Add-on:MythTV PVR Client

MythTV PVR Client

See this add-on on the kodi.tv showcase Author: Christian Fetzer, Jean-Luc Barrière Type: Repo: Kodi.tv repo v21 Kodi.tv repo v20 License: GPL-2.0-or-later Source: Source code Summary: Kodi frontend for MythTV

Add-ons

MythTV PVR Client

Need help with this add-on? See here.

MythTV frontend (up to MythTV 34). Supports streaming of Live TV & Recordings, listening to Radio channels, EPG and Timers.

Installing

This add-on is installed from the Add-on browser located in Kodi as follows:

1. Settings
2. Add-ons
3. Install from repository
4. PVR clients
5. MythTV PVR Client
6. Install

For Linux, see... Ubuntu PVR add-ons

Live TV, PVR & Radio Contents
PVR main page 1. Tuner Cards 2. Backends 3. Setup 4. Live TV Artwork
Related Pages:
All PVR Pages All PVR Add-on Pages

MythTV can be set up on a variety of Linux distributions and also on Mac OS X. The MythTV Wiki page has several pages of detailed instruction sets for various distros and tuner types.

The released PVR client addon for Kodi have been tested with MythTV PVR backend (server) version 0.27 to 33.

What is MythTV

MythTV is a open source software PVR project that is designed to run on Linux, although other operating system packages are available. With MythTV you can watch Live TV, schedule recordings, view episode guide information, and many other features you expect from a DVR type appliance device. But more interesting for Kodi users is that as MythTV uses a distributed application structure it can also be configured as PVR backend (PVR server) for Kodi, supporting multiple Kodi frontends as clients, with MythTV acting as the PVR backend that does work of tuning TV signals, recording, scheduling, and post processing jobs.

By levering existing third-party PVR_recording_software applications such as MythTV that specialize in receiving television signals and support a client–server model which Kodi can access via a PVR client addon, these PVR features allows you to watch Live TV, listen to radio, view a EPG TV-Guide, schedule recordings and enables many other TV related features, all using Kodi as your primary interface once the initial pairing connection to MythTV have been done and configuration of the PVR client addon for it is complete.

Note: This will not give you access to the Videos section. For videos you can enable NFS.

MythTV quick start guide

You have to setup an IPv4 address for all backends (master and slave) and the PIN code to allow remote connections from clients as Kodi. Kodi could connect to the master or any slave. The master backend chooses the best tuner/host regarding of the availability. Also in the addon settings you will have to enter the IPv4 address of the master backend, not a slave.

Connecting Kodi to MythTV

1. Go to Settings -> Add-ons -> Install from repository -> PVR Clients and select the MythTV add-on.
2. Select "Configure"
3. For Linux installation see... Ubuntu PVR add-ons

MythTV addon designed for Kodi (pvr.mythtv)

The addon supports MythTV Backend version 0.27 and up to 34. It inter-operates with new API provided by MythTV backend from 0.27. To use it first you have to enable the API services of your backend by running mythtv-setup and set the security pin as "0000", set the IPv6 address to value "::1" if you haven't IP6 network infrastructure.

Addon provides Live TV, recording playback and schedules services. It includes its internal demuxer for mpeg-ts standard and allows access of sources and storages of all MythTV infrastructure including master and its slave backends.

Addon allows streaming of Live TV and Recordings, listening to Radio channels, EPG and Timers, including fanarts, covers and previews from your MythTV backend.

Settings

General

MythTV Backend Hostname or IP The hostname or IP address of the server where MythTV / master backend is installed. If backend and frontend run on the same machine then 'localhost' can be used. MythTV Backend Port The default is 6543 but this will need updating if you have changed it in the MythTV settings. MythTV Backend Port for API services The default is 6544 but this will need updating if you have changed it in the MythTV settings. MythTV Security PIN for API services The default is 0000 but this will need updating if you have changed it in the MythTV settings. MythTV Backend Ethernet address (WOL) Add the MAC address of your backend to allow the addon to wake up the backend using WOL. Also addon will wait any user activities to send the magic packet, otherwise the backend won't be wake up to save power. Enable Live TV This enables Live TV. Switch it off if you do want to use MythTV only for watching recordings. Allow Live TV to move scheduled shows This allows MythBackend to move scheduled recordings to another tuner if the scheduled tuner is blocked by an active Live TV playback. If turned off, you might miss recordings! Conflict handling This allows to configure the Live TV vs. scheduled recoding conflict handling. The setting determines how the addon should handle upcoming recordings for a tuner, that is being used for Live TV at the moment. - Prefer Live TV when recording has later slot: (default) Continue watching Live TV in case there is a known later slot for the recording. Reschedule to record this repeat instead. If there's no later slot, stop Live TV and start the recording now. - Prefer recording and stop Live TV: Stop Live TV and start the scheduled recording. - Prefer Live TV and cancel conflicting recording: Ignore the conflicting, upcoming recording and continue to watch Live TV instead.

Recording template

Configuration of the default rules for new recordings. Recording rule templates have been introduced in MythTV 0.26. For older MythTV versions, please use and configure the addon-Internal template provider.

Template provider - MythTV: Use MythTV's default recording rule template - Internal: Use Kodi's respectively the addon's settings Automatically Look Up Metadata Advises the MythTV backend to download metadata for this recording. Commercial Flag new recordings Advises the MythTV backend to run the commercial flag job for this recording. Allow recordings to expire? Allows the MythTV backend to automatically delete the recording when necessary. Transcode new recordings and Transcoder Advises the MythTV backend to automatically transcode the recording into a different format. Run user Job #1-4 Advises the MythTV backend to automatically run the user defined jobs for this recording. Note Start and End Offset is configured in |Kodi Live TV settings

Advanced

Advanced tab contains settings to tune the addon. Some change the look and feel, while others modify the behavior with respect to your hardware configuration.

Include more debug information in the log file If turned on, additional debugging information is written to the log file. This should be turned on if you want to debug or report problems. It should be OFF for normal usage. Enable demuxing MPEG-TS If turned on, the demuxing of LiveTV stream is handled by the addon itself. The built-in demuxer supports MPEG-TS stream including the following codecs: mpeg-video, h264, hevc(h265), mpeg-audio, aac, ac3, eac3, subtitle and teletext. This allows you to bypass the default demuxer provided by Kodi, and significantly reduce latencies. Allow backend shutdown If turned off, backend will waiting Kodi exit or sleep before shutdown. Even turned on, addon allows backend shutdown when screen saver becomes activated. It should be turned ON for normal usage. Note: This option do not block shutdown or suspend initiated by Kodi itself. Tuning delay (sec) Depending of your hardware, a delay could be needed to spawn Live TV. Limit channel tuning attempts Turn on, after a failure the addon will never retry to tune the channel with next tuners

EIT Categories or MythTV genre colours in Kodi EPG

You can create your own matching file "eit_categories.txt" to configure the matching of MythTV categories and EIT categories, depending of your country or the source of the guide data. To do that, copy the original file from "~/.kodi/addons/pvr.mythtv/resources/eit_categories.txt" in the user folder i.e "~/.kodi/userdata/addon_data/pvr.mythtv/eit_categories.txt", then edit this copy by adding your(s) own matching. The file contains record in the format CSV. Lines starting with "#" are comment. Each record contains two fields: the first is EIT number (hexadecimal format), and the second is the category retrieved from the MythTV backend (Guide data).

Troubleshooting

1. If you're experiencing troubles with the add-on, MythTV section of Kodi Forum is the correct place to ask for help.
2. Always include a full Debug Log with the add-on setting Include more debug information in the log file enabled.
3. Issues that are only related to this add-on (not to Kodi itself or Kodi's general PVR code) should be reported here: https://github.com/janbar/pvr.mythtv/issues (if unsure, ask in the forum first!)

Development

See also: MythTV Compilation

• See sources repository pvr.mythtv to learn how to build addon from the official repository
• This addon uses the Transifex Localization platform. You're welcome to contribute translations: https://www.transifex.com/janbar/pvrmythtv/

Additional guides and links

• MythTV website - http://mythtv.org
  • Documentation
• MythTV backend for Kodi support forum - http://forum.kodi.tv/forumdisplay.php?fid=170
• Addon's issue tracker: https://github.com/janbar/pvr.mythtv/issues
• MythTV genre colours in Kodi EPG
• MythTV + HDHomeRun Prime: http://gameroomsolutions.com/live-tv-setup/