Enchancing data in the NextPVR XML API's

[sub]

We only have relatively quick access to artwork if the user is using SD. With DVB/Freesat/XMLTV epg it's more complicated and slower to find the artwork. It's a lot more straight forward in the code to have the application behave the same way, regardless of where it's coming from. There is also a lot of people with rubbish internet, and a lot of these image files are pretty large, so regardless of whether there is a good CDN it can be slow to download these images.

That said, I'll put it lower on the list of things for possible inclusion in v5.

[mvallevand]

Ok too bad though apps like Emby can be requesting 20+ images at a time just for current programs images and NextPVR is going through a lot of logic to get them or not when It can't find anything on SD. My wishlist request was specific to SD.


Martin

[mvallevand]

We only have relatively quick access to artwork if the user is using SD. With DVB/Freesat/XMLTV epg it's more complicated and slower to find the artwork. It's a lot more straight forward in the code to have the application behave the same way, regardless of where it's coming from. There is also a lot of people with rubbish internet, and a lot of these image files are pretty large, so regardless of whether there is a good CDN it can be slow to download these images.

That said, I'll put it lower on the list of things for possible inclusion in v5.

Since it it s a possibility I thought I'd give a demo of the performance in Emby getting art assets from their tribune based service. I mapped some channels to Emby Live TV and paired them with the same channels from NextPVR. The only difference that I see is the art, and I have made the optional configuration in my plugin to have Talk+New showing as Live.

https://youtu.be/e5VoR5Fi6-c


Martin

[sub]

Do you get any artwork from NextPVR? In that video it doesn't look like it. Like if you either wait longer, or go back and click on that show again. (if not, could be a bug rather than a performance problem)

Ultimately, for the reasons I already gave above, I'm not going to change it to tell the browser to get the artwork directly from SD. I could certainly improve the speed though, like only looking at SD, rather than all the artwork services, if I know they've got schedules direct listings, and just downloading the specific bit of artwork required (like portrait poster). Currently it downloads all the artwork for the selected show, like fanart etc, on the chance you'll need it in the future.

[mvallevand]

I took out episode art for testing because it was too slow and caching way to much junk like large catalog files to my NAS. Also when I didn't have SD enabled Emby looked awful with mostly empty boxes. With IPTV there are a lot of hybrid databases and not all channels will have SD and so there still won't be art for most the of the guide and I have to tell Emby in advance whether there is an image or not. That is why I asked for you in the prerelease forum to include the unique_id in the the channel listing, I would only request for MV, SH, SP, EP unique ids. Since only the series part of the SD unique ID is relevant, I could fake it so that the Emby change creates the guid based on the same value.

If you can optimize things, perhaps also including the unique_id that would be great. Alternatively a field in the listing that it (likely) has and image similar to what you do for channel icons would allow you to control how ugly Emby looks.

Martin