PVR

This page explains how to setup XBMC to be a PVR. This allows you to watch live TV, listen to radio, view an EPG, schedule recordings and enables many other TV related features.

The PVR functionality of XBMC is currently under (heavy) development. Not everything will work properly yet and you can expect occasional crashes while using this. Also, the documentation here could be outdated as development progresses.

INCOMPLETE: This page or section is incomplete. Please add information or correct uncertain data which is marked with a ?

Hardware

If you want to watch TV on your PC, you'll need at least one supported tuner card or a provider that provides IPTV access. That tuner hardware doesn't have to be installed on the same computer on which you want to watch TV. We'll call the computer with the tuner hardware the backend. The computer used to view TV will be called the frontend. The backend and frontend can be one and the same machine. XBMC will be run on the frontend.

Linux

If your backend runs Linux, have a look at these pages to find compatible hardware:

• DVB-C tuners - for digital cable television
• DVB-S tuners - for digital satellite television
• DVB-S2 tuners - for digital HD satellite television
• DVB-T tuners - for digital Terrestrial television
• analogue tuners - (fill me in)

Windows

A list of supported tuners can be found here.

Backends

XBMC currently supports the following backends:

1. HTS Tvheadend
2. VDR
3. MythTV
4. MediaPortal
5. ForTheRecord

You'll have to install (at least) one of them.

1. HTS Tvheadend

• OS: Linux
• Homepage: lonelycoder.com
• Addon maintainer: dushmaniac
• Forum support topic: XBMC forum
• Installation: ?

2. VDR

• OS: Linux
• Homepage: tvdr.de
• Addon maintainer: ?
• Forum support topic: XBMC forum
• Installation: ?

3. MythTV

• OS: Linux
• Homepage: mythtv.org
• Addon maintainer: dteirney
• Forum support topic: XBMC forum
• Installation: ?

4. MediaPortal

• OS: Windows
• Homepage: team-mediaportal.com
• Addon maintainer: margro
• Forum support topic: MediaPortal Python plugin/PVR addon, XBMC PVR development section
• Installation: Follow the MediaPortal quick setup guide to get the TV server running. MediaPortal needs a plugin, TVServerXBMC, to communicate with XBMC. Download it from here and copy it to the MediaPortal's TVServer plugin directory. Open up the MediaPortal TVServer Configuration page and select the TVServerXBMC plugin. Then go to Manual Control in the tree and stop the TVServer service, wait a few seconds, and start it up. MediaPortal is now able to communicate with XBMC. For a more complete guide go to margro's page here

5. ForTheRecord

• OS: Windows
• Homepage: 4therecord.eu
• Addon maintainers: margro, red-f
• Forum support topic: ForTheRecord forum
• Installation: Install ForTherecord (including the optional Cassini Web Server), configure and enable the ForTheRecord PVR addon in XBMC.

Note: this addon is not yet in opdenkamp's git repo. See margro/red-f's git repo's for the sources. Margro's XBMC-Dharma-PVR builds include an early version of this PVR addon.

XBMC

As was told in the first paragraph, the PVR functionality in XBMC is under development. It's not a part of the mainline source tree yet, so you'll have to install XBMC a bit differenty.

Installation

Ubuntu

There are prebuilt packages available for Ubuntu Karmic, Lucid and Maverick.

To install them, open a terminal windows via Applications -> Accesoires -> Terminal and enter the following commands:

sudo apt-get remove xbmc xbmc-bin xbmc-data xbmc-skin-confluence xbmc-standalone ## remove a previous XBMC installation
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lars-opdenkamp/xbmc-pvr ## add the PVR ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc xbmc-standalone

From source

The sources can be found on GitHub. At the time of writing, the stable repository is Dharma-pvr. The development repository is master.

To get the stable source on your pc, execute these commands on the command line (you must have git installed):

git clone git://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc-antiquated.git
cd xbmc-antiquated
git checkout Dharma-pvr

To get the development source, execute this command:

git clone git://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc.git

Now you can follow the normal compile instructions (but those will probably need updating):

• HOW-TO compile XBMC for Linux from source code
• HOW-TO compile XBMC for Windows from source code

Windows

Dushmaniac provides a precompiled package for Windows users based on the latest code revisions. Check here for install package.

Margro provides a precompiled package for Windows users based on the stable XBMC Dharma version extended with PVR support. See his website for the Dharma+PVR installer.

Configuration

Configuration for XBMC is a two step process. First the pvr addon must be configured then enabled. Once the addon is able to connect to the backend service XBMC Live TV settings can be set. Follow the steps below to setup the individual PVR addons.

MediaPortal

The Mediaportal addon has a configuration page within the addon itself. Using the Confluence skin go to System > Add-ons > Installed Add-ons > PVR clients > MediaPortal PVR > Configure. Set the Mediaportal Hostname to the IP address of the computer with MediaPortal TVServer installed (default 127.0.0.1 is fine if the computer with XBMC and Mediaportal are on the same machine). Set the Mediaportal recordings directory to the share that MediaPortal saves it's TV recording to. That's it, select OK to save options.

XBMC Live TV

After you have a working PVR addon you are able to configure Live TV. Got to System > Live TV. In the General tab select the Enabled radio. XBMC will try to start the PVR addons, if it is successful the other options will no longer be grayed out and you can modify all the other settings. If it is not able to successfully start any of the PVR addons an Error message will appear.

Troubleshooting

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Further references

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