Current State of VDR vs MythTV

[darrenmason]

I have decided that I will do a clean install for 710RC1 and I am considering switching to VDR.
I realise the VDR integration has been moving along with each 710 release but would like a few questions answered by someone that is actually using it, preferably in Australia as well (colinjones - I am sure you fit the bill)

Setup is (and will be) dedicated core with 4 (currently) MDs. Core has two DVB cards (Winfast 1000T) -  which are well supported by the current kernel and are autodetected successfully, and work well with MythTV.

Question 1) Does the current VDR integration support having all the tuner cards in a server and then multiple clients (MDs) utilising them - as MythTV does quite well?

Question 2) Does VDR have the same extent of recording options as MythTV for regular recordings (things like Pad the start/end, record from any channel etc. Is the interface for this entirely within linuxMCE?

Question 3) Particularly for Australia - Is the broadcasted EPG guide sufficient? Does it provide enough data or is it/should it/can it be suplemented with an external guide data source?

Question 4) Is viewing of recorded programs entirely though linuxMCE videos interface or can they be browsed/viewed through another interface? Also how does this work for programs that are still recording?

Question 5) Is there the equivalent of MythWeb for web based scheduling of recordings?

I will probably attempt to answer a lot of these with an install and test but I would like to save myself the effort if it is not quite there yet.

Thanks in advance

Darren

[caiman]

Darren,

according to this post from Michael: http://smart-home-blog.com/archives/1001 the VDR integration is not complete, e.g. you cannot use it independently on MD. For that reason I am going to switch back to Myth on my next install.

The answers to your questions should be "yes to all".

I stand to be corrected :-)
Sam

[colinjones]

Darren

Haven't installed RC1 yet....

3 - the EPG is somewhat patchy, with Channel 10 and SBS being the main offenders, but other than that, its quiet reasonable

4 - you can do all this through the vdr-admin web site (you need to install that manually in B4, but totallymaxed said that the intent is to include this, dunno if that has happened yet for RC1)

Col.

[totallymaxed]

Question 1) Does the current VDR integration support having all the tuner cards in a server and then multiple clients (MDs) utilising them - as MythTV does quite well?

Yes VDR supports this but currently inside LinuxMCE this is not automatically setup for you. The options here are to configure vdr yourself to do this or to wait until we have this available in an update.

Question 2) Does VDR have the same extent of recording options as MythTV for regular recordings (things like Pad the start/end, record from any channel etc. Is the interface for this entirely within linuxMCE?

I can't compare MythTV to VDR as i dont have any experience with Myth. But I can confirm that VDR has options to allow for the padding of the start/end time of recordings, can use VPS if it is supported by your TV stations, it can record from any channel on the MUX that a tuner is tuned to concurrently. Pressing F6 while watching Live TV will bring up the UI2 EPG/Channel guide which allows you to use a fully integrated UI2 media browser like interface to 'tumble' through channels, schedules for any channel and set recordings etc. TV recordings can accessed from the Videos screen in UI2. However there are still some VDR functions, menus that must be accessed from the vdr OSD interface... in the future we plan to integrate these too into UI2.

Question 3) Particularly for Australia - Is the broadcasted EPG guide sufficient? Does it provide enough data or is it/should it/can it be suplemented with an external guide data source?

VDR supports external data sources for EPG data... but these require plugins to be added to vdr.

Question 4) Is viewing of recorded programs entirely though linuxMCE videos interface or can they be browsed/viewed through another interface? Also how does this work for programs that are still recording?

you can view recorded programs from the Videos menu screen... they will appear along side ripped DVD's and any other video content you have stored on your core. However if you playback a VDR recording from the Videos menu screen while that recording is still underway then LinuxMCE will only be able to play back that recording up to the point the recording was at when you pressed 'Play'. However if you use VDR internal Play Back capability then you can start playing a current recording and VDR will do 'chase play' while the recording continues. Also currently he only way to use 'Live Pause' is from the internal VDR OSD interface.

Question 5) Is there the equivalent of MythWeb for web based scheduling of recordings?

Yes there is and its called vdradmin-am. I have written some Wiki notes on installing and configuring vdradmin-am here; http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Vdradmin-am

Hope the above helps.

Andrew

[colinjones]

Andrew - do the channel up/down buttons on remote controls work yet instead of having to use the F6/tumble option? What about the record button?

[darrenmason]

Thanks for the responses. I am going to do an RC1 install on a separate HD solely for the purpose of some further VDR evaluation. I will do some research on configuring it manually for remote clients (MDs)

[totallymaxed]

Andrew - do the channel up/down buttons on remote controls work yet instead of having to use the F6/tumble option? What about the record button?

Hi Colin,

Yes channel up/down is now correctly mapped... as is the the 'Record' button :-)

All the best

Andrew

[jayzee]

Hi Andrew,

you mention

Question 1) Does the current VDR integration support having all the tuner cards in a server and then multiple clients (MDs) utilising them - as MythTV does quite well?

"Yes VDR supports this but currently inside LinuxMCE this is not automatically setup for you. The options here are to configure vdr yourself to do this or to wait until we have this available in an update."

How long away is this update, will it be with the full release?

If this is the case is it a massive job to get the tv on the mds in its current state if I check around the VDR forums a bit, is there a plugin i should be checking out?

cheers
jay

[totallymaxed]

Hi Andrew,

you mention

Question 1) Does the current VDR integration support having all the tuner cards in a server and then multiple clients (MDs) utilising them - as MythTV does quite well?

"Yes VDR supports this but currently inside LinuxMCE this is not automatically setup for you. The options here are to configure vdr yourself to do this or to wait until we have this available in an update."

How long away is this update, will it be with the full release?

If this is the case is it a massive job to get the tv on the mds in its current state if I check around the VDR forums a bit, is there a plugin i should be checking out?

cheers
jay

There are plenty of examples of how to do this on the VDR wiki... Streamdev plugin is one route... but the complexity is not in that area its in making the whole thing work inside LinuxMCE. As with Myth doing these things when VDR is main or only application you want to have at the centre of your system is relatively easy... making it all play well inside LinuxMCE is the issue.

Andrew

[nite_man]

I use external EPG for Russian channels in my VDR. The script gets data from web with VDR format and then using SVDRP commands. In that case VDR shouldn't be restarted to refresh EPG.

The problem can be with using more then one card with VDR. Its design doesn't allow to connect each card to the different LNB - http://tinyurl.com/3sgd35. So, one way to solve that is SourceCaps patch - http://tinyurl.com/6pgvqs. All information is on German. So, maybe burgiman will help us to understand it and apply it on the next VDR release. Because we don't have VDR sources to apply that patch (discussion about applying that path on the version 1.6.0 - http://tinyurl.com/6qgbx9).

Regarding to using VDR on the client I have some idea. It can be done with streamdev-server on the LinuxMCE core and streamdev-client on the client PC. The client PC can be any Linux machine with VDR (I'm trying to use AppleTV with Kubutu 7.10). Unfortunately it won't be MD but using plugins such mplayer, dvd and mp3 it can get media content from the core. Also streamdev-client will allow to switch channels, control recording etc. As I see this is only one way to have a multiroom TV system with LinuxMCE and VDR.