Jump to content

NextPVR or ServerWMC?


danswan

Recommended Posts

danswan

I'm in the UK and have fitted a dish to receive freesat. Over the weekend I'm installing a dual dvb-s2 card in my server with a view to trying the live TV features of MB3. I was hoping to draw on the experiences of other users, there's loads of info dotted around for both plugins but I really want to know which I'm best using and if there's any documentation on setting things up. The 'server' is running Win7Pro so it has WMC installed, meaning I can use ServerWMC if I wish and this plugin seems to have more info on the forums, is there any benefit to using NextPVR instead?

 

Sorry, rambling a bit but I'd like to know a bit more and I'm struggling to collate all the info on here to help me make a decision.

 

Any feedback welcomed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spaceboy

i believe nextpvr should do what you want because using serverwmc means you then need something to get the dvb-s2 into wmc.

 

my personal setup is to feed wmc with a product called dvblink. the reason why is use this is it supports the use of CI cards so i can get my sky subscribed channels in wmc. i've asked whether nextpvr supports CI cards and did not get a straight answer. as you don't need a CI card i would go direct to nextpvr. i cannot comment on functionality or stability as i have never used nextpvr

Link to comment
Share on other sites

danswan

Thanks for the reply. How about setting things up? I know for ServerWMC you can set up WMC first so you can see everything working on the TV side first. Is there any info about how to set things up for NextPVR? There's a wiki on the NextPVR website but it's not MB3 specific, is this still going to be of use?

 

I see there's also a MB3 thread on the NextPVR site, I'll get reading :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spaceboy

The problem we have with taking the dvb-s2 direct into wmc is that you are reliant upon MS to update the transponders. I know from my time on thegreenbutton that people complained they were not updated quickly and I can't see that It will have improved. That's the other benefit a program such as dvblink or (I imagine) nextpvr, they allow you to manually update transponders from somewhere like kingofsat.com.

 

I would look at nextpvr, it's free, dvblink is not. Pretty sure the nextpvr dev is around here too

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spaceboy

Oh and yes, I would get nextpvr all working with epg and icons etc and then you install the nextpvr plugin, point it at the right place and you should be good to go

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not to knock the next pvr implementation as I haven't used it.... But.

I personally feel the WMC with TV handled by WMC with MB classic is unsurpassable atm in terms of UI and feature completeness...

That's not to say I wouldn't move on at a later date, I've tried allsorts of different tv implementations due to the reasons Spaceboy mentioned but I always come back to WMC....

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No problem. :)

I don't have a pc with media center on it. :)

 

So i can't use ServerWMC. So the only option was to use something else..

UI for MB is the same, online for the product itself it's different..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

danswan

The nextpvr dev is available. :)

If you have any questions, shoot. :)

That's good to know, thanks. I was hoping to do this over the weekend but the card's not arriving until Monday now, no doubt I'll have some questions for you next week ☺

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 'server' is running Win7Pro so it has WMC installed, meaning I can use ServerWMC if I wish and this plugin seems to have more info on the forums, is there any benefit to using NextPVR instead?

There is one fairly significant advantage to NextPVR. It has the multi-record functionality not available in WMC, allowing your record multiple channels with a single tuner. For example, you might have one tuner, streaming BBC1 to a live tv session, and another live tv session of BBC2, all while recording BBC1 and BBC2 and BBC3 and BBC4, while only using a single tuner. It'll automatically make best use of the available tuners with it's multi-record functionality to allow you do the most things possible simultaneously. Edited by sub3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

danswan

Been having some fun getting the dish aligned correctly - trying to use an android compass was not the best idea :) 

 

Will be testing this later in the week all being well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Been having some fun getting the dish aligned correctly - trying to use an android compass was not the best idea :)

 

Will be testing this later in the week all being well.

Maplins £10 signal finder ftw!!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

danswan

Maplins £10 signal finder ftw!!

 

Hehe would have been £10 well invested, but instead spent hours of trial and error  :wacko: . All done now and up and running. It's working but I do have some questions. I use MBC which doesn't support live TV so I've had a quick look in MBT and I can't see a tv guide? I just have channels and recorded TV in MBT. I know a guide is there as I can see it in the web client, has this not been implemented in MBT yet? Also I can't see a way to 'channel hop', I seem to have to go back to the channels list if I want to change channel. I know this is early days for MBT so is this just something that will be added later?  *edit* seems I assumed MBT was a bit further forward with its Live TV implementation than it actually is, my bad. Is there a windows client that is better for Live TV at the minute?

 

Generally things are pretty slow. On the server directly in NextPVR it takes 4-6 seconds to load a channel, on the web client (still on the server) it's around double that. It takes no longer on clients so it's not network performance. Is this to be expected?

 

I'm delighted I've got this working but at the minute I can't see me using this day-to-day for live TV. Recordings will be useful though, although that begs another question... In the web client, how in the world do I set a series recording? I was expecting to see an option after hitting 'Record' but I only see a Pre/Post padding setting. 

 

Sorry if these are obvious questions and thanks for the devs work on this, I hope I don't sound ungrateful, it's a cracking bit of work so far :)

Edited by danswan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I experienced LONG delay on channel changes in my very short lived next pvr trial.

Why haven't you tried WMC if you're using MBC..? Just out of interest

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Generally things are pretty slow. On the server directly in NextPVR it takes 4-6 seconds to load a channel, on the web client (still on the server) it's around double that. It takes no longer on clients so it's not network performance. Is this to be expected?

You say NextPVR takes 4-6 seconds to load. Is that the time you're seeing to change channels or just the time to start live tv first time? Typically it takes a few seconds to start live tv, then between 1-3 seconds to change channel (exact duration depends on speed of your tuner, and broadcaster's encoder configuration ie time between IFrames). Unless of course you're using an IRBlaster and set top box, which can slow things down.

 

I can't really tell you how long MB3 would take, but NextPVR will typically be delivering channel data to MB3 within a second or so, but MB3 passes data through ffmpeg etc which slows things down.

Edited by sub3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@@sub3 I had very slow channel changing with next pvr with a haswell core i5 8gb ram and a tbs quad satellite tuner. That was one of the main reasons I didn't pursue it any further could just imagine the wife repeatedly pressing channel because it wasn't quick enough and ending up ten channels on!

If you can advise on how to fix that I could be tempted to have another look!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@@sub3 I had very slow channel changing with next pvr with a haswell core i5 8gb ram and a tbs quad satellite tuner. That was one of the main reasons I didn't pursue it any further could just imagine the wife repeatedly pressing channel because it wasn't quick enough and ending up ten channels on!

If you can advise on how to fix that I could be tempted to have another look!

That was within nextpvr btw..

Not thru mediabrowser

Approximately how long were your channel changes taking in NextPVR? If you can reproduce a few slow channel changes, then supply your npvr.log/nrecord.log/ndigitalhost.log, then I'm happy to take a look.

 

Slow channel changes in NextPVR is not something we hear about very often, so I'm inclined to think it's down to something like the decoders you're using. Hopefully your logs will show something like this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Deihmos

Wmc is the way to go for live TV at home. I have tried serverwmc and nextpvr with xbmc and there is a delay in changing channels. Serverwmc had the longest delay. None of them come close to the experience with wmc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

danswan

Interesting stuff. @@Lee, the reason I'm using NexPVR is I just thought I'd have a look. I'm liking it tbh but definitely need to see about speeding things up. If I can't get it faster then Ill give serverwmc a try too and then decide which is best for me. I don't have a TV card in the HTPC and its too small to take one but its easy to get the dish linked through to where the server is (the loft) so getting TV over the network has a big appeal to me.

 

Its interesting you are using a TBS card, I have a dual dbv-s2 TBS card so maybe that's on the slow side?

 

@@sub3 thanks, I'll have a go at getting some logs at some point over the next few days, I'm doing the Great North Run tomorrow so I'll be a few days until I recover ☺

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its interesting you are using a TBS card, I have a dual dbv-s2 TBS card so maybe that's on the slow side?

Yep, it's possible this is a slow device. A good test would be to see how long it takes changing to a channel on the same frequency - in this case no tuning is done, so it'll take about quarter of a second before it'll start delivering data. (digital tv transmits several channels on each frequency, and changing between these does not require any retuning)

 

thanks, I'll have a go at getting some logs at some point over the next few days, I'm doing the Great North Run tomorrow so I'll be a few days until I recover ☺

Just to be clear, I can only really look at the logs showing channel changes in NextPVR itself, not mediabrowser logs, since it does other stuff like transcoding the stream which adds time that is outside of my control.

 

In XBMC, NextPVR can give channel change times as low as about a second, and since MediaBrowser is using the same mechanism for requesting channels, it gets the data just as quickly, so assuming they're not adding too much time on the MB side, it should have relatively quick channel changes times too.

Edited by sub3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@@sub3 I've only got lavfilters Installed. Been bitten by codec packs too many times

If you're on Vista or Win7, have you tried the Microsoft decoder, which is included with most versions of Windows?
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think it's a slow device, channel changes on WMC and DVBViewer are rapid (unless using cardshare on dvbviewer!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...