[psbguy]

I have an issue that I'm facing under a couple of skins, where tv channels icons won't show up under PVR widgets or PVR OSD when "Download TV Guide Artwork" is enabled in the add on settings.

For example, in Arctic Horizon 2 skin, artwork would usually show up in PVR widgets and OSD if it exists, while channel icon would show up when the artwork is missing (sports, news,...), but for me, channel icon doesn't show up and is left blank when I enable the artwork to be downloaded in NextPVR add on.

The skin developer suggested after raising the below issue that PVR client might be adding a filename for ListItem.Art(thumb) but the actual file doesn't exist. Not sure if that is correct and if it can be fixed. Any suggestions? Thanks

https://github.com/jurialmunkey/skin.arc...issues/871

[emveepee]

In NextPVR "Download TV guide artwork" is not enabled by default because it is not really recommended. 

Meta art can come from several sources and it can take ~1-5s and evem more to search Schedules Direct, TVDB, TMDB  TVMaze and direct URLs and download.  Since as you scroll/page the guide most people won't usually wait for the art but even as you skip over them they are still queued for download.  If you scroll backwards you will see them, but you may end up with artwork for shows you may never "hit" again and the backend will accumulate a lot of art for shows you aren't interested in.

There is a filename (URL) for all art since at EPG load time NextPVR won't normally have art for a show.  The art NextPVR URL will return a 404 if it can't find art.  Perhaps sub the author could provide the channel icon as a fallback but in some use cases for the API that doesn't make sense.

Schedules Direct is by far the fastest if you subscribe since NextPVR has direct links to the art and there won't be a 404 and you will have some art for almost every show.  If you watch this video you can see SD art in action https://imgur.com/a/JT5jiDe . The art with the title over some random art would typically be a 404 from other sources and there are quite a few as you can see for the more obscure shjow.  You can see the occasional delays too, even with direct links via the NextPVR.

It is conceivable that art could be reasonably faster using some XMLTV source files with episode icon link.  In general this is low quality art, few NextPVR users have these types of XMLTV files and sub has given them the lowest priority over the better source.   I guess sub could provide these URL to Kodi via the API and pvr.nextpvr could optionally use it.  The response would be faster approximately the same as iptvsimple. 

For me though the bottom line is does that image improve PVR?  Check that video again if you aren't sure. I actually find it distracting, since I am trying to read the text from the guide, plus when I page down I'd rather see the channel icon and not what show I landed on.

Martin

[psbguy]

Thanks for the thorough reply, and I agree that images can be distracting in the guide, but it can be useful in PVR widgets. It will be great if channel icon can be used as a fallback when there is no art, and/or if images from XMLTV files can be used, as I actually have them.

Thanks again!

[emveepee]

Yes I guess the Estuary skin could be modified to show the channel icon on the guide screen and just call the image in the popup too to avoid all the junk art in the texture cache.  @pkscout can you suggest a way to do that maybe in your mod?

I don't know what a PVR widget is.

I am not sure that defaulting to the channel icon is a great idea, in that video you can see the Estuary popup and while it doesn't show a channel icon it could and two channel icons would look unusual.  That would always be the case with the recommended default.

Anyway, I suggest creating a wishlist item on the NextPVR forum for your two requests.  If sub updates the API to include the XMLTV provided URL I will update pvr.nextpvr but I won't backport it to Nexus.

Martin