Lost Connection

[MVB]

Hi,

I recently installed a Hauppauge WinTV-quadHD card in my PC. I am running Windows 10. I installed NextPVR on my Windows PC successfully. I can go to 127.0.0.1:8866 in a browser window and see NextPVR. I want to use NextPVR as a client on an Android Kodi box on my network so that I can access my live local TV channels and recorded shows on my PC server. I have an EZStream Ti8 box physically connected to my router and am connecting my server PC wirelessly to my router. The problem is that I cannot find specific instructions on configuring the server and client to talk to each other. More specific online setup info would be nice. I continue to get "Lost Connection" messages on my Kodi box. That doesn't tell me much.

In NextPVR on my PC, I can go into Settings->Clients but can't find any documentation that tells me what I'm supposed to be setting in here. What is the Number of Servers setting supposed to be? Am I setting this to 1 since I have NextPVR installed on my PC? I have checked Enable Web Server. I assume I'm supposed to do that. What about Username and Password? Username and Password for what? My Kodi box? Am I supposed to change this from what appears to be a default of admin and password? Is this a userid and password of the client or of the server? Am I supposed to click on Allow Remote Access in the XBMC&Touch Clients section? The Access PIN is set to a default of 0000. What is this used for? Am I supposed to do something with this on the client?

I have gone into Settings on my Kodi box and turned on the PVR and enabled the NextPVR client. For the server name, what am I supposed to use? The default is 127.0.0.1. The Wiki page says this is okay to use if server and client are on the same PC. What am I supposed to use if they aren't? The name of my PC is Mike-PC. I tried entering that as the server name in the NextPVR client on the Kodi box but I still get a lost connection. Am I supposed to be setting a static IP address for my PC? Is an IP address the only valid thing that can be used here or is an actual name allowed? Neither seems to work for me. Both give Lost Connection messages on my Kodi box.

What is the significance of port 8866, the default port setting? Am I supposed to be configuring something for this port in the setup info on my router or firewall on my PC, or both? What is required to have both the Kodi box and network PC see each other?

I cannot find specific setup/configuration info for any of this online. Just generic "put a server address here" info. Can someone please point me to online setup info for NextPVR server and client that gives specifics on what I'm supposed to use in the fields on both the server PC and the client, as well as what router and firewall settings are supposed to be tweaked? Am I supposed to setup some type of port forwarding for 8866 somewhere? Some newbie setup info would be nice. I have spent 2 full days trying to configure this without success.

As far as I can tell, NextPVR is working on my network PC where my tuner card is installed. I can see programming info and view Live TV channels just fine. But just can't find any specific info on setting up NextPVR client on Kodi. By the way, when I enable NextPVR on Kodi, am I supposed to get a new "TV" menu item tab or am I supposed to be seeing NextPVR in the existing "Live-TV" tab? I don't see either. What am I supposed to be seeing in Kodi if the NextPVR client is working successfully? Currently, Lost Connection popups from NextPVR is all that's happening on my Kodi box.

Thanks for any info you can give me. I really appreciate it.

[sub]

You shouldn't need to change any settings in NextPVR to use Kodi clients.

In Kodi, enable the NextPVR addon, and in the addon settings set the server ip address to whatever the IP address is on your Windows PC is (where NextPVR is installed). If you don't know the IP address of your Windows PC, start a command prompt on it, and run "ipconfig.exe", and you'll see the IP address in the info that is listed. The most common address is something like 192.168.1.x

[MVB]

I did the ipconfig on my PC. I assume I'm looking for the iPv4 address of my Wireless LAN Adapter Wi-Fi? That is 192.168.1.81. I entered that into the NextPVR Kodi client and still immediately get the Lost Connection popup. Am I supposed to be doing some type of homegroup between the Kodi box and my PC? There is obviously something I am missing here that isn't in the online doc for NextPVR setup. Just can't figure out what it is. Thanks for your suggestion. I appreciate it. I really want this to work but am losing confidence that it ever will. I assume someone is successfully using the NextPVR client on the EZStream Ti8 Kodi box to connect to a NextPVR server on a PC in the same network? I don't know if the fact that my Kodi box is using wired Ethernet connection to router and my PC is using wireless connection to router has anything to do with this or not. Just doesn't seem like setup should be this difficult...

[sub]

I entered that into the NextPVR Kodi client and still immediately get the Lost Connection popup. Am I supposed to be doing some type of homegroup between the Kodi box and my PC?

No. You'd usually just enter the IP address and you're done.

From a PC other than your NextPVR machine, try entering http://192.168.1.81:8866 into the browser, and confirm your can see the web pages. If you can't then maybe your have some firewall or antivirus software running on your PC which is blocking the network activity.

There is obviously something I am missing here that isn't in the online doc for NextPVR setup. Just can't figure out what it is. Thanks for your suggestion. I appreciate it. I really want this to work but am losing confidence that it ever will. I assume someone is successfully using the NextPVR client on the EZStream Ti8 Kodi box to connect to a NextPVR server on a PC in the same network?

I don't know anything about this EZStream Ti8 Kodi box, but it should be fine.

Just doesn't seem like setup should be this difficult...

It's usually not - just enter the IP address of your NextPVR machine and you're done.

[mvallevand]

I don't know if the fact that my Kodi box is using wired Ethernet connection to router and my PC is using wireless connection to router has anything to do with this or not.

Could be if your wireless IP and wired IP are on different subnets. This will easily happen if you plug your wifi router's WAN port into the same wired network as your Android box.

Martin

[MVB]

Very, very interesting. Thanks for the response. I went to another PC (connected wirelessly) and also used an iPad (connected wirelessly) and entered http://192.168.1.81:8866 into a browser on both and am able to view the web pages from both devices. On the other PC, I even selected a live TV channel and was able to watch it. Pretty cool.

This would make me think it's not a firewall or anti-virus issue. Maybe it is something related to my Kodi box being a wired Ethernet connected to the router and my PC being a wireless connection. Hmmm.

Thanks for your patience helping me with this. I really appreciate the feedback.

[MVB]

Hi Folks,

Just a quick update. I finally got this working. It seemed to be a combination of things. First, since the IP address of my PC had a DHCP address, I assigned it a static IP address to see if that would make any difference. I realize I was going to have to do this eventually anyway. I rebooted my router and reinvoked Kodi on my Android box and still got the Lost Connection popup. I then went into the NextPVR client and selected Clear Data or Clear Cache everywhere that it was possible to do so. This triggered two popups that were "Lost Connection" and "Error: Connection Failed. Could be PIN." I looked at the PIN in the NextPVR client and it was still set to 0000. I retyped it be to 0000 again. I then went into NextPVR on the server and couldn't tell what the PIN was (just ****) but it said that the default was 0000. I don't think I ever touched this setting in either place, but I retyped 0000 on the server side as well. I then restarted Kodi again and got quick popup boxes at the top center of the screen indicating it was getting channel info from the server. Nice!!! But then afterwards, there was no selection or tab for PVR or TV created anywhere in the EZStream Media Center/Kodi environment. I went thru every menu and there was no way to select it or use it. I then went to System->Skin Settings and went thru all of the tab settings. I went to the Live TV tab and found that there was a submenu pulldown in there that gave me TV as an option. I selected this and then went back to the main screen and selected the Live TV tab. I now had Channel and Guide selections in the submenu of this tab. This is either a bug or poor design by EZStream. When I enable PVR on the box, I expect settings or a PVR/TV tab to be created for me. But anyway, on the box I can now view the TV channels acquired from the TV tuner on my server PC. This is pretty cool. Thanks again for everyone that gave me suggestions along the way. I really appreciate it! This forum helps those that help themselves. I like it. I just needed some feedback to get me going in the right direction. Thanks again!

Mike

[MVB]

One more question if you folks don't mind. I have a TorGuard Anonymnous-VPN app on my Android/Kodi box. If I configure it to startup when the Android box is powered on, when I then invoke Kodi afterwards I get the Lost Connection popup from NextPVR. If I disable VPN and reinvoke Kodi, NextPVR connects fine with the server PC. I assume this is because the VPN service associates a different IP address with the box and the box no longer appears to be on the same local network as my server PC running the NextPVR backend. Has anyone else run into this?

Is the solution to also install TorGuard on my server PC as well and connect it to the same location that TorGuard is connecting to on my Android box? Or is a better solution to have a separate router with DD-WRT installed that is configured to connect to VPN at all times, such that any device connected to this router has the same remote IP address? That would allow me to not have to run TorGuard locally on my Android box or on my server PC.

I assume you guys have already run into this at some point, so I'm interested to learn the best workaround. Thanks!

[sub]

Sorry, I can't really you with that. I've never used TorGuard.

[pkscout]

One more question if you folks don't mind. I have a TorGuard Anonymnous-VPN app on my Android/Kodi box. If I configure it to startup when the Android box is powered on, when I then invoke Kodi afterwards I get the Lost Connection popup from NextPVR. If I disable VPN and reinvoke Kodi, NextPVR connects fine with the server PC. I assume this is because the VPN service associates a different IP address with the box and the box no longer appears to be on the same local network as my server PC running the NextPVR backend. Has anyone else run into this?

Is the solution to also install TorGuard on my server PC as well and connect it to the same location that TorGuard is connecting to on my Android box? Or is a better solution to have a separate router with DD-WRT installed that is configured to connect to VPN at all times, such that any device connected to this router has the same remote IP address? That would allow me to not have to run TorGuard locally on my Android box or on my server PC.

I assume you guys have already run into this at some point, so I'm interested to learn the best workaround. Thanks!

You'll probably need a separate router to do Tor upstream from the network on which your two machines live (as you described). Even if you connect both machines to Tor, there's no guarantee they'll be on the same subnet, and even if they are all your traffic will probably go out your home, through Tor, and back to your home. The likelihood that you get decent network performance after that is just about zero.