Re: [gentoo-user] Opinions on DVR/PVR backend?

[taii...@gmx.com]

So you know the RPI is not open source as the RPI foundation doesn't 
provide firmware sources.
Proprietary firmware is required to boot and fully use the device as the 
RPI foundation only cares about open source when it is convenient to them.


I would consider purchasing another device, of which legitimately open 
source low power ARM devices are a dime a dozen (vs the high performance 
realm where POWER's TALOS 2 or rare developer boards are the only choice)

Re: [gentoo-user] Opinions on DVR/PVR backend?

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Jan 26, 2018 at 11:29 AM, Grant Edwards
 wrote:
>
> The main backend options seem to be MythTV, Plex, and TVHeadend.
>

You seem to understand the pros/cons fairly well.

I moved from MythTV to Plex about two years ago, but as a result of
moving from DVR to discrete media files, which MythTV was a poor fit
for.  The DVR service is new for Plex and I've never tried it, though
it would be free for me to use (I have a lifetime Plex pass).  I don't
have any tuners set up at all right now and no easy ability to watch
LiveTV of any kind.

One pain I always had with MythTV was any time where I wanted to run
different distros on front-ends vs servers, because the protocol
changes from time to time and upstream does not support anything other
than all clients and servers running on the exact same build.  (In
reality it is more flexible than that, but protocol version changes
are not generally announced or managed because upstream really does
want everything on one build.)  So, running a Gentoo server and a
MythBuntu front-end is a constant source of pain with the versions
never being in-sync.

The thing I like about Plex is that upstream basically tries to keep
everything painless and "just working."  They do QA testing on all
their platforms/etc, and I've never had a situation so far where my
server wouldn't talk to one of my clients.  I use a Roku client, an
android client, my android client casting to a chromecast, and the web
client.  I've messed with the windows desktop client as well.  They've
all always "just worked" with the auto-updates on all the various
platforms, and I just update my server about once a month (I think I
have that running in an Arch container on my main Gentoo box). Plex
also seems to handle media in whatever format I already have it in
fairly flexibly - I rarely have to rename files or anything like that.

Now, MythTV in general is going to be more flexible with DVR
capabilities, since it does have a database you can poke around in,
and more of an API/etc.  And of course it is open source so you really
can patch whatever you want into it.

In a pure DVR world I might still be running MythTV.  I'd certainly
evaluate Plex though.  I'm not sure how easy it is to evaluate Plex
DVR without paying something though.

-- 
Rich

[gentoo-user] Opinions on DVR/PVR backend?

[Grant Edwards]

I think it's about time to replace my SageTV DVR/PVR system, so I'm
looking for opinions and recommendations for a DVR backend to run on a
Gentoo desktop machine.

Some Background...

For many years, I ran a dedicated, combined frontend/backend MythTV
system (usually a Debian install).  Then I switched to a mac-mini
frontend booting a dedicated MythTV frontend distro from a USB flash
drive with the MythTV backend running on my general-purposed Gentoo
box.  I was never completely happy with the mac mini frontend, but it
was small and quiet and mostly worked.

After that (about 8 years ago) I switched to using the SageTV backend
on that same Gentoo box with SageTV brand custom frontend set-top
boxes.

About a year later, SageTV got bought by Google and mostly shut down.
Software continued to be updated for a few years, and EPG data was
kept flowing.  The software has since been open-sourced, but the
backend development has slowed and development/support for the set-top
boxes ended (there are some nagging set-top box problems that are
never going to get fixed). The "lifetime" free EPG data spigot for
SageTV got turned off last year.

SageTV is a large Java app with a bunch of custom libraries.  For now,
the tarball of JAR files and binaries works, but it's not a long-term
solution.  I tried building the SageTV backend under Gentoo and was
unsuccessful in an effort to produce an ebuild for it.  The build
system is a completely broken mess of shell-scripts and makes all
sorts of assumptions about development host library versions (it
requires a lot of ancient library versions).

And now...

I'm looking for opinions on a DVR backend to run on a desktop Gentoo
box.  Input is OTA ATSC via an Ethernet-connected tuner (SiliconDust
HDHomeRun).  The ideal set-top frontend would be Roku. I'd also really
like a good Android frontend.  My next choice for a set-top frontend
would probably be Kodi on Raspberry Pi 3B or Vero 4K HW.  I'm going to
pick up a RPi3 this weekend and start playing with Kodi (OSMC or
LibreELEC).

The main backend options seem to be MythTV, Plex, and TVHeadend.

 MythTV

Pros: Good feature set
  Open-source

Cons: It's a giant bloated mess that pulls in all sorts of Qt stuff
  Fragile frontend API/protocol that gets broken regularly
  Poor music player (the last time I tried it)
  Poor frontend support for Android.

 Plex

Pros: Roku frontend
  Good integration of existing media files
  Good support for Android

Cons: DVR support is new
  Closed source
  Commercial service

 TVHeadend

Pros: Lightweight
  Minimal dependencies
  Open-source
  Android frontend (I think)

Cons: Weak recording management
  Poor integration of existing media

There are minimal subscription costs for all three ($40/year for Plex,
$25/year for the others), so that's a push.

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! Youth of today!
  at   Join me in a mass rally
  gmail.comfor traditional mental
   attitudes!