Keep Awake During Remote Viewing of a Recording

[DarkJediTL]

Is it possible to keep the computer awake during remotely viewing a recording, similar to the way the system is kept awake during recording?

Specifically, the scenario I am running into is that I have a Sony android TV on which I installed Kodi.  I have it configured to wake on LAN my Windows 11 HTPC, which has NextPVR installed on it.  It works great, the computer remotely turns on and I can access the recordings and watch them.  The issue is that my HTPC is set to sleep after 5 minutes of inactivity.  The remove viewing of the recording doesn't keep the HTPC awake, so after watching the recording for 5 minutes it freezes because the HTPC goes to sleep.  I know that I can easily work around the issue by increase my sleep timer on my HTPC, so it doesn't go to sleep in 5 minutes.  However, I do like having it set at 5 minutes as that allows it to go to sleep after finishing recordings and doing the nightly updates of the EPG.  I was really hoping that was a way to keep the system awake during the remote access of NextPVR.

[mvallevand]

In an offline response to this https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...#pid571588 sub told me NextPVR never did anything to keep the server awake while streaming but I too have noted that something in Windows 11 may have changed that since I can't keep Windows awake.

You can tell Windows to stay awake during network sharing but I am not sure if that makes a difference, my understanding is this requires an API. Try it and see.

Martin

[BrettB]

In an offline response to this https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...#pid571588 sub told me NextPVR never did anything to keep the server awake while streaming but I too have noted that something in Windows 11 may have changed that since I can't keep Windows awake.

I seem to recall him having said before that it wasn't needed because the disk activity was enough to keep Windows from going to sleep. Maybe Microsoft changed something about the way that disk activity is (or isn't) factored into determining whether or not to sleep.

[sub]

Yeah, Windows was always able to tell it was active and would just stay awake by itself.

I can probably put something in to actively force it to stay awake while streaming though.

[sub]

Do you see it with live tv or playback of recordings or both? The reason I ask is that it looks like there might already be something doing this for recording playback.

[jcjefferies]

For quite a few years I have used some software called Smartpower to stop Windows going to sleep. Its quite old but still works for me. It will stop Windows going to sleep if any of a list of parameters are true such as CPU %, Active users, Network traffic, Process running, IP addresses active. I use a combination of CPU % and IP addresses active but I am still using Windows 8.1 on the server!

[DarkJediTL]

I can watch live TV remotely and it stays awake. Interestingly, if I go from watching live TV to trying to start watching a recording, the PC goes to sleep right away and recording playback freezes immediately.
I also did some testing with "System Unattended Sleep Timeout", set it to 30 minutes, while keep my sleep time at 5 minutes. It didn't help the PC still went to sleep after 5 minutes while remotely playing the recording.

[mvallevand]

What client are you using remotely?

Martin

[DarkJediTL]

What client are you using remotely?

Martin

I am using the android version of Kodi on a Sony Android TV.  Using wake on lan, connecting back to my Windows 11 HTPC that has NextPVR.

[mvallevand]

Thanks since there is no persistent connection with Kodi (and most clients) it makes sense that it goes to sleep after playback. You would need an app with a rule that any network activity keeps you PC awake then the pvr.nextpvr heartbeat that is sent every minute would keep your PC awake The downside is your PC would never sleep while Kodi is running.

Martin