encounter an XMLTV source that includes the artwork url, so it wasn't designed to make use of this. My thinking is - if we're going to have to take the hit of going out to look for artwork, I might as well grab all the versions I'll need at that time. (ie, for most setups the searching is much slower and more expensive than the downloading)

You said that XMLTV guide included image was disabled, how can I reenable it?
That seems to be the way to go for me and others that have a valid xmltv.

It's not something the user can enable.

If you want to supply a sample xmltv file though, I'll see if there is something I can do for you.

[mvallevand]

This thread is going in circles sub has already addressed that the ability to download XMLTV art is not available although I thought the md5 hack was cool . I stated earlier that fanart is only applicable to the web app, but that is the key, it is applicable to the web app and that is sub's focus. As I posted earlier it is only a couple of 100ms so nothing to get to excited or worried about. Kodi will use both poster and landscape. If you really are concerned about the time from Kodi turn off EPG episode art and see if your usability changes that much.

Note the SD sourced XMLTV from xteve cannot be used with Plex, Emby or TVimate. Then your whole setup with 6 PVR's doesn't make a lot of sense and I am not going to try to understand your reasoning. Personally I'd focus on reducing the complexity of your setup and not optimizing NextPVR's image download logic.

Martin

[nathan909]

As I posted earlier it is only a couple of 100ms so nothing  to get to excited or worried about. Kodi will use both poster and landscape. 

As shown in the video it's not 100ms, it 2000-5000ms and even longer in Kodi. The only thing that makes sense is that its download other art first, then finally a quick grab from SD for poster

If you really are concerned about the time from Kodi turn off EPG episode art and see if your usability changes that much.

Yes you can do that and have no poster art at all, again taking away from a real DVR/Guide experience

Note the SD sourced XMLTV from xteve cannot be used with Plex, Emby or TVimate. 

SD is not supposed to be, but Zap2it which sources the same data and is FREE can and in my case is. 

Then your whole setup with 6 PVR's doesn't make a lot of sense and I am not going to try to understand your reasoning. 

Personally I'd focus on reducing the complexity of your setup and not optimizing NextPVR's image download logic.

2 PVRs don't make much sense.. The goal is to have only one, but the best one, or the one that checks the most boxes. I'd hope you test drive more than one car and/or model before purchasing a new one, that way you can tell everyone what you really like about it and what you didn't like about the others your tested..... as opposed to having a biased, uneducated option. 

In no way am I talking bad about all the work in this project, I'm not it great, just trying to figure out the quirks I found
 
There were just some things I thought would work, that do on other platforms, but don't here

Boxes that need to be checked:

1. Natural Guide feel when using a remote in front of a TV (Fast Poster art is a key factor here), because that's how it works on a real DVR
   A way to PRE-cache the poster would help this
   A way to enable XMLTV posters for properly provided guides could also fix this 
   
   
2. Having the show data/images saved properly in the folder, so It can be cross platformed properly viewed.
   emby and Jellyfin do a great job at this, none with plex
   
   
3. DVR (negative)  pretime DVR offset works only in default settings, but under show its not in the selectable dropdown.
   
   
4. When buffering live TV and you record show, buffer should be saved as well 
   

Attached is an honest opinion on my take on the different PVR options, I think Jellyfin and NextPVR are a close tie thoe, that's just how my numbers came out

[mvallevand]

I understand better now you aren't using SD at all, you are using zap2it against it's ToS and there are Gracenote/TMS links for art. If you aren't using SD yes it can be notably slower.

Check the video out using SD, https://imgur.com/a/ONEO3d6 When the cursor is going quickly do you really think the backend needs to be downloading the art as it moves. When you go slow you can see the time isn't seconds (some might be cached but certainly not all) but does that make the Kodi EPG significantly better? Do you seriously believe you will watch Seinfeld because of that little image?

The reason I focus on the guide is that is where the difference of seconds make a difference. For recordings for major show the lookups from tmdb and tvmaze should be fine.

I will disagree 100% with your PVR chart because it seems to ignore tuner support so it is IPTV and Silcon Dust centric and there is no column for comskip or remote control support. Perhaps you like transcoding solution, I like Direct Play solutions and NextPVR does direct play on more platforms then Plex, Emby or Jellyfin.

Martin

[nathan909]

I understand better now you aren't using SD at all, you are using zap2it against it's ToS and there are Gracenote/TMS links for art.  If you aren't using SD yes it can be notably slower.

Check the video out using SD, https://imgur.com/a/ONEO3d6  When the cursor is going quickly do you really think the backend needs to be downloading the art as it moves.  When you go slow you can see the time isn't seconds (some might be cached but certainly not all) but does that make the Kodi EPG significantly better?  Do you seriously believe you will watch Seinfeld because of that little image?

The reason I focus on the guide is that is where the difference of seconds make a difference.  For recordings for major show the lookups from tmdb and tvmaze should be fine.

I will disagree 100% with your PVR chart because it seems to ignore tuner support so it is IPTV and Silcon Dust centric and there is no column for comskip or remote control support.  Perhaps you like transcoding solution, I like Direct Play solutions and NextPVR does direct play on more platforms then Plex, Emby or Jellyfin.

Martin

I have stated 6x that I am using SD and mapped the channels to them, ONCE AGAIN I mapped my channels to SD before making a post here, see attached.
 
I use Zap2It as its FREE and DS TOS doesn't like the use of Plex. Now comparing the 2 I can see that my images are more accurate on the use of Zap2It (notice the "Extra" and "FBI" shows) not sure if that's a SD issue or a nextPVR issue grabbing image from elsewhere. Look below and you wont find a missing poster where through NextPVR there is a few missing and a few off, these many more, just don't have the time to point them all out. I guess you could look to see why FBI is wrong, its also wrong in your video.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jgmjnttqcj3pmn...x.mp4?dl=0
non precashed is 2-5 seconds, cached is near-instant

vs

https://www.dropbox.com/s/obm47rpsm9x30p...y.mp4?dl=0
100% correct images and Look at the end when I'm actually channel surfing, its instant


I 100% agree with you on the Guide vs recorded, the extra images are not needed unless you go to record a show.


I'm sure most want a ALL-IN-ONE (Movies, TVShows, LiveTV, DVR), so that, which narrows it down to Plex, Emby, Jellyfin, Kodi(NextPVR) 

NextPVR, Emby and Jellyfin do DirectPlay, which is why they scored higher on the LiveTV, but Plex didn't

Comskip/CUT is a great feature, which is why Plex scored better on the DVR side, it just works and works quick
NextPVR, Jellyfin, & Emby all do comskip as a post record script, although HW transcoding is hit/miss on these.

Plex wins hands down on the Platform/client side, Just about every smartTV, Web Browser, streaming device, but again their LiveTV suffers.

As far as remote control, I like the Kodi stock key mapping the best, but you can also change that to just about anything, again this is why Kodi scored better on live TV, but emby is a close 2nd, most keys just work including page up/dn on the right remote/client

xTeVe is great as tuner control! Until I pick one DVR, it buffers TV and allows any platform to use that same tuner. If News happens to be on in 3 rooms, using any client. I can still record 4 other shows, always merging anything watching the same show to same tuner


As you can clearly tell from above I am Honest about what I like/dislike about each. Not trying to put one on a pedestal, just because I use it, which make it a non-opionionated view!

[mvallevand]

Thanks for the additional clarification, it would have helped from the beginning to have logs. Turns out that there is a new NextPVR bug downloading art from Kodi depending on the Kodi platform so maybe that is adding to your issues. There were also some patches to 5.2.2 for art downloading already.

If not since you don't need the the art on the EPG can you tell me why the original download speed is an issue? As soon as you create the recording from the EPG the art will be created so you even if you have a one to 1-5 second download, after that it is cached and there will be no difference in speed when you actually load the recording via a recording screen.

For quality since you have cleaned out the cache you should have quality art from SD now. You will be getting the same art as you get from zapit For example "Today Show" you mentioned is here https://tvlistings.zap2it.com/overview.h...aid=gapzap and this is how it is created by NextPVR /var/opt/nextpvr/media/shows/Today With Hoda & Jenna_03195422-catalog.xml You can likely see how they are linked

You can search for other shows there and in testing this new feature in 5.2.2 I haven't seen any mismatch issues. If you could give one example of one show that is a mismatch or better using zap2it that would be helpful.

You and I can't convince sub to drop fanart as unnecessary but I can't believe that is a deal breaker for you.

There is no point in turning this into a DVR comparison. A lot of NextPVR users don't use Schedules Direct or care about art the way you do. Myself, I prefer to actually watch what I record, and typically ignore all the metadata. I'm just glad that sub created a stable PVR where I can count on the recordings, that outweighs every other metric you can put on it.

Martin

[sub]

nathan909, do you have a sample xmltv file you can provide that had images? I want to check a couple of things.

[nathan909]

nathan909, do you have a sample xmltv file you can provide that had images? I want to check a couple of things.

Here's a clip of what i use, I can PM you the full file if needed. The images are locally cached by xteve, which is why the browse times are instant.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <tv generator-info-name="xTeVe" source-info-name="xTeVe - 2.2.0">
      <channel id="365">
          <display-name>VH1</display-name>
          <icon src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/3b9bb0b75e95d9ccc1bb3e68d56d2829.png"></icon>
      </channel>
      <channel id="465">
          <display-name>STARZ KIDS &amp; FAMILY</display-name>
          <icon src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/f989bcaf9836dc0fc1a3f9d4f3b52cde.png"></icon>
      </channel>
      <channel id="4">
          <display-name>4  | NBC KNBC</display-name>
          <icon src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/e8fad754d41946e32a3722dec4892b64.png"></icon>
      </channel>
      <programme channel="279" start="20211107030000 -0800" stop="20211107033000 -0800">
          <title lang="en">Coin Collecting with Mike Mezack</title>
          <desc lang="en">Learn about the wonderful world of numismatics with your host Mike Mezack and get the opportunity to build your own collection with some of the best deals around!</desc>
          <episode-num system="dd_progid">SH02094379.0000</episode-num>
          <icon height="" src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/ea0f0ae970d824f25feb8a4f65295c92.jpg" width=""></icon>
          <credits></credits>
          <video></video>
          <date></date>
          <previously-shown start=""></previously-shown>
      </programme>
      <programme channel="279" start="20211107033000 -0800" stop="20211107040000 -0800">
          <title lang="en">Coin Collecting with Mike Mezack</title>
          <desc lang="en">Learn about the wonderful world of numismatics with your host Mike Mezack and get the opportunity to build your own collection with some of the best deals around!</desc>
          <episode-num system="dd_progid">SH02094379.0000</episode-num>
          <icon height="" src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/ea0f0ae970d824f25feb8a4f65295c92.jpg" width=""></icon>
          <credits></credits>
          <video></video>
          <date></date>
          <previously-shown start=""></previously-shown>
      </programme>
      <programme channel="279" start="20211107040000 -0800" stop="20211107043000 -0800">
          <title lang="en">Counting Cars</title>
          <sub-title lang="en">Back in the Wind</sub-title>
          <desc lang="en">Building a custom bike for a disabled man; a 1960 Coupe de Ville; a '70s-era El Camino.</desc>
          <episode-num system="common">S01E05</episode-num>
          <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP01589925.0005</episode-num>
          <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">0.4.</episode-num>
          <icon height="" src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/31feac8f62390a8ed16e274ad56c898d.jpg" width=""></icon>
          <credits></credits>
          <rating system="">
              <value>TV-PG</value>
          </rating>
          <video></video>
          <date></date>
          <previously-shown start=""></previously-shown>
      </programme>
      <programme channel="279" start="20211107043000 -0800" stop="20211107050000 -0800">
          <title lang="en">Counting Cars</title>
          <sub-title lang="en">Blackjack Bike</sub-title>
          <desc lang="en">A casino bigwig commissions a high-end chopper to be used as a blackjack bonus prize; detailer Roli eyes an impressive motorcycle of his own.</desc>
          <episode-num system="common">S03E25</episode-num>
          <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP01589925.0067</episode-num>
          <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">2.24.</episode-num>
          <icon height="" src="http://192.168.1.100:34400/images/d9db969f0e4e3afea247c962724c3344.jpg" width=""></icon>
          <credits></credits>
          <rating system="">
              <value>TV-PG</value>
          </rating>
          <video></video>
          <date></date>
          <previously-shown start=""></previously-shown>
      </programme>

This is what the XML looks like from zap2it. but I don't use this. xTeVe cleans it up, with only my channels and caches the images

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE tv SYSTEM "xmltv.dtd">

<tv source-info-url="http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/" source-info-name="zap2it.com" generator-info-name="zap2xml" generator-info-url="zap2xml@gmail.com">
    <channel id="I2.11331.zap2it.com">
        <display-name>2 WCBS</display-name>
        <display-name>2</display-name>
        <display-name>WCBS</display-name>
        <icon src="https://zap2it.tmsimg.com/h3/NowShowing/11331/s10098_h3_aa.png" />
    </channel>
    <channel id="I3.83094.zap2it.com">
        <display-name>3 WJLPSD</display-name>
        <display-name>3</display-name>
        <display-name>WJLPSD</display-name>
        <icon src="https://zap2it.tmsimg.com/h3/NowShowing/83094/s70436_h3_aa.png" />
    </channel>
    <programme start="20211106010200 -0700" stop="20211106013000 -0700" channel="I128.14771.zap2it.com">
        <title lang="en">Coin Collecting with Mike Mezack</title>
        <desc lang="en">Learn about the wonderful world of numismatics with your host Mike Mezack and get the opportunity to build your own collection with some of the best deals around!</desc>
        <length units="minutes">30</length>
        <icon src="https://zap2it.tmsimg.com/assets/p11377439_st_v9_aa.jpg" />
        <url>https://tvlistings.zap2it.com//overview.html?programSeriesId=SH02094379&amp;tmsId=SH020943790000</url>
        <episode-num system="dd_progid">SH02094379.0000</episode-num>
        <previously-shown />
        <subtitles type="teletext" />
    </programme>
    <programme start="20211107040000 -0800" stop="20211107043000 -0800" channel="I128.14771.zap2it.com">
        <title lang="en">Counting Cars</title>
        <sub-title lang="en">Back in the Wind</sub-title>
        <desc lang="en">Building a custom bike for a disabled man; a 1960 Coupe de Ville; a &apos;70s-era El Camino.</desc>
        <length units="minutes">30</length>
        <icon src="https://zap2it.tmsimg.com/assets/p9354940_e_v4_ac.jpg" />
        <url>https://tvlistings.zap2it.com//overview.html?programSeriesId=SH01589925&amp;tmsId=EP015899250005</url>
        <episode-num system="common">S01E05</episode-num>
        <episode-num system="dd_progid">EP01589925.0005</episode-num>
        <episode-num system="xmltv_ns">0.4.</episode-num>
        <previously-shown />
        <subtitles type="teletext" />
        <rating>
            <value>TV-PG</value>
        </rating>
    </programme>