[sfrooster]

First, let me say that for everything else (including recording/recorded tv) the Xbmc / MythTv combination is superb.

But when it comes to watching Live Tv (and associated PVR functions) it's definitely far far far from ready.

I had some success with setting it on a channel and leaving it. But PVR functions were DOA. Then I discovered I could get some PVR functionality by selecting a channel to watch and then explicitly telling it to record.

So, in advance of today's Super Bowl, I set it on the desired channel and hit record. Then I started looking around and noticed that this was consuming two tuners - one for live tv, and one for recording.

That's clearly not a good solution so I tried to clean it up - delete a recording, etc. - but to no avail, so I left it.

Then I did some PVRish things - skip back a little, pause, skip back forward - then *boom*, it goes weird and the next thing I know it jumps back to near the beginning of the recording.

Thinking I had mucked something, I stopped the recording, and changed off of the channel and then back on. It went along fine for a bit, and then just popped backwards. So I changed off the channel and then back on again, and again it goes fine before inexplicably jumping backwards. Finally, one more round of this before Xbmc goes into (I'm not kidding) an un-ending loop of dieing, restarting, loading the EPG, putting up the "Working" dialog, freezing, dieing....

I finally had to do a killall to get it to stop.

Now, its possible my hardware is underpowered (it's all running on a Zotac Mag N330 running Ubuntu 12.04 with a HDHR Prime), but before we go there, I want to understand if what I'm trying to do is understood to be just not-quite-there, or if a reasonably powered rig could handle this.

If it's achievable, are there any tricks?

Or do I need to wait for some future enhancements?

[User 57826]

I'm not sure that "EPIC Fail" is a fair assessment. Does it have bugs? Yes. Are some more annoying than others? Yes. Are there things that need to be fixed asap? Of course. But it does work, and is currently very usable.

If you are not happy with Myth, have you tried any of the other back ends and see if they fit you better?

For me personally I love Myth, and love XBMC, so it is very important for me to get them working. I will do nearly anything I can to help the devs get the bugs fixed.

If you have found a bug and can reproduce it, you can always report it here...
https://github.com/fetzerch/xbmc-pvr-addons/issues

[sfrooster]

I'd hoped that my first sentence would go a long way towards acknowledging that Xbmc, Myth and the combination do several things very well and that, in those regards, I'm very happy.

My post was meant to focus on the LiveTv/PVR experience.

Having used Myth (FE and BE) off and on since 2004, I'm acquainted with what Xbmc as a FE (for LiveTv) *could* do, and I was curious about the delta between that and what it was actually doing. In my opionion, what it was doing was definitely a complete failure.

Setting aside minor things (like very slow channel changes), and ca. 2000 functions like step back, step forward, it still was horrible on *this* day:

-Twice lurching to a halt, indicating it was buffering, then emerging to a point in the stream several minutes in the past
-Eventually falling into non-ending loop of crash, re-start, import the EPG, crash...

I even got a core dump.

I don't think I was trying to do anything unreasonable, but this was not reasonable behavior. So, I'm left with trying to figure out the disconnect:

a) Am I expecting too much from the software as it stands today? If so, are these things in the works/planned? Maybe I need a newer version of something (I think I've got the latest but...)?

b) Am I trying to squeeze too much out of my hardware? I see people using RaspPi's as FEs so it makes me think I'm not, but maybe PVR functions are especially taxing, and I need to beef things up, especially since it's all running on one box (which, BTW, seems to handle watching recorded TV just fine)?

c) The software ought to handle all of this, the hardware is fine, and it's unclear what exactly went wrong.

Trust me, I'd really like for this to all work out. What I've seen so far is quite impressive. I just need this last bit to allow me to chuck those awful cable boxes and make Xbmc/Myth our full time system.

[User 57826]

I'll just clarify, I'm not a dev, but just an overexcited user

I know what you are saying and really agree with you on most of your parts. I don't think you are asking too much; I don't think I am either (I hope). I think with a few people (like you and I) we can help fix the bugs and help make it better for future releases. If you know how to compile from git, there are a few patches right now that fix a few errors. I'm not sure how they want to handle new bug reports, but there are a couple things I have in mind. First and foremost is the play, pause, FF, RW, step FW, step BACK issues that you mentioned.

I know we've had a conversation about your hardware, just to reiterate I think you might be pushing it. I think as a frontend its perfect, but FE/BE its just too much. But again its just my opinion. Just for reference, one of my frontends is a Pentium M 2.26, my backend is a Q8200.
ATOM 330
Pentium M 2.26
Q8200

[sfrooster]

I thought I'd update this thread.

First, at least for the moment, my PVR-functions-with-LiveTV issues seem to be solved:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=150022&page=3

Second, my brief foray into the world of RaspPi as a FE, while interesting, are almost over. I have two Zotax ID41+'s showing up tomorrow to act as frontends and the Mag N330 is moving back into a MythBE/Web/SMB/OwnCloud role. This ought to remove any hardware issues - until I add another HDHR and another TV or two...