Sometimes you find a fix for a problem that's so simple you want to kick yourself.
I'd been unable to watch live TV streams on other frontends (OpenElec on Raspberry Pi, Ubuntu laptop, and Windows 8 laptop) around the house for several months. Having searched extensively and posted the problem on forums I could not seem to solve the issue.
Even though mythbackend would serve live TV to Kodi frontend on the same machine, I could not serve these streams across my local network to other machines running Kodi. The error message in the mythbackend log was "Client speaks protocol version 75 but we speak 77!" when attempting to connect from some devices (e.g. Raspberry Pi), and "Client speaks protocol version 8 but we speak 77!" when attempting to connect from others (e.g. Windows 8)
After some prodding around in the mythtv-setup options, I accidentally blanked out the IPV6 field in the "general" settings section. I then blanked out the IPV6 fields in the kodi-pvr-mythtv settings on the frontend client, and hey presto! It worked! Live TV streamed without issue.
What I found amazing was that this was a such a simple fix yet I had been struggling to overcome the live TV streaming for months. The reason it had baffled me is that in mythtv-setup settings the IPV6 field hint suggests that if I will be connecting to the backend from frontends on other machines then the field shopuld not be left blank. I hadn't really given this much thought other than, my Kodi frontends are on other machines therefore the field should not be left blank. In retrospect, I guess this hint refers to MythTV frontends, not other frontends such as Kodi, which is what threw me.
Showing posts with label MythTV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MythTV. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
Best Kodi add-ons for use in the UK
There are hundreds of add-ons for Kodi. Many don't work, some give you access to content which is illegal to view in the UK such as copyrighted movies, sport and television series, and some seem to just be too niche to be any use to most people in the UK (Gun reviews in Russian anyone?). Amongst them are some gems. Here is a post to help UK Kodi users find the diamonds in the rough.
BBC iPlayer This essential add-on allows streaming of live and BBC TV and radio and catch-up TV from the iPlayer database. It has a much simpler menu system than the layout on BBC's content-heavy iPlayer website, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference. Personally I like its simplicity and aside from Cmyth (see below), this is my most used add-on.
ITV Player Again, another essential add-on for UK viewers. Not quite as slick as the iPlayer add-on in terms of menu layout, but still easy to use, and allows streaming of live ITV broadcasts across ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 as well as streaming catch-up TV from ITV player's database.
USTVnow UK viewers can get live (HD for several months before reverting to SD) access to 6 US channels, for free. ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, CW, and PBS). OK, this one is a bit of a grey area as it is designed for US citizens living abroad, and requires you to tick a box saying so. However, the only time I use this add-on is when my American pal visits to watch the superbowl. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! If you visit https://www.ustvnow.com/ and sign up for free registration, you can then add your username and password to the USTVnow add-on settings and the add-on will stream these free to view channels in Kodi.
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Radio If BBC radio isn't broad enough for your listening tastes (Zouk, anyone?), Radio gives you access to hundreds, maybe even thousands (I haven't counted - let's just say, lots!) of international radio stations, which you can search by popularity, genre, topic, country, city, language, or search for local stations.
FilmOn Allows access to free to air channels from UK Freeview and many others around the world. The picture quality is not particularly good, but this is made up for by the range of channels available.
Spotimc You'll need a premium Spotify account for this to work. If so, installing this add on lets you search for music, browse for music and play your favourite playlists, all from inside Kodi.
This is just a small selection of the Kodi add-ons out there, and these happen to be my most often used ones. I also use a MythTV add-on which connects to my MythTV backend for me to watch and record UK Freeview TV and Radio.
Hope this list has been of some use to other Kodi users in the UK.
BBC iPlayer This essential add-on allows streaming of live and BBC TV and radio and catch-up TV from the iPlayer database. It has a much simpler menu system than the layout on BBC's content-heavy iPlayer website, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your preference. Personally I like its simplicity and aside from Cmyth (see below), this is my most used add-on.
ITV Player Again, another essential add-on for UK viewers. Not quite as slick as the iPlayer add-on in terms of menu layout, but still easy to use, and allows streaming of live ITV broadcasts across ITV1, ITV2, ITV3 and ITV4 as well as streaming catch-up TV from ITV player's database.
USTVnow UK viewers can get live (HD for several months before reverting to SD) access to 6 US channels, for free. ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, CW, and PBS). OK, this one is a bit of a grey area as it is designed for US citizens living abroad, and requires you to tick a box saying so. However, the only time I use this add-on is when my American pal visits to watch the superbowl. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! If you visit https://www.ustvnow.com/ and sign up for free registration, you can then add your username and password to the USTVnow add-on settings and the add-on will stream these free to view channels in Kodi.
Youtube Allows quick and easy access to Youtube direct from
Kodi. Unfortunately, Youtube seems to have limited access to some DRM-protected content such as official music videos, meaning they can't be viewed from Kodi, but you could view them via a browser. Nonetheless, still a useful add-on.
Radio If BBC radio isn't broad enough for your listening tastes (Zouk, anyone?), Radio gives you access to hundreds, maybe even thousands (I haven't counted - let's just say, lots!) of international radio stations, which you can search by popularity, genre, topic, country, city, language, or search for local stations.
FilmOn Allows access to free to air channels from UK Freeview and many others around the world. The picture quality is not particularly good, but this is made up for by the range of channels available.
Spotimc You'll need a premium Spotify account for this to work. If so, installing this add on lets you search for music, browse for music and play your favourite playlists, all from inside Kodi.
This is just a small selection of the Kodi add-ons out there, and these happen to be my most often used ones. I also use a MythTV add-on which connects to my MythTV backend for me to watch and record UK Freeview TV and Radio.
Hope this list has been of some use to other Kodi users in the UK.
Wednesday, 17 December 2014
Kodi and UK Freeview TV
OK - so after a few months of not attempting to fix/get around some roadblocks in terms of streaming live TV to XBMC frontends, and no sound on HD channels, I decided to revisit my nearly complete HTPC for one last stab.
And, hey presto, I've made good progress and I'm really pleased with the setup as it stands - still some tweaks I intend to make, but I have a funny feeling I'll never be satisfied with the status quo.
So, I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.1, Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), MythTV as a primary backend server, UK Freeview DVB-T2 being tuned by TBS6285.
The rest of the kit can be seen in my previous posts.
I managed to resolve the HD audio issue simply by going into Cmyth-PVR addonn settings in Kodi, and under advanced, deselecting the de-mux option. I'm sure I tried this several months ago, to no avail, but it seems to have done the trick this time. So, now I can hear TV audio on all digital channels.
I'm able to stream to another PC in the house running Kodi as a frontend, simply by adding the CMyth-PVR addon. I couldn't achieve this using a Rasperry Pi with Openelec - for some reason that version of Cmyth just wouldn't allow primary backend and Rapsberry Pi to talk to each other.
All in all, I am really impressed. Live TV channel changing in Kodi seems to be quicker than when I last tried with XBMC in summer, and whilst not what I would called instant, it is acceptable - probably 2 - 3 seconds for the new channel to buffer and then play.
The picture quality is excellent, in HD. I did have to play around with a few variations of settings in Kodi's hardware acceleration settings section and in the onscreen display video settings section. I finally settled on auto interlacing, auto interlacing method, and auto video scaling. The quality and frame rate is excellent.
I also spent some time re-ordering channels on the mythbackend. I did this by opening a terminal and typing mythtv-setup. In the options menu that appears, select Channel Editor, and then work through the channels amending as you see fit. I've removed all the shopping channels, dating channels and all SD channels that have an HD alternative, and moved them into my preferred order. After this, mythbackend needs to be restarted, then open Kodi LiveTV settings and ensure "Always use the channel order from the backend/s".
I'm using a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard to control the HTPC and somtimes theYatse android app to control Kodi, This sounds complex, but it works really well. e.g. keyboard is on other side of living room, no problem - you can still control Kodi without the massive effort of rising from your chair and walking 3 steps across a lounge!
And, hey presto, I've made good progress and I'm really pleased with the setup as it stands - still some tweaks I intend to make, but I have a funny feeling I'll never be satisfied with the status quo.
So, I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.1, Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), MythTV as a primary backend server, UK Freeview DVB-T2 being tuned by TBS6285.
The rest of the kit can be seen in my previous posts.
I managed to resolve the HD audio issue simply by going into Cmyth-PVR addonn settings in Kodi, and under advanced, deselecting the de-mux option. I'm sure I tried this several months ago, to no avail, but it seems to have done the trick this time. So, now I can hear TV audio on all digital channels.
I'm able to stream to another PC in the house running Kodi as a frontend, simply by adding the CMyth-PVR addon. I couldn't achieve this using a Rasperry Pi with Openelec - for some reason that version of Cmyth just wouldn't allow primary backend and Rapsberry Pi to talk to each other.
All in all, I am really impressed. Live TV channel changing in Kodi seems to be quicker than when I last tried with XBMC in summer, and whilst not what I would called instant, it is acceptable - probably 2 - 3 seconds for the new channel to buffer and then play.
The picture quality is excellent, in HD. I did have to play around with a few variations of settings in Kodi's hardware acceleration settings section and in the onscreen display video settings section. I finally settled on auto interlacing, auto interlacing method, and auto video scaling. The quality and frame rate is excellent.
I also spent some time re-ordering channels on the mythbackend. I did this by opening a terminal and typing mythtv-setup. In the options menu that appears, select Channel Editor, and then work through the channels amending as you see fit. I've removed all the shopping channels, dating channels and all SD channels that have an HD alternative, and moved them into my preferred order. After this, mythbackend needs to be restarted, then open Kodi LiveTV settings and ensure "Always use the channel order from the backend/s".I'm using a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard to control the HTPC and somtimes theYatse android app to control Kodi, This sounds complex, but it works really well. e.g. keyboard is on other side of living room, no problem - you can still control Kodi without the massive effort of rising from your chair and walking 3 steps across a lounge!
Tuesday, 10 June 2014
TBS6285 Part 2
Following on from my previous
post http://ubuntulinuxhtpc.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/tbs6285.html I've
received the quad-tuner and installed it, having overcome a few hurdles. I've described the process I followed, below. If you can't get this card to work, feel free to get in touch, and I should be able to help you get up and running.
1. Create a .conf file
3. Reboot to load the driver with MSI loaded.
Then, following intructions from http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work and http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6284 with a few amendments for TBS6285 and some permissions problems, I managed to get the card working. These are the commands I used:
1. Extract the ZIP file tbs-linux-drivers_v[VERSION NUMBER].zip. As of 25 April 2014, the latest version is 140425.
5. Select platform architecture
(for any x86_64 kernel only)
enter into a terminal:
7. Install driver
(Ubuntu-based distros only. See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work for other distros)
Reboot:
The first hurdle to overcome was installation of the linux drivers for the TBS6285. These can be downloaded from http://www.tbsdtv.com/download/. After help from Constantine, developer at Turbosight (TBS), it turned out that my motherboard (MSI 990FXA-GD65) is one of many faulty ones floating around (there is a buggy ASM1083 chip soldered between PCIe and PCI bus) which cannot handle IRQ from the card and causes an interrupt storm from the card. To overcome that I did the following (from http://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=7631#p24903):
1. Create a .conf file
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/tbs.conf2. Edit contents of .conf file by inserting the following two lines and saving file
options saa716x_tbs-dvb int_type=1
options saa716x_tbs-dvb enable_ir=0The first line activates MSI (Message Signal Interrupts) instead of the older IRQ. The second disables remote control receiver on the card to make sure the interrupt storm is not coming from there).
3. Reboot to load the driver with MSI loaded.
Then, following intructions from http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work and http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6284 with a few amendments for TBS6285 and some permissions problems, I managed to get the card working. These are the commands I used:
1. Extract the ZIP file tbs-linux-drivers_v[VERSION NUMBER].zip. As of 25 April 2014, the latest version is 140425.
unp -u tbs-linux-drivers_v140425.zip2. Extract linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2 archive
cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425
unp linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz23. Change ownership and permissions of extracted files
sudo chown -R <yourusername> tbs-linux-drivers_v140425
sudo chmod -R 777 tbs-linux-drivers_v1404254. Change to driver package directory
cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425
cd linux-tbs-drivers4.1 (If on fresh install on CentOS or similar)
yum install kernel-devel-`uname -r`
cd linux-tbs-drivers
make distclean
(move to Step 5)
5. Select platform architecture
(for any x86_64 kernel only)
enter into a terminal:
./v4l/tbs-dvbc-x86_64.shand then:
./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh6. Build the driver. Recompiles v4l for a wide range of cards, around 500, will take many minutes.
make(I modify this to make -j7 to use all 6 cores of my CPU)
7. Install driver
sudo make install8. Reboot, then
(Ubuntu-based distros only. See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work for other distros)
sudo rm -Rf /lib/modules/<your kernel version>/kernel/drivers/media9. Reinstall drivers
cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425
cd linux-tbs-drivers
sudo make install10. Load newly installed driver
sudo modprobe -v tbs62x0fe
insmod /lib/modules/3.(your kernel version)-generic/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/frontends/tbs62x0fe.ko11. Check it loaded correctly
Reboot:
sudo shutdown -r nowAfter rebooting and logging back in, check to see if dvb adaptor nodes now exist:
ls -al /dev/dvbYou should see something similar to the following displayed in your terminal:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 120 Jul 9 21:12 adapter0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 120 Jul 9 21:12 adapter1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 120 Jul 9 21:12 adapter2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 120 Jul 9 21:12 adapter3This should give you a correctly installed TBS6285 on Ubuntu 14.04 (after trials and tribulations, it did for me!)
Monday, 19 May 2014
TBS6285
Ordered a TBS6285 today.
Should arrive in a week or so.
This card, once plugged into a spare PCI slot, should allow viewing/recording of 4 different mulitplexes at the same, and can tune to 4 channels within each multiplex. So, it's technically possible to record 16 channels simultaneously with this card. I can't ever foresee the need for that, but the option to tune to 4 different multiplexes will be.
Once it arrives I'll post further updates on how I get on with using it in XMBC. I plan to do a fresh install of Mythbuntu, too, to see how it compares to XBMC as a back-end server.
This card, once plugged into a spare PCI slot, should allow viewing/recording of 4 different mulitplexes at the same, and can tune to 4 channels within each multiplex. So, it's technically possible to record 16 channels simultaneously with this card. I can't ever foresee the need for that, but the option to tune to 4 different multiplexes will be.
Once it arrives I'll post further updates on how I get on with using it in XMBC. I plan to do a fresh install of Mythbuntu, too, to see how it compares to XBMC as a back-end server.
Monday, 6 January 2014
The plan..
I've become unimpressed with the quality of pay TV, and find myself watching mainly free-to-air channels such as BBC, Channel 4 and Film 4. As a result I've decided to have broadband only and recycle an old desktop case I have lying around to build a media centre/HTPC for the living room, serving live and recorded TV and other media to 3 bedrooms.
The main goal is to try and keep the build cost of the living room backend server close to £700 (similar to the the annual cost of my current cable TV package and set top boxes), whilst striking a balance between power (for gaming), low noise and power efficiency as machine will be on 24/7. The bedroom PCs are to be less than £100 each, so probably Raspberry Pis running XMBC.
I'm looking forward to more geeking out on the research, build, and setting up of such a system.
So far, I have the following hardware connected to my living room TV:
This is a working system, but not the final build. I am outstanding a TV tuner to be able to receive Freeview broadcasts, SSD on which to install the OS (Ubuntu) and Steam files to ensure system is spritely, larger HDD to store media (music, films, TV), and some peripherals such as a wireless keyboard.
Total price should be not far off £668.00
In it's current form (i.e. without SSD) Ubuntu and Steam are rapid, even with the motherboard set to ECO mode.
The Scythe Mugen IV was money well spent, as it is virtually silent - the noise that the stock AMD cooler made was really loud!
The machine now emits just a low hum, which is imperceptible when sat more than a few feet away from the case.
I should be in receipt of my TBS 6285 tuner card very soon; once I have I will post a progress update on setting up MythTV as a backend and XBMC as a frontend.
The main goal is to try and keep the build cost of the living room backend server close to £700 (similar to the the annual cost of my current cable TV package and set top boxes), whilst striking a balance between power (for gaming), low noise and power efficiency as machine will be on 24/7. The bedroom PCs are to be less than £100 each, so probably Raspberry Pis running XMBC.
I'm looking forward to more geeking out on the research, build, and setting up of such a system.
So far, I have the following hardware connected to my living room TV:
- Case: ATX tower case, £0 (recycled)
- Storage: An old Western Digital SATA1 160 GB HDD, £0 (recycled)
- Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD65, £57.98
- CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz Socket AM3+, £80.99
- RAM: 8GB Kingston low-profile (so Scythe heatsink fits) RAM, £60
- PSU: Corsair CX600M, £52.96
- Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 650 N650-1GD5/OCV1, £51.98
- CPU Cooling: Scythe Mugen IV, £37.11
This is a working system, but not the final build. I am outstanding a TV tuner to be able to receive Freeview broadcasts, SSD on which to install the OS (Ubuntu) and Steam files to ensure system is spritely, larger HDD to store media (music, films, TV), and some peripherals such as a wireless keyboard.
- TV Tuner: TBS 6285 T2 PCIe card, £125.00
- SSD: Crucial M550 250GB, £107.94
- HDD: WD Caviar Green 2TB, £65.00
- Wireless Keyboard: Logitech K400, £29
Total price should be not far off £668.00
In it's current form (i.e. without SSD) Ubuntu and Steam are rapid, even with the motherboard set to ECO mode.
The Scythe Mugen IV was money well spent, as it is virtually silent - the noise that the stock AMD cooler made was really loud!
The machine now emits just a low hum, which is imperceptible when sat more than a few feet away from the case.
I should be in receipt of my TBS 6285 tuner card very soon; once I have I will post a progress update on setting up MythTV as a backend and XBMC as a frontend.
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