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Confused regarding Emby TV Guide Data


Armageus

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Armageus

Hi All,

 

Just giving Emby another trial following the recent updates.

 

I'm a bit confused about Emby's included Guide Data - it seems this can't be used for any plug-in TV Sources? Is this just intended for HDHomerun (in which case it's a shame, as I'm "paying" for something I can't use if you see what I mean, as I can't use Emby's guide data in NextPVR/TVHeadend?)?

 

I've currently set up the latest Emby Beta with NextPVR and a USB DVB-T Tuner (Sony PlayTV), I have channels listed in NextPVR, but was hoping to use Emby's guide data and configure everything within Emby? However the Channel Mapping option just shows a blank window (Maybe worth adding a message if this is expected?)

 

I'd tried TVHeadend previously with Emby (before Guide data was included), but guessing this would still work the same?

 

Are any of the other backend's any different (Mediaportal?) in this regard, as ideally would like the backend to be as simple as possible (i.e. just to support generic tuners e.g. USB or PCI/PCI-E tuners), with Emby handling the "front-end" TV work, epg etc

 

Ultimate aim is to have an over-the-air Freeview solution with 1 tuner per multiplex (so 6 or 7 tuners required), meaning all channels should be watchable/recordable at the same time.

 

 

Other than that, the latest version seems to be an improvement from the last version I tried (October-ish?), and I've picked some slightly better hardware (i3-4130, SSD), which has made TV Performance noticeably better when streaming to a Roku device.

 

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Hi.  If you use a plug-in to handle your live TV and recording, then Emby is not in control of that so we cannot provide guide data for it.

 

The exception to that would be if you used the plug-in just to get access to the hardware and defined it to Emby as an m3u tuner.  In that case, you could then use the built in guide provider.

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Armageus

Thanks for the reply.

 

I read some details about M3U's here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/63665-nextpvr-dumb-tuner/

 

From what I can see: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/63665-nextpvr-dumb-tuner/page-4&do=findComment&comment=643411 the only issue is that Emby won't be able to deal with any recording conflicts etc, but with enough Tuners available and locked to individual multiplexes (e.g. 7 multiplexes = 7 tuners), then as long as the backend can handle "multi-rec" then it shouldn't be an issue.

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Armageus

I got round to giving the M3U dumb tuner option a test - manually limited myself to 2 muxes in nextpvr by deleting channels that were on any other muxes. Then after downloaded a copy of the channels m3u and adding a made up clientid to the end of each one, I added this to Emby (which then found and matched the channels using the Emby guide data - very slick)

 

I was able to watch 3 different channels simultaneously via different clients (2 web 1 roku), but hit the issue regarding watching a channel that was already being watched by someone else (i.e. because of the clientid I added).

 

Is there any way of getting a dynamic clientid added? If emby can't do this, is there anything else available that can?

 

If not I'm tempted to look at writing something myself to listen for the request from emby with the a known channelid, and then just replace it with something random (although not sure how much other interaction would be needed)

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Spaceboy

I’m doing something very similar with mediaportal and it seems to have been working for the last 6 months or so

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arrbee99

Hi.  If you use a plug-in to handle your live TV and recording, then Emby is not in control of that so we cannot provide guide data for it.

 

The exception to that would be if you used the plug-in just to get access to the hardware and defined it to Emby as an m3u tuner.  In that case, you could then use the built in guide provider.

 

Dumb question (I know, again), but why not provide data ? If I'm using a plugin to provide New Zealand channels, and Emby is (at some point) providing NZ channel guide data via Gracenote, why can't it be used just because the streams happen to come via a plugin.

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Dumb question (I know, again), but why not provide data ? If I'm using a plugin to provide New Zealand channels, and Emby is (at some point) providing NZ channel guide data via Gracenote, why can't it be used just because the streams happen to come via a plugin.

 

If you set it up like I indicated such that it is just that "the streams are coming from a plug-in" then our guide data will work.

 

However, if you use an external system to handle all your recording duties then the scheduling engine involved is not ours.  It is within that other system and does not have any knowledge of our guide data.

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arrbee99

Think its finally sunk in what you mean. I keep on thinking, whats the problem, its just replacing SD with Gracenote and that worked fine, but then I remember, but the SD is going from NPVR to Emby, not the other way round as Gracenote would (or rather wouldn't).

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arrbee99

Well sub3 didn't seem to think it was recommended as mentioned / linked to in post#3. Ideally if would work just as well as it does now then great. Guess also it depends what country you're in re Gracenote.

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Spaceboy

There are drawbacks to the dumb tuner approach, loss of multiplex being the biggest, but from my perspective it’s far far far better to allow (in my case mediaportal) the backend to do nothing but provide a stream in request and utilise emby to do everything else

 

That said since I’ve had this working so well in xteve and emby now for six months or so, I haven’t been back and check whether use of the plugin has improved. My issues were playback full stop and just being very slow

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Are you sure about loss of multiplex? If we ask the backend to open a stream to a given channel, couldn't it reuse an existing stream where multiplex is supported?

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Armageus

Are you sure about loss of multiplex? If we ask the backend to open a stream to a given channel, couldn't it reuse an existing stream where multiplex is supported?

 

Multiplex (as in multiple streams from the same tuner) works fine in my limited testing. The ideal for me would be to have enough tuners to cover all the multiplexes (8 in my case: https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/tv/Belmont )

Ideally in conjunction with the above it would be ideal to have the tuners "live" on 1 of the channels from each mux, to further reduce time to switch channels (as tuner would already be locked, would just need to start a new stream).

 

 

Main issue for me still is that when using NextPVR as a dumb tuner via an m3u file, then not being able to pass a unique channelid per channel + emby device, means that 2 emby devices can't stream the same channel (and Nextpvr seems to get unstable if you consequently retune to a channel that a user has recently used)

 

 

 

I've tried using xTeVe between NextPVR and Emby, and using the HDHomerun functionality, but that made the Guide data not match up correctly with my regional channels (e.g. BBC One Yorkshire and Lincolnshire), and wouldn't actually provide a stream when selecting a channel.

 

@@Spaceboy - I'd be interested in your solution using Mediaportal - I had a quick look but couldn't work out what I needed to get an m3u from Mediaportal

 

I'll give tvheadend another go as well when I get a chance, but tried it tonight and was struggling with authentication issues so couldn't get m3u's or hdhomerun (via "antennas") to work.

Edited by Armageus
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Armageus

You're saying multiplex works fine with the m3u tuner?

 

Yes - I have a dual usb tuner (Sony PlayTV), and had 3 steams running at once

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Armageus

Example below:

 

BBC2 is on MUX - PSB1

ITV and Channel5 are on a different MUX - PSB2 

 

 

Note that for the above to work, I am watching via 3 separate devices, and my NextPVR channels.m3u playlist has been edited manually appending unique clients per channel:

 

e.g.

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:0, 1 - BBC ONE Yk Li
http://192.168.1.114:8866/live?channel=1&client=0.1

#EXTINF:0, 2 - BBC TWO
http://192.168.1.114:8866/live?channel=2&client=0.2

#EXTINF:0, 3 - ITV
http://192.168.1.114:8866/live?channel=3&client=0.3

#EXTINF:0, 4 - Channel 4
http://192.168.1.114:8866/live?channel=4&client=0.4

#EXTINF:0, 5 - Channel 5
http://192.168.1.114:8866/live?channel=5&client=0.5

5c37a9082b655_3streams.png

Edited by Armageus
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