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krustyreturns · 2012-09-04, 17:56

I have read on this forum that Windows Media Center cannot be pursued as a backend for PVR. Is this primarily because of technical reasons or legal reasons?

margro · 2012-09-04, 18:19

Well, as far as I know, there is no documentation available on how to access / control the WMC backend (Windows Media Center Receiver Service) from your own application so that is why...

krustyreturns · 2012-09-04, 18:37

(2012-09-04, 18:19)margro Wrote: Well, as far as I know, there is no documentation available on how to access / control the WMC backend (Windows Media Center Receiver Service) from your own application so that is why...

There is no documentation, but if you google hard enough and do a lot of reflection you can figure it out. I know how to read WMC's epg data and schedule recordings (episodes and series), from c# code directly to WMC's service. Is there more to it than that? Other than live-tv, which I have not played with.

So as far as you know, there is no legal reason why I can't use wmc as my backend? I can't think of why there would be, but just checking why nobody has pursued it.

margro · 2012-09-04, 23:02

Well, that would be a starting point for a partial pvr addon (without live tv). The preferred programming language for pvr addons is (still) C/C++. If you really need to access a .NET API, you could use some managed C++ code (only a bit slow when loading the addon but I've tested this a while ago against the 4Therecord API and it does work).

krustyreturns · 2012-09-05, 00:46

I don't see why I couldn't port it to c++, I prefer c# though. I was hoping I only needed to provide an interface to the recording service, I guess through an addon, how naive is that? I also know that there were issues with xbmc playing wtv files, but in my testing it seems that post eden builds play wtv just fine. A workaround is needed for the file naming conventions.

I am very new to xbmc and not sure what to look at first. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

jajoflo · 2012-09-05, 02:30

Have looked at the sdk?
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/...89066.aspx

All com object are more or less (More less than more Big Grin

) documented.

krustyreturns · 2012-09-05, 04:44

I'm not sure why you posted that link - programming WMC I have done a lot of, its xbmc I need help with. Maybe you meant the link for someone else? Thanks for the interest though.

Livin · 2012-09-06, 00:17

I use wmc as my 'backend'. I never go into the native wmc ui, in windows... I watch all the recordings using XBMC.

I setup recordings, and delete them, using a free Web ui called Remote Potato and a free Android app called Remote Media Center.

It works perfectly.

If there was a true integration into XBMC I'd love to use it. Imo no other purpose works as well and is as fool proof.

krustyreturns · 2012-09-06, 01:38

That is really interesting, I knew about those apps but hadn't realized that they could solve this problem in a "remote" way (I wonder if it runs on a Fire...).

For that matter you can use xbmc to launch wmc, setup a recording, and jump back into xbmc when you are done. Essentially that's my solution for Netflix in xbmc, I use xbmc to go straight into wmc-netflix, and I wrote a little wmc add-on so that when I back out of netflix with the "back" button it pops you back into xbmc. It makes wmc feel like a netflix app.

So are you converting your recorded programs out of wtv format for xbmc? If so, what software are you using? If not, how do you handle the weird file names wmc uses for recorded files?

Livin · 2012-09-06, 02:53

XBMC plays wtv files directly

krustyreturns · 2012-09-06, 04:03

But xbmc can't scrape info on the video or organize them, due to the naming conventions that wmc uses, right? When I tried it I just got a list of wtv files with strange names.

**joebrady** · 2012-09-06, 05:04

MCE Buddy converts and renames I believe.

Jamesy · 2012-09-18, 15:29

I have Googled around and not found a suitable answer for this as of yet.

I installed XBMC (Eden 2012-03-21, latest Current Stable Release) this week on my old WinVista32 media box running MCE. XBMC is an awesome thing indeed - it even play .wtv files by browsing to the directory and clicking play. No wtv episode info but that is alright by me. It even is stripping out the commercials without me running the files through a program like MCEBuddy or ComSkip - Wow!!!

The issue I am having is I can only play up until 21 minutes in any given video file and then XBMC jumps back to the file menu. The files in question are news shows recorded from a SD feed and the one hour show (XBMC now shows as 44 mins) is 2.3GB and a three hour show is almost 7GB.

Is there a buffer setting that needs tweaking? Should I try one of the nightly builds? Since it is primarily news I am after I don't think running the files through a conversion process is practical. We love the fact that commercials are magically stripped from the file on the fly.

Thanks in advance.

krustyreturns · 2012-09-21, 01:54

I found the same problem. It has to do with the version of ffmpeg that Eden uses. You can fix the problem by using a prerelease build of frodo. I have been using frodo alpha 3 with no problems.

Jamesy · 2012-09-23, 17:00

(2012-09-21, 01:54)krustyreturns Wrote: I found the same problem. It has to do with the version of ffmpeg that Eden uses. You can fix the problem by using a prerelease build of frodo. I have been using frodo alpha 3 with no problems.

Thanks for this - I installed frodo alpha 3 on one machine running an ION2 (ASUS EEPC 1501P) and the video is perfect but there is no audio at all coming out of XBMC. I found this post related to issues with ION GPU's but I don't know if that is the issue.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=124600&page=65

I will try frodo alpha 3 on my main HTPC that has an ATI 4650 GPU and see if the same issue persists.