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Dumyat

***** UPDATE - (01/11/24) *****

Kindly be informed that an updated version of this skin is now available for both Nexus and Omega. For more info and download links,

Click Here

Hi Folks,
I'm very pleased to introduce EstuaryPVR+, a modification of the Estuary skin.
The main aim of this skin is to offer users some additional PVR features and views that are not currently available on the default version of Estuary. It also offers a more detailed OSD, whilst remaining a very light weight and easy-to-use skin.
Dependencies
Whilst EstuaryPVR+ does not require any additional dependencies to work, some additional PVR features will only work when the Skin.Helper.Script is installed. This addon is available by downloading the marcelveldt repository and navigating to the Matrix Folder. Download link here: [https://github.com/kodi-community-addons...-1.0.3.zip]

Screenshots

More images available here: https://imgur.com/a/wxqZDrf

New Features Added
(Global)

Colourised OSD and media flags throughout.
New OSD layouts and buttons added throughout the skin, including new info OSD dialogs.
2 new colour themes added to skin (Cobalt (blue), Claret (red)
3 new skin views added (Flix Large, Flix Wide and Flix Landscape)
Ability to switch to smaller poster size being displayed on Home Screen for movies and TV Shows
Ability to switch OSD and OSD Info from being colourised to default Estuary black

(Live TV)

New PVR settings added to skin settings with additional Live TV options.
Artwork supported on all PVR screens (Can be used individually or combination of Backend, Local and Skin Helper)
Now/Next programmes displayed on new Live TV OSD layout.
New 'Last Channel Played' button added to Live TV OSD that switches back to last live tv channel played.
New TV Channel Screen layouts including Now/Next view. ('Next' artwork only works when local artwork is enabled, otherwise default fallback image is displayed).
New Layouts for TV Recording and Timer Screens.
New PVR Info Dialog in line with the look of the Video and Music Info Dialogs.
PVR Recording artwork displayed on Home Menu (Only works when local artwork is enabled, otherwise default fallback image is displayed.)
Banner Artwork dialog for 'Next/Up' TV Programme appearing 30 seconds before next programme start (Enabled via new PVR Settings in the skin settings or via PVR Sideblade on the EPG screen. This feature only works when local artwork is enabled, otherwise default fallback image is displayed).
Ability to disable TV Groups from EPG (Via new PVR Settings in the skin settings or via PVR Sideblade on the EPG screen).
Ability to disable Live TV Genre Colours on EPG Screen (Via new PVR settings in the skin settings or via PVR Sideblade on the EPG screen).
Ability to display actual premiered flags on EPG instead of a '*' as the indicator (Via new PVR settings in the skin settings).
Movie clapperboard icon added to genre on EPG Screen if genre contains 'Movie or Film'.
New 'Day' indicator added to plot panel on OSD Guide.

(Movies)

New OSD Layout for Movies.
New Actor button added to Movie OSD which opens new OSD dialog showing actors for movie being played. (Requires Skin Helper to be installed).
Ability to add movies to 'Watchlist' via button on 'Flix Large' view or via context menu on any other skin view. (Requires Metedata Editor installed).
New 'Watchlist' and '4K Movie' widgets added to Movie Home Menu.
New 'Decades' widget added to Movie Home Menu which allow you display movies in library by decade.
New content flags added to OSD and Flix views to display if movie is 'Kodi Local library', 'Netflix', 'Prime', 'iplayer' or 'YouTube'. (Removed April 2022)
Ability to display clearart above the OSD via the OSD settings button or using Skin Settings.

(Music)

New OSD Layout for Music.
Animated graphic equalizer added to Music OSD when music is playing.
New Artist Biography button added to Music OSD which opens Music Artist OSD dialog.
Next 3 tracks coming up shown on the bottom left hand side of music OSD.
Support for Fake Disc Art added if no original album disc art exists. If clearlogo is available for artist, this will be added to fake disc, otherwise text will be used.
Ability to enable Disc Art via Music OSD settings button.
Ability to enable Artist Clearlogo via Music OSD settings button.
Ability to enable scrolling text via Music OSD settings button.
Ability to switch from colorized equalizer on Music OSD to plain white colour using OSD settings button or using Skin Settings.
New Recommended Songs Widget added to Music Home Menu.

Items Removed

Vertical EPG view.
Fixed List when navigating Channel Groups on the EPG screen. I much prefer the focus bar to move across the screen and loop to the 1st group.

Full changelog is available here:- Changelog.txt

PVR Artwork
PVR Artwork was an area I specifically wanted to try and improve upon for this project. EstuaryPVR+ lets users decide how they want to fetch the PVR Artwork for their Live TV Set-up with the following 3 options available:-

Use 'Backend' for PVR Artwork.
Use 'Skin Helper Script'
Use 'Local PVR Artwork'

These options can be found under the new 'PVR Settings' heading on the Skin settings option and can be used individually or in combination with each other. Artwork provided by a 'Backend' server will always take precedence over the 'Skin Helper Script' and 'Local Artwork', unless this option has been disabled.

If your backend server already provides PVR Artwork, you might not want to use options 2 or 3, but bear in mind the Skin Helper Script also displays other info as well for Live TV and PVR items, such as 'IMDB Star Ratings', 'First Aired Date/Movie Premiered Date' and 'Movie/TV Show classification rating'.
By using local artwork, you will get additional features such as 'Next' programme poster artwork on the 'Now/Next view', Poster and Landscape artwork for TV Recordings and also 'Next-Up' banner artwork appearing shortly before the next Live TV show begins.
Disabling all 3 options will result in the default poster artwork being displayed.

Premiere Flags on the EPG Screen
The new 'PVR Settings' heading on the Skin settings has an option to display actual premiere flags on the EPG screen instead of using an '*'.
The flags shown are as follows:-

'Live' - A Orange coloured flag represents a Live TV Broadcast such as sport or news event.
'New' - A Yellow coloured flag represents a TV programme that has been identified as 'New'.
'Prem' - A Red Coloured 'Prem' Flag represents a 'TV Premiere' where the Season and Episode number are equal to 'S01E01' *
'Prem' - A Green Coloured 'Prem' Flag represents a 'Season Premiere' where the Episode number is equal to E01 and the season number is higher than season S01, eg 'S02E01' or 'S03E01'.
'Fin' - A Blue coloured flag represents a season finale.

* This flag is not completely bulletproof, as sometimes S01E01 could be a repeat and therefore might not be true TV Premiere, ie something never broadcast before.

Known Issues
The following items are currently known as issues:-

Auto Close OSD option listed under the 'General' heading on the skin settings is currently a WIP and not working. (Added to skin 7th July 22)
Movie/TV Show classification ratings on all Flix views (Currently only working for UK ratings).
Green Season Premiere Flag (Currently working upto season 5 only).
Possible issue with Black Colour theme. (Removed April 2022)

Things to do

Tidy up code on OSD window. (Completed April 2022. New OSD and Info Panels introduced)
Update language strings.
Finnish off re-sizing some of the colourised media flags.
Add support for A-Z search on Video and Music library views.

Download Link
Skin is only available on Matrix currently and can be directly downloaded from here:-
EstuaryPVR+ Skin (Matrix)

Thanks and Credits

Many thanks to @phil65, the original author of the default Estuary skin.
Thanks to Team Kodi for maintaining the Estuary skin, which I've found to be great base for this project and improving my skinning knowledge.
Many thanks to @Guilouz for letting me use his OSD Actor List and Live TV Next-UP custom windows on this skin.
Thanks to @Angelinas for helping out with my skinning questions.
Thanks to @black_eagle and @ontap for assisting with the testing.
And a very special thanks to @bsoriano who I owe a huge amount of gratitude to for helping me get set-up on the GitHub and with my many skinning questions.

Dumyat

Configuring Local PVR Artwork
If you want to use the local PVR artwork feature on this skin, you will first need to create a main artwork directory (Mine is called 'PVR (New) Art'). This directory will hold all your Live TV Programme folders that are named exactly the same way as they are on the EPG screen in Kodi. Each programme folder will then hold each artwork type for that specific show or movie, as shown below:-

Once you've created your main artwork directory and started adding your programme folders and artwork, you can then specify the local PVR artwork directory by navigating to:- Settings>>>Interface>>>Skin>>>Configure Skin>>>PVR Settings>>>Set Path For Local PVR Artwork.
You will also need to enable the local artwork option immediately above the local path.

Your local artwork will then appear instantly on the various PVR screens if the programme exists in your current guide data. I find one of the best benefits of using local artwork is you have total control over your PVR artwork. If you get bored of seeing the same poster artwork for a particular programme, just delete the poster.jpg in the programme folder and replace it with your new preferred choice and it will appear instantly.

General Tips When Using Local PVR Artwork
One of the quickest ways I've found to add local artwork is to install the Skin Helper Script and set a download folder in the settings. I would highly recommend using a different directory to your local PVR artwork directory specified in Kodi for the following reasons:-

1) Sometimes the SHS might not actually find any artwork to download simply because it does not exist or there is a problem with the programme title on the EPG data. In these instances, an empty programme folder is still downloaded to the SHS directory, which is pretty worthless and not something you would want to include in your active PVR artwork directory.

2) Artwork downloaded to the directory specified in the SHS settings seems to only have limited lifespan and will get deleted after a period of time. Obviously, you don't want this happen, so to avoid this, just copy and paste all the downloaded artwork from the SHS directory to your actual PVR artwork directory specified in Kodi. That means you retain everything for your own PVR usage and nothing ever gets deleted.

Limitations
Whilst I do find using local artwork very useful for my own Live-TV setup on Kodi, particularly as my backend server does not provide any artwork there are some limitations as well:-
1) Special characters such as ?, :, and programme items ending with multiple full stops means you cannot create a programme folder as Windows 11 will not allow these characters to be used when naming folders. I don't think the same restrictions apply to Linux, so maybe those users would be unaffected. Not sure about other operating systems. The Skin Helper Script will identfy programmes that are broadcasting 'Now' and display artwork, but 'Next-Up' programmes are not supported.

2) Programmes in the EPG with the same title, ie a movie and a TV show sharing the same name perhaps (Lethal Weapon as a quick example). There is no way to have 2 programme folders with the same name.

3) ) Local artwork can be quite heavy on hard drive resources over a period of time. I've been using local artwork for about 15 months now and my library of artwork has grown massively in that time. Currently, I have over 4.4K programme folders, 25.5K individual artwork types amounting to nearly to nearly 10GB of external hard drive space being used.

That being said, I had no PVR artwork previously which always bugged me. Now I have artwork running very successfully on 3 Kodi installations in my house using a smb connection, with very few programmes without any artwork for the current and next items. Until such time that a much better solution is developed, I'm happy to continue in this way.

For those interested, a full copy of my current PVR artwork directory is available to download from here:-
https://mega.nz/file/oX4EibTI#HOxA8CYpds...RofuMjp8WU

Bear in mind the size of this directory, so it might take upto 15-20 mins to download depending on your internet speed.
The programme folders are based on Radio Times guide data in the UK, so are all written in English. Obviously, the different artwork types are also in English. I suspect a very high percentage of these programme folders will also work fine for other English guide data sources/providers as well.
Best idea, give it a try.

Dumyat

# Reserved for future use.

Dumyat

# Reserved for future use.

**black_eagle** · 2022-01-07, 21:19

@Dumyat Great job!! Been using this since I can't remember when and all the family absolutely love it. PVR stuff is much better than in stock Estuary (IMO) and the other changes you have made to the OSD dialogs are great. Although I use Estuary for testing purposes, all my "production" installations (5 of them) are using your skin.

Fake CD is really clever and works with streaming radio as well as local music files, coloured flags look good, the whole thing is very polished. Of course, a skin is quite a personal thing and what one person considers beautiful might not match someone else's opinion. For us here though, EstuaryPVR+ is a must, so thank you very much!!

Dumyat · 2022-01-08, 02:16

Thanks for all the kind words and your help with the testing.
Glad your family also approve. Anything that gets the Wife Acceptance Factor has to be a bonus! Wink

Cheers...

Solo0815 · 2022-01-09, 13:26

Thanks for your skin.

There is a small "casesensitive"-bug in "View_509_Flix_Landscape" line 25:

xml:
<texture colordiffuse="primary_background">overlays/NetFlixOverlay3.png</texture>

doesn't work on casesensitive systems like Linux, Libre- or CoreELEC.
If you rename it to "netflixoverlay3.png" the overlay works.

The same for Flix_Large and Flix_Wide

**bsoriano** · 2022-01-09, 14:01

@Dumyat, very well done, congratulations on the skin!!!! It looks great, it runs really well, and I really enjoy the PVR changes that you have done. They have actually moved me to using PVR more Smile

In particular, the use of local artwork is one of my favorite features.

Please let me know if you need any help with the issues that you mentioned, and I will continue to use and test the skin.

Again, well done!

Best regards,

Bart

Dumyat · 2022-01-09, 17:01

(2022-01-09, 13:26)Solo0815 Wrote: Thanks for your skin.

There is a small "casesensitive"-bug in "View_509_Flix_Landscape" line 25:

Thanks very much for info @Solo0815
I will fix and push an update later today.
I take it everything else is working okay for you?

No doubt you've noticed already, but existing the guide works slightly differently with this skin to the default version. 1st 'Back' click takes you to the channel groups and 2nd 'Back' click actually exits the guide. Just means you can access channel groups from anywhere on the guide grid. If you are near the top of the guide you can use the 'UP' button to access the channel groups as well. When you are on the Channel Groups, pressing 'UP' will display the PVR sideblade.

Forgot to mention this on the 1st post.... Wink

Dumyat · (This post was last modified: 2022-01-10, 10:45 by Dumyat.)

(2022-01-09, 14:01)bsoriano Wrote: Please let me know if you need any help with the issues that you mentioned, and I will continue to use and test the skin.

Thanks for your kind words and continued support.
I'm glad you like everything.
I plan to also try and keep the link to my local PVR artwork updated, as I add more artwork to the directory. Who knows, the idea might catch on and more countries other than English can be added as well.
Thanks again for all your help. Very much appreciated Smile

Angelinas · (This post was last modified: 2022-01-09, 18:21 by Angelinas.)

@Dumyat, good job Smile

Lets try something new....I add thumb for Nexttitle.For now need to enable "pvr_art_google" in settings.And ad code in skin.
New version of SHS is on github
https://github.com/kodi-community-addons...9afb2c3fa0

Code:
$INFO[Window(home).Property(SkinHelper.ListItem.Art.NextTitle)]

And this is how look in your mod

*Sugestion
For focused channel as fallback image use thumb

Code:
Window(Home).Property(SkinHelper.ListItem.Art.thumb)

ontap · 2022-01-09, 20:40

When trying link above SHS , giving error on "metadautilis"

debutanker · 2022-01-09, 22:56

Give it a try with https://github.com/kodi-community-addons...-1.0.3.zip

ontap · 2022-01-09, 23:13

Cheers, but am using a mac and installing that version causes the "remote communications server" bug that happens using bingie skin on a mac , the skin starts trying to install multiple versions of kodi onto the mac .

Dumyat · (This post was last modified: 2022-01-10, 13:54 by Dumyat.)

(2022-01-09, 18:19)Angelinas Wrote: Lets try something new....I add thumb for Nexttitle.For now need to enable "pvr_art_google" in settings.And ad code in skin.
New version of SHS is on github
https://github.com/kodi-community-addons...9afb2c3fa0

Wow!.....Great stuff and much appreciated! Smile

NextUp artwork was the one thing really missing with the SHS!
I will give the new version a try later today.

Couple of other quick questions I've noticed with the SHS:-
1) Artwork on the OSD never appears when I first open a channel. However, if I switch channel, then it works fine. I wasn't sure if this is a bug or not?
2) I also noticed that SHS artwork didn't seem to work on DialogPVRChannelGuide and DialogPVRChannelsOSD. Are you able to confirm that SHS artwork is not possible on these dialogs? I wondered if previously, artwork was only possible with the old web service? I think I ended up removing SHS support on these dialogs currently.