[negge]

If the intention is to use the Videos Library why does XBMC PVR/LiveTV section have a Recordings screen at all then?!

I don't know about you guys but 90% of what I record is something other than actual series (news, documentaries, etc.), that's what you need the recordings window for.

The use case is all users of XBMC PVR who want to view their recordings, from the LiveTV->Recordings area. It already supports hierarchical folders but doesn't have the ability to set the folder images. As krusty says, setting the image on the "Show" folder would look a lot nicer. We have the images in the backend, but nowhere to put them on the front end. The recordings on the backend are a flat folder structure and we "virtualise" the heirarchical structure for presentation to XBMC so in order to scan them into XBMC library they would need to be physically moved/renamed into alternative physical folder structure etc. That's alot of complexity for PVR users who want to schedule recordings and watch those recordings from XBMC PVR section, but would like to see folder icons reflective of the given show

I thought all backends that supported folders created the actual folders on disc somewhere. If not then I can see why integrating it into the library would be difficult. All in all, if you say the backend already has images that could be used (aka. XBMC doesn't have to do anything other than display it) then I don't see why it couldn't be integrated. Just have to find some time to do it.

[scarecrow420]

I can also assist with development but I wanted some direction from the existing PVR developers how we should structure it, a couple of alternate suggestions were made by me in an earlier post in this thread, I'll dig up a link

Edit: here we go http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1717496

[Mettbrot]

3, Option to cancel current operation by tuner if you want to switch channels and only have 1 tuner. At the moment you have to go to timer and cancel recording or delete.

I like this! I have a dual Technisat DVB-S2 Reciever at home which is extremely user friendly and easy to use. With recordings it acts like this:

If You switch to a channel that is currently recording it shows a pop up and asks you if you want to watch from the beginning or live or switch back to last channel.

When you have all tuners in use it pops up, tells you that all tuners are busy and you can select from the channels the tuners are tuned to and watch those.

Would be nice to see this in XBMC

[negge]

It would indeed be nice, the underlying functionality that is needed would enable quite a lot of interesting use cases.

[xhaggi]

The recordings on the backend are a flat folder structure and we "virtualise" the heirarchical structure for presentation to XBMC so in order to scan them into XBMC library they would need to be physically moved/renamed into alternative physical folder structure etc.

it's possible to use the virtual pvr path to integrate the recordings to your library. but you can only use it once to define the corresponding content (movie, tv, etc.).

Code:

pvr://recordings/

and yep i agree, it would make sense to support thumbs for folders in the recordings view.

[krustyreturns]

@xhaggi,

Did you see my post about suppressing standard xbmc timer dialogs when the addon implements custom timer dialogs?
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1743310

Any chance we could get that in helix?

[xhaggi]

yep, but IMO we should extend the api to support series recording instead of doing this within the addon.

[FernetMenta]

It would indeed be nice, the underlying functionality that is needed would enable quite a lot of interesting use cases.

vnsi could do that already if the PVR api supported it

[scarecrow420]

yep, but IMO we should extend the api to support series recording instead of doing this within the addon.

We agree that XBMC should add support for series recording, but at the same time there are always going to be backend options that XBMC doesn't support because they arent common enough across all backends. Having a framework that allows an addon to tell XBMC not to display a dialog for a particular situation would give a more seamless experience rather than having a double dialog (XBMC standard plus addon's custom one) pop up in sequence...

[da-anda]

IMO a hook system/API that allows addons to define the available options would be better. So not limiting/enabling supported features implemented in XBMC but freely adding random settings. With our new settings system this shouldn't be that complicated to do. But XBMC itself will never the less need support for series recordings and be it only to indicate which timer is a series recording and which is onetime one. Having every PVR addon injecting it's own system is IMO a no go, especially because of the extra burdon for skinners to support every PVR addon flavor - so there has to be some standard way for addons to inject their own timer settings etc.

[scarecrow420]

Eventhough it's more burdon for skinners etc the XBMC development/release cycle is fairly slow and labourious, yours is more a "idealistic" viewpoint, where as krusty and mine are a "realistic" one. What you suggest sounds great, as do many other things, but will we realistically be able to get them done in time? I would much rather a Helix XBMC that enabled us to achieve a result and deliver functionality to users, even if it that was achieved through some creative workarounds and the work of skinners and others who are able to constantly tinker away and work on addons/skins outside of the normal XBMC dev cycle, than to have mapped out what the perfect implementation is for xbmc to handle everything but have it not make it into Helix due to time/effort/code freezes etc... Having it all built into XBMC would be ideal if it happened but the work/time required to do it, when at the moment we cant even get PVR pull requests merged for more than a month because everyone is busy, it really seems what we need are quick and targeted changes in XBMC that let the rest of the user communiunity who already spend countless hours massaging/working on things to get them that bit closer to our "perfect setup" something to work with

[krustyreturns]

I would love it if we could tell xbmc which timer settings we support and have it take care of presenting them to the user for us. And I'm sure I speak for scarecrow too that we'd be happy to work with the xbmc team to figure out which settings to support. But like he says its ambitious, so maybe consider it a fallback that we at least have the option to present our own dialogs without the confusing double-dialog deal.

I know its a pain for skinners to support these dialogs, just like its a pain for us to provide them for Confluence. They don't have to do them though, in which case our uses can either just continue with Confluence or just forgo the custom dialog.

[qzem]

What about the xbmc's own backend server ? I know, I know too much of work, but someday maybe...

[da-anda]

you are way to optimistic qzem

[negge]

I don't think that's ever gonna be a good idea, there's a ridiculous amount of wheel-reinventing in the DVR/PVR software scene as it is. AFAIK there's not even a current project that is cross-platform.