NextPVR - channel missing and recording question

[Luke 37062]

Quote

A quick question, when using the NextPVR, will Emby fetch guide data from NextPVR, or do I have to add my own Guide Data Source under Emby's Live TV settings?

Yes and no.

[Luke 37062]

Regarding series recordings, I'm guessing there's just not as much data when coming from next pvr. We'd have to look at a specific example.

[chjohans 32]

23 minutes ago, emveepee said:

Thanks but Luke did all the work on this as I prefer using full NextPVR clients.  I am sure it will be useful for most Emby users and I can almost recommend it now.

Martin

Well @emveepee, your effort is still very much appreciated! I have been using TV Mosaic as my Live TV "backend" until now but decided to change since that platform is pretty much dead after DVBLogic folded. I see that you are pretty involved in the NextPVR forum as well, seems like I will be replacing TV Mosaic with NextPVR. So I went to donate to NextPVR as well, I do appreciate everybodys effort and I don't expect to be nor do I want to be a "freeloader".

I do appreciate @Luke's effort as well, hopefully he can fix the issues (re my post above) so Live TV in Emby can be used. I do feel that he kind of "ows me" that, considering that I've bought two Emby Premiere lifetime licenses, partially because of Live TV support.

[emveepee 112]

Emby is not allowed to use Scheduled Direct EPG data so that is excluded but XMLTV and OTA should be OK.    However I would just configure the XMLTV import in Emby rather than NextPVR since the import can be a hog unless you are going to be using NextPVR too.  If your are going to use NextPVR too I did write a utility to import TV Mosaic recordings.

Recording scheduled recordings is not a NextPVR issue. Other backends have their own way of identifying series and recurring schedules, but it is not typically in generic guide data.  I expect Luke would need to make the addon EPG data parsing smarter to address this.  This seems like a variation on this thread

Martin

 

 

[Luke 37062]

Well I think we don't know yet what's going on here. We need more information first.

[chjohans 32]

4 minutes ago, Luke said:

Regarding series recordings, I'm guessing there's just not as much data when coming from next pvr. We'd have to look at a specific example.

Aha, so what you say implies that not all of the guide data is being fetched from NextPVR.

Why do you need a specific example? This can easily be tested, and I've outlined exactly what happens.

I can do any testing you want, and provide any concrete example that you want, if you tell me exactly what you want.

My guess, based on what you just wrote, is that the guide data being fetched from NextPVR skips parts of the data, and certainly the episode info. This *has* to be fixed, don't you agree? I mean, this totally breaks the recording function.

I am guessing that Emby has cached my EPG data, and that in a few days episode data wil disappear from my EPG, once it relies only on new EPG data fetched from NextPVR. Is there eny way the clear the cached EPG data on the server to confirm this without waiting a week or so?

And @Luke , please let me know what you need from me in order to fix this issue. Maybe using EPG data from Emby's Live TV settings (if it exists) would be an option? Not saying that the guide data from NExtPVR should not be fixed. But it could be overruled by EPG data from the Live TV settings if defined there.

Another thing is that "over-the-air" guide data that some TV server's will get from the DVB-C/DVB-T sources are incomplete, so it just makes sense to be able to override this with better GPG data.

By the way, as I wrote above I did  define and use  my own EPG XML when I was using the builtin Hauppauge/WinTV support. Series recording seemed to work fine then. When checking the EPG data in WinTV it's "incompleted" and lacks most eposide data, it gets it's EPG "over-the-air". So it seems like Emby *does not* fetch guide data from WinTV, if it did my series recording would not have worked. is that correct @Luke? And if so, why so inconsistent?

Anyhow, this just does not work at the moment, Live TV in Emby seems broken and can't really be used as it is.

@Luke - What can I do to help with fixing this? I got plenty of time to spend on this, if it leads to things actually being fixed.

[chjohans 32]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

Well I think we don't know yet what's going on here. We need more information first.

Come on @Luke, I believe I've provided plenty of information. Please tell me exactly what you need, I'll be most happy to test anything and provide any info and test results that you want, but you have to be more specific than just "we need more info"

[chjohans 32]

12 minutes ago, emveepee said:

Emby is not allowed to use Scheduled Direct EPG data so that is excluded but XMLTV and OTA should be OK.    However I would just configure the XMLTV import in Emby rather than NextPVR since the import can be a hog unless you are going to be using NextPVR too.  If your are going to use NextPVR too I did write a utility to import TV Mosaic recordings.

Recording scheduled recordings is not a NextPVR issue. Other backends have their own way of identifying series and recurring schedules, but it is not typically in generic guide data.  I expect Luke would need to make the addon EPG data parsing smarter to address this.  This seems like a variation on this thread

Martin

 

 

Yes, my conclusion is that Live TV in Emby is a mess, it just does not work as a "PVR" at the moment.

As for identifying series and episodes of series, I believe the common practise is to use the <episode-num> tag from the XMLTV source, and to fallback on the <sub-title> tag if that is not present. An example from my grabbed XMLTV data:

<programme start="20220615051500 +0200" stop="20220615053000 +0200" channel="Channel 5">
    <title lang="en">Grizzy &amp; The Lemmings</title>
    <sub-title lang="en">BatGrizzy</sub-title>
    <desc lang="en">The Lemmings try to catch a bat to play rodeo, disturbing Grizzy as he plays his favorite game on the ranger's mobile. But when the phone is hit and its alarm activated, a submarine sonar sound is emitted. When the bat hears it, it seems to become docile.</desc>
    <icon src="https://production.togglestatic.com/shain/v1/dataservice/ResizeImage/$value?Format='jpg'&amp;Quality=85&amp;ImageId='4862053'&amp;EntityType='LinearSchedule'&amp;EntityId='ff54bc2a-cf3a-469d-9221-3b18405742a2'&amp;Width=1280&amp;Height=720&amp;device=web_browser&amp;subscriptions=Anonymous&amp;segmentationTags=all" />
    <episode-num system="onscreen">S2 E25</episode-num>
    <rating>
      <value>PG</value>
    </rating>
  </programme>

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by chjohans

[Luke 37062]

2 minutes ago, chjohans said:

Come on @Luke, I believe I've provided plenty of information. Please tell me exactly what you need, I'll be most happy to test anything and provide any info and test results that you want, but you have to be more specific than just "we need more info"

All of the information requested here. So for example:

• What you're recording
• What the guide data looks like in the guide prior to recording
• What the resulting recording file looked like
• How the series recording is configured and what the schedule for it looks like

In other words, an example. Thanks.

[emveepee 112]

2 minutes ago, chjohans said:

Yes, my conclusion is that Live TV in Emby is a mess, it just does not work as a "PVR" at the moment.

I disagree I don't think it is a mess at all,  and at the same time many users are quite happy with Emby.  It is just not as advanced as other backends which to be fair have been around for a decade longer.  Too many posts have been made about delivering functionality that isn't there yet and now temporarily? avoiding tuner development might allow the core can be improved. 

Martin

[Luke 37062]

24 minutes ago, emveepee said:

Emby is not allowed to use Scheduled Direct EPG data so that is excluded but XMLTV and OTA should be OK.    However I would just configure the XMLTV import in Emby rather than NextPVR since the import can be a hog unless you are going to be using NextPVR too.  If your are going to use NextPVR too I did write a utility to import TV Mosaic recordings.

Recording scheduled recordings is not a NextPVR issue. Other backends have their own way of identifying series and recurring schedules, but it is not typically in generic guide data.  I expect Luke would need to make the addon EPG data parsing smarter to address this.  This seems like a variation on this thread

Martin

 

 

I've looked into it, and no, that's not the issue. That topic is about Movies being recorded as if they were Series due to IsSeries=true being set on everything.

The NextPVR plugin is not doing that so it shouldn't be an issue here.

[chjohans 32]

48 minutes ago, Luke said:

Yes and no.

Thank you @Luke, but how about answering my other and more important questions in the same post, and addressing the issues I point to?

[Luke 37062]

2 minutes ago, chjohans said:

Thank you @Luke, but how about answering my other and more important questions in the same post, and addressing the issues I point to?

Yes we're looking into the Hauppauge issue, but everything else related to guide data it's hard to answer without looking at a specific example, so that's why I keep asking for that.

[emveepee 112]

6 minutes ago, Luke said:

I've looked into it, and no, that's not the issue. That topic is about Movies being recorded as if they were Series due to IsSeries=true being set on everything.

The NextPVR plugin is not doing that so it shouldn't be an issue here.

It wasin't the movie flag, I was figuring you need to be smarter about identifying isSeries=true for people that that want to record something recurring by time when the data doesn't provide S/E info.

Martin

[chjohans 32]

Another thing, it has been established that Emby will fetch guide data from NextPVR when that plugin is in use. That data seems to be incomplete, and it seems to be used to schedule recordings. So "series recordings" are impossible as episode data seems to be missing, ifven if they exist on NextPVR( which they do in my case).

But, when I define my own XMLTV source in Live TV settings, that data (and not the data fetched from NextPVR) is shown in the EPG. Because the EPG has episode data.

It just seems like a hopeless design to use one source of data to schedule recordings, and another source to show EPG data to the user. It can't possibly be more confusing for the end user.

Again, I really want this to work so @Luke please let me know what I can do to contribute to a quick fix!

[Luke 37062]

1 minute ago, chjohans said:

Another thing, it has been established that Emby will fetch guide data from NextPVR when that plugin is in use. That data seems to be incomplete, and it seems to be used to schedule recordings. So "series recordings" are impossible as episode data seems to be missing, ifven if they exist on NextPVR( which they do in my case).

But, when I define my own XMLTV source in Live TV settings, that data (and not the data fetched from NextPVR) is shown in the EPG. Because the EPG has episode data.

It just seems like a hopeless design to use one source of data to schedule recordings, and another source to show EPG data to the user. It can't possibly be more confusing for the end user.

Again, I really want this to work so @Luke please let me know what I can do to contribute to a quick fix!

This.

[chjohans 32]

21 minutes ago, emveepee said:

I disagree I don't think it is a mess at all,  and at the same time many users are quite happy with Emby.  It is just not as advanced as other backends which to be fair have been around for a decade longer.  Too many posts have been made about delivering functionality that isn't there yet and now temporarily? avoiding tuner development might allow the core can be improved. 

Martin

It's OK to disagree of course, but a "PVR" needs to be able to use the tuner(s) you attach to it, and it needs to be able to do series recordings. When it' not capable of that it's a "mess" in my book!  And it's not like Live TV in Emby is something new, it has been around for years already too, and it's a "Paid feature" which automatically gives you a bit higher expectations. 

[chjohans 32]

11 minutes ago, Luke said:

This.

Sure, I have no problem doing that. I've already done that "in words", but I'll document a specific example for you. Thanks!

But one thing, since I had my XMLTV sourced configured under "Live TV", and now have removed it, I'm not sure what data the EPG actually shows. Could this be reset (cache flushed) somehow so I can be sure  where the guide data is from?

WHen testing something you need to know exactly what you are testing, so I need to know where my guide data are from (eg from NextPVR or cached" from my XMLTV source that I removed).

[chjohans 32]

27 minutes ago, Luke said:

I've looked into it, and no, that's not the issue. That topic is about Movies being recorded as if they were Series due to IsSeries=true being set on everything.

The NextPVR plugin is not doing that so it shouldn't be an issue here.

I don't think it's a good idea to rely on the isseries flag. For series recording it's probably much better to use the <episode-num> tag from the XMLTV, and fallback to the <sub-title>  from the XMLTV if it has no <episode-num>.

[Luke 37062]

4 minutes ago, chjohans said:

Sure, I have no problem doing that. I've already done that "in words", but I'll document a specific example for you. Thanks!

But one thing, since I had my XMLTV sourced configured under "Live TV", and now have removed it, I'm not sure what data the EPG actually shows. Could this be reset (cache flushed) somehow so I can be sure  where the guide data is from?

WHen testing something you need to know exactly what you are testing, so I need to know where my guide data are from (eg from NextPVR or cached" from my XMLTV source that I removed).

Unless you manually mapped channels then there's nothing you need to do. If you did manually map channels then you may want to review them.

[chjohans 32]

I just noticed that it has scheduled recordings for series on days that does not yet have any guide data.

When I used the built-in Hauppauge/WinTV support it would schedule recordings only for days that actually had guide data, and use the <episod-num> tag to differentiate  between episodes.

Now when I'm using NextPVR it seems to be doing things quite differently, and on days with guide data, and on days the show is shorter it has still scheduled a recording for the same length as the initial episode I clicked "Record Series" on.

It would be soo much easier to test this if there were some description of how things are supposed to work "by design"...

[chjohans 32]

16 minutes ago, Luke said:

Unless you manually mapped channels then there's nothing you need to do. If you did manually map channels then you may want to review them.

I had manually mapped each channel from NextPVR to my own XMLTV source that I defined under "Live TV".

I have later removed that mapping and the XMLTV source, so now each channel under "Live TV" says "Not mapped to guide data".

But the actual EPG shown in the TV Guide is that from the XMLTV that I have later removed.

I would very much prefer that Emby would actually use my own XMLTV source if I mapped each channel to it though. It makes no sense to have the option if it's not being used.

 

[Luke 37062]

Make sure to run the refresh guide scheduled task, which will get kicked off automatically anyway, but give it a chance to complete and then check again.

[chjohans 32]

I have done that, and restarted the server. Guide data has been refreshed several times, and it has been a few hours since I removed the XMLTV source from "Live TV" settings.

 

So if what I see is coming from NextPVR then it has episode data ( eg the <episode-num> tag in the XMLTV) because the EGP Emby shows indeed have the episode numbers.

The EPG data in NextPVR is identical to the XMLTV I had configured under "Live TV" in Emby as I use the same XMLTV source for both Emby and NextPVR.

Anyhow, I'll change the XMLTV source in NextPVR a bit so I can visually confirm where the data is from before I do some more testing to give you a detailed example of what happens. Need to know where the data is from first, and if it's currently from NextPVR then that means Emby is fetching episode data (or at least the <episode-num> tag) through the NextPVR plugin.

Edited June 15, 2022 by chjohans

[emveepee 112]

You won't be getting XMLTV "tags" from NextPVR.  NextPVR parses XMLTV and other EPG source and then it is provided in JSON Emby.  One thing that NextPVR doesn't support from xmltv_ns format unless the season and episode (first two values) are populated.

I wonder if you have to set you XMLTV data from NextPVR to None in Emby and then save it again to XMLTV like I have to do with the Emby guide source

Martin

Edited June 15, 2022 by emveepee