[chris007]

Hello!

So I've been playing with this since yesterday. Some background. I've been using Media Center under Windows 7 for several years now (Ever since I knew I could use a CableCard and stop paying the cable companies an obscene amount of money) with a HDHomeRune Prime. I've never had a unified experience with Media Center but we lived with it (Not being able to watch Recorded TV that was still in progress on a secondary TV was a bit of a bummer!) Well - I just heard that Media Center will no longer be supported so I started looking at my alternatives now.

I first started on the road by realizing I needed to figure out what I wanted to do in terms of my client/server setup (backend/frontend). I decided it would be best to put MythTV into a virtual machine using HyperV (currently on my workstation but will end up building a dedicated server for it in the future, and will be able to easily move it to another box) I installed MythBuntu - I tried to "demo" the setup without subscribing or paying for any EPG Services, but got nowhere slowly.. I ended up signing up to Schedules Direct for the EPG and ended up with a 7 day trial! Nice!... So, after this point my progress sped up quickly. Channels lined up and I was able to open Kodi from my Windows PC and tune the channels. Tuning is a bit slower than media center, but something I think I can live with. At this point my "lab" was done.

At this point I need to work on replacing my two HTPC's with Kodi, now running Windows7/Media Center. I loaded Kodi on top of Windows on my upstairs HTPC. I immediately noticed the cursor and video was a bit sluggish. Possibly something I could live with. I then enable the PVR Client and watch Live TV. Audio and Video not matching up. This was not going to work. At this point I considered using KodiBuntu - It's been 15 years since I've used Linux, so I was a bit hesitant! I ended up loading it and almost immediately regret it.

Long story short. The ISO I downloaded for KodiBuntu was version 14, when I downloaded the mythtv pvr client (via the wiki using the sudo apt-get install command) the PVR Client and Live TV would not properly enable - crashing Kodi. The reason was not obvious. I reloaded KodiBuntu a second time but this time received a message that I may have neglected the first time, stating that version 15 was available. I did a little research and updated to Kodi 15, uninstalled and reinstalled the MythTV PVR Client and all was well.

Video performance was NOT an issue on this PC with Kodibuntu installed. I customized only a few settings in regard to Live TV - added a few video libraries, and found a skin I really liked.

I'm REALLY happy with this solution. All around. User experience, backend setup... I try to think of things that will cause my headaches.

What would it be like to recreate this solution from scratch?
How will my wife and kids like navigating?

I'm satisfied on both fronts. The test will come soon!


I'm posting this moreso as a great experience I had in the end with these products. But also - more importantly! I'm curious where I should go from here. I'm sure i'll get a dozen different answers (hopefully) but that's what i'm looking for. What do YOU do with your Kodi/MythTV installation? What am I missing? Should I add anything? Customize anything?

LOVE MYTHTV Commercial stripping
LOVE KODI's youtube trailers for video's I've downloaded.

my ONLY regret is not setting this up sooner!!

[lovemachine]

I'm in the middle of a similar redo, switching from WMC on a big Win7 PC to a new Kodi/PVR backend on a lightweight haswell ChromeBox. I went the KodiBuntu route first, but being a Linux N00b I didn't like the hyperminimalist interface, and I had a feeling I'd bork getting MythTV installed. I wiped it and installed MythBuntu, and much prefer the interface. Got Myth up and running and talking to Kodi, but video performance was choppy (possibly this distro doesn't have the latest VAAPI drivers?) and I could only get 2.0 sound. I might be completely misconstruing this, but it seem MythBuntu sets up PulseAudio, vs. KodiBuntu that uses Alsa (?). With KodiBuntu, I had great video/audio without any tweaking. With MythBuntu, I had a great PVR ready to go. I'm looking at ways of getting the best of both.

Chris007, can I ask, are you getting DTS-HD, etc. bitstreaming in Kodi? As I read it, you started with MythBuntu and loaded KodiBuntu on top of that, yes? I haven't tried any such layered installs, but given your success I might try it soon. I ask in the hopes of getting the GUI and PVR of MythBuntu with the audio/video features of KodiBuntu. I know OpenElec is better for Linux-virgins, but it's a bit too minimalist (I'll do other things besides HTPC on it).

Edit: Whoops! Looks like I misread your post. The Linux machine just had a KodiBuntu install, yes?

[gnicko]

Hey guys, congrats! One thing you might take a look at when using MythTV and Kodi together is MythicalLibrarian.... automatically handles your library and adds recordings, etc. just how you'd expect. Killer script! (http://kodi.wiki/view/MythicalLibrarian)

I think you might be "over-thinking" all of this..."Mythbuntu" and "Kodibuntu" are actually whole operating systems and you're not going to get very pleasing results from trying to install one O/S over the top of another one on the same box. What will happen is you'll overwrite everything and just end up with whatever you did last. You'd need to install each on its own computer (or maybe a virtual computer) to make it work I imagine.

Actually, the "buntus" are kind of over-kill for doing what you're looking to do. It would be far superior (and maybe easier) to just install Linux (Ubuntu if you wish, but actually I recommend Xubuntu...since you seem to be "Windows guys" and because of a lot of other reasons.) and then install Mythtv and Kodi on top of that as the stand-alone programs they were meant to be.

Once you have a good, "normal" installation of Linux, installing Mythtv and Kodi is usually just a matter of selecting the install files from the appropriate repositories...maybe takes 10-15 minutes total, and the resulting system should be more stable and versatile than one of these prefabricated, one-trick pony "*buntus". There are a few details in getting things configured properly, but nothing really, really "scarry" that can't be tackled pretty easily in a few minutes and a couple of shots with Google.

I've used the "*buntu" tailored systems before, and your mileage may vary, but I found them to be a bit "flaky" and hard to maintain. They seem to be good for "proof of concept" but not really "production ready" in my opinion. Simply put, they do save you some work up front, but very quickly they're more trouble than they're worth.

To get to the rest of your inquiry:

I run MythTV backend on a "large" server running Debian and a bunch of HTPCs running Xubuntu and Set Top Boxes running OpenElec. I also "feed" MythTV live television from SiliconDust HomerunHD tuners and Leaf antennas. This arrangement works very, very well for us. By keeping all the Kodi installations on the same version (currently 15.0 and 15.1) I can sync them all to a central MySQL database on the Debian server a nd keep things quite nicely synchronized in "damn-near" real time.

The whole system works great...wife, kids and grand-kids all love it. We've dropped cable entirely and now see commercials so rarely that they've become somewhat of a novelty that we (kind of) look forward to catching one once in a while. I've even got things set up to watch Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc. with no worries. (http://www.playon.tv/) and (https://www.virtualbox.org/)

[ikke-t]

You'll probably love the fact that you can soon run your media center on almost all devices. Kodi runs on android too, and many devices like RaspberryPi. So like in our household all smartphones, and few tablets, and two old TVs boosted with RasPi can run the same Kodi. Not only the "main" TV with PC. And BTW, the PC is Ubuntu, the very same installation has been there for at least 7 years, always updated to new LTS once such become available.

[nickr]

I have had myth running for years now, originally with mythfrontend clients, but now use kodi on all my frontends. Great setup.

PS you don't need a flash backend, mine is a Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz with 4G ram and it is more than adequate. Its a second hand hp workstation with lots of sata ports. Not only my mythbackend, but stores all my ripped/downloaded media.

[gnicko]

PS you don't need a flash backend,.....

Yeah... true. But it makes for running VMs and transcoding, etc. so much more better!

[nickr]

I have no need for VMs or transcoding.

[earthtorob]

I seriously just typed out this long ass post and didn't post it.

Anyway, has anybody had any luck using Mythtv + MythLibrarian + Emby to move video to Emby shares? I was thinking about doing that.

[nickr]

Not a kodi question is it?

[earthtorob]

Not a kodi question is it?

Yeah.....I talked about that in that "long ass post" I didn't post.

Since people are bragging about their current system in this thread, has anybody (Insert Rob's question here).

I mean dude.....The thread is even named "Kodibuntu and Mythbuntu - Success!"

[nickr]

I googled mythlibrarian and found mythicallibrarian, which is a kodi addon.

So I guess that makes it kodi relevant!

[gnicko]

Not really a Kodi addon. It's a script you add in to MythTV to handle recordings and shuffle them off to your library. It is designed to work with Kodi (XMBC) but it isn't installed in with Kodi.
I've been using it for years. It's pretty good...gets it right about 90-95% of the time, although it doesn't seem to be as accurate as it would be if it just used the program data that Myth downloads for the program guide.

I imagine it might be of some use with Emby...but it wouldn't integrate as closely. You might be better off just mapping Emby to your storage location(s) or mapping the Myth storage locations to where Emby "looks" for stuff and be done with it.

[earthtorob]

I googled mythlibrarian and found mythicallibrarian, which is a kodi addon.

So I guess that makes it kodi relevant!

I'm pretty sure I'm always going to stick with Kodi. Even if somebody released a fully integrated server that does everything with your media automatically and even some really great file system that supported lots of big drives, if it didn't support Kodi, then I'd do things the hard way. I love Kodi that much.

But I still need a server and video capture. So I'm asking what all the wonderful kodi users are using for their back end. I didn't come here to ask that question. But people were talking about their back ends here. So I figured I'd ask.

[earthtorob]

Not really a Kodi addon. It's a script you add in to MythTV to handle recordings and shuffle them off to your library. It is designed to work with Kodi (XMBC) but it isn't installed in with Kodi.
I've been using it for years. It's pretty good...gets it right about 90-95% of the time, although it doesn't seem to be as accurate as it would be if it just used the program data that Myth downloads for the program guide.

I imagine it might be of some use with Emby...but it wouldn't integrate as closely. You might be better off just mapping Emby to your storage location(s) or mapping the Myth storage locations to where Emby "looks" for stuff and be done with it.

Thanks. I'm currently using a windows box for a file server (which I might change to one of those nifty Open Nas out there) I populate the Metadata with Media Center Master and it somehow acquires Tv Show through some method I am unfamiliar with. Because my library has gotten so large, and hard for a Raspberry to manage, I decided to use Emby to handle that. Now I've added Mythtv and I'd like to get MythicalLibrarian to dump the video into my server shares where Emby and Kodi can pick them up.

Do you have a simpler way? Or do I need to fight with MythicalLibrarian?

[gnicko]

Thanks. I'm currently using a windows box for a file server (which I might change to one of those nifty Open Nas out there) I populate the Metadata with Media Center Master and it somehow acquires Tv Show through some method I am unfamiliar with. Because my library has gotten so large, and hard for a Raspberry to manage, I decided to use Emby to handle that. Now I've added Mythtv and I'd like to get MythicalLibrarian to dump the video into my server shares where Emby and Kodi can pick them up.

Do you have a simpler way? Or do I need to fight with MythicalLibrarian?

I think you're on the right track.... MythicalLibrarian isn't much of a fight (at least on a Linux box) I'm not sure it will work on a Windows box. I know MythTV doesn't run very well on Windows, but I guess some people have done it. You might consider a Linux box to run MythTV and also store the library files on.

Here's a link for ML info: http://kodi.wiki/view/MythicalLibrarian
Another Info Link: http://www.noahswint.com/2012/08/integra...xxbmc.html
GitHub repository for ML: https://github.com/gnickoloff/mythicallibrarian

MythTV/MythicalLibrarian will work just fine as a backend to multiple Kodi installations. That's how I have my house set up. It works great. MythicalLibrarian will reach out and acquire the Metadata, rename your recordings and move them to the Library while updating the Myth database automatically. MythTV handles the "whole library" once you get it all settled in place. I'm not sure how Emby fits into the whole system...it seems unnecessary once you get Myth and MythicalLibrarian running.

Good luck... let me know if you need any help, etc.