OSX Version doesn't work so well

[Peter]

Hi,
I downloaded the OSX version of the NextPVR v5 beta and it looks very promising but unfortunately didn't get that far with testing it with OTA channels in Australia. I'm on High Sierra using an HDHomerun network tuner. The HDHR is detected and all the channels show up in a scan but I don't seem to be able to populate either the channel guide or view live TV. I am using theDVB/ATSC guide which is freely available in Australia and shows up in the HDHR app, but it never populates the TV guide.
If I try to watch live TV when I click on a channel to open the player I get an Error Starting Transcode: Internal Server Error which appears in the player window.

While playing around I also got a few error dialogs show up and my terminal window also has a number of error messages. I have saved the log file if you would like to have it

[sub]

I downloaded the OSX version of the NextPVR v5 beta and it looks very promising but unfortunately didn't get that far with testing it with OTA channels in Australia. I'm on High Sierra using an HDHomerun network tuner. The HDHR is detected and all the channels show up in a scan but I don't seem to be able to populate either the channel guide or view live TV. I am using theDVB/ATSC guide which is freely available in Australia and shows up in the HDHR app, but it never populates the TV guide.

Unfortunately the streams that come from an HDHR don't include the DVB guide data. This is why it doesn't give you the 'DVB EPG' guide option one the screen where you import channels from the HDHR. With NextPVR you can only currently get the guide data from an HDHR device on Windows (when they're using BDA drivers). For your setup you'd need to use xmltv or icetv or something for that.

The app has all the code for processing the EPG from this type of stream, because it does it with other devices like DVB and SAT>IP devices etc, but we can't get this specific stream from an HDHR. SiliconDust's focus for guide data has been licensing data from online service for use in their own applications rather than grabbing it from the stream (probably because they have shitty broadcast EPG in the US, so it's just not worth the effort there)...I was literally looking at this again today though. I have messaged SiliconDust to ask if there is any alternative way to get this stream of data, but haven't heard back yet.

If I try to watch live TV when I click on a channel to open the player I get an Error Starting Transcode: Internal Server Error which appears in the player window.

Sorry, I forgot to mention you'd need to install ffmpeg if you're going to watch in the web app. For other types of clients that play native streams, like kodi, or AppleTV/iOS app etc it doesn't need ffmpeg.

I added a brief note to the install instructions mentioning this.

While playing around I also got a few error dialogs show up and my terminal window also has a number of error messages. I have saved the log file if you would like to have it

Are you able to capture screenshots of those error dialogs? Also happy to look at logs.

[sub]

It looks like http://freepg.tv/ does free xmltv urls for Australia. In theory, you should be able to register there, and they'll email your a url for you listings. In NextPVR head over to the Settings->Devices pages, click your HDHR, delete your existing channels. Hit 'Scan Channels' again, and in the Guide drop down, select 'Add xmltv Lineup' and enter your freepgtv url. Then try importing the channels again using that as the Guide. Hit 'Update EPG' and hopefully you'll have guide data. (at least that is the theory)

[Peter]

It looks like http://freepg.tv/ does free xmltv urls for Australia.

Ok, thank you for that information. I have made some progress but the process wasn't as smooth as one would hope. I registered at freepg.tv and got a unique url which I entered into your software but nothing happened. The ECG importer showed 0 imports and updates. Apparently freeing.tv sends the xml as a .gz file which may cause a problem? Anyway I opened the URL in a browser and copied the xml data to a regular file, checked it with an xml editor to make sure it was well formed and then successfully imported it into your software via drag and drop into the URL field. And the guide showed up! Great but...

Unfortunately only some of the channels showed up in the channel guide. The xml file shows 21 <channel>s at the start of the file but only 11 show up in your program. I had a quick look at some of the <programme>s and they looked like they for for channels that don't show in your guide. I have the xml file if you need it but its 400k zipped.

[Peter]

OK thank you for the explanation. I hope you manage to get SiliconDust to implement this as I had assumed it would be available when I bought the HDHomeRun a few days ago. I am trying to ween our family off Windows Media Centre as the rest of our home is Mac only and we have only ever used the free EPG that WMC uses in Australia.

I haven't seen the error dialog for a while since I got the Channel guide to partially work but will keep an eye out.

[sub]

Ok, thank you for that information. I have made some progress but the process wasn't as smooth as one would hope.

I'm always looking to make the process better. Unfortunately there is so many factors with different tuners, and different EPG sources, that's it's not always possibly to make it as smooth as I'd like. I'll keep improving things though. Hopefully SiliconDust with come through with some info.

The process is smoother when using DVB devices etc, when it can directly map to the DVB EPG.

I registered at freepg.tv and got a unique url which I entered into your software but nothing happened. The ECG importer showed 0 imports and updates. Apparently freeing.tv sends the xml as a .gz file which may cause a problem? Anyway I opened the URL in a browser and copied the xml data to a regular file, checked it with an xml editor to make sure it was well formed and then successfully imported it into your software via drag and drop into the URL field. And the guide showed up! Great but...

.gz should fine.

If you want to PM me your xml url to try, and a download link to your npvr.db3, I'll check here.

I've not used this freepg.tv service - it's just what turned up with a quick google.

Unfortunately only some of the channels showed up in the channel guide. The xml file shows 21 <channel>s at the start of the file but only 11 show up in your program. I had a quick look at some of the <programme>s and they looked like they for for channels that don't show in your guide.

The channels shown in the Guide page should be whatever channels were returned from your HDHR during the initial scan. Whether those channels have TV listings will come down to whether it managed to match a channel in your xml file. It does this by name, so is only as accurate as the names in both the broadcast and xml. For channels that don't automatically get mapped to your xml, you can manually do the mapping.

(ie, would be great if NextPVR could automagically map all your channels, but sometimes there just isn't enough information available)

[sub]

Also still fairly early days for NextPVR being multi-platform, with mac support etc. I'm definitely happy to get feedback like this - it helps me focus on areas that'll be important to new users.

[Peter]

Also still fairly early days for NextPVR being multi-platform, with mac support etc. I'm definitely happy to get feedback like this - it helps me focus on areas that'll be important to new users.

REPOST - Looks like my earlier reply disappeared so this is an approximate repost.

Thank you for this info re the DVB guide data. I managed to eventually instal an xmltv guide from freepg.tv though not without problems. When I entered the URL for the guide your software scanned the guide but didn’t download anything. I am not sure of the problem but freepg does compress the xml (.gz). I managed to download the xmlfile externally, validated the xml in another program then installed the guide via drag and drop into the url field. This time it did work.

However, unfortunately only some of the channels appeared. The xml file shows over 20 <channel>s near the beginning of the file but only half appeared in the guide. A quick check showed that a least some of the channels that didn’t show up had <programme> data associated with the channel.

I did manage to schedule and record a program and play the resulting file through vlc, but I am not sure whats happening with the program guide. I have saved a copy (350K) if you want to take a look.

Also, thanks so much for making this available for the Mac. There is very little that actually works on this platform and it looks good.

[sub]

REPOST - Looks like my earlier reply disappeared so this is an approximate repost.

Sorry, I hadn't actually noticed your post was marked as 'requiring moderation'. For brand new users, the forum software does this is if they make a new post with a url in it, in case it's spam.

You should now be able to see your post, and my original reply above now.

Also, thanks so much for making this available for the Mac. There is very little that actually works on this platform and it looks good.

[jchhenderson]

Also, thanks so much for making this available for the Mac. There is very little that actually works on this platform and it looks good.

Agreed! :-)