Jellyfin / NextPVR Setup

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Jellyfin / NextPVR Setup

askelon

866 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#296146 25-May-2022 10:10

Until fairly recently Ive been running Mediaportal on my main computer in the lounge connected to the TV. I decided to check out NextPVR which Ive tried on and off over the years hoping for something to replace MP since its not really aging all that well. Ive been running Jellyfin on the same computer and having my Android TV box connecting to that. Since there was no real (reliable) way of getting MP TV Server to talk to anything else NextPVR was my next stop.

I found they had released a new UIDroid app for Android TV so I switched off MP, got NPVR up and going and chucked the new app on both my Android TV boxes. New app works well but it did cause my boxes to reboot from time to time while watching live TV.

My next thought was why not see if NVPR has a good working plugin for Jellyfin's Live TV features.

Glad to say as of right now it does! I upgraded my Jellyfin to the latest beta (1.8 beta 3 from memory) as there was a new plugin for 1.8 in the works. Installed the plugin on Jellyfin, buggered around till I found out the settings I needed to change - to be honest theres only like half a dozen things you can change in the plugin, I found I needed to untick the transcoding to get it to work.

So for the last week Ive been running it as the main TV system for the house and its working very well. Jellyfins interface works well for what I want. No more reboots/crashes. This weekend I even completely uninstalled Mediaportal off the TV computer and its relegated to a media server now rather than something actively used. Changing channels is a little slow (Im guessing its buffering) but its fine.

So my basic setup now is as follows:

Desktop Computer in the lounge:

Windows 10
Jellyfin / NextPVR connected to a dual DVB-T tuner (my third tuner wont work with NPVR)
Lots of HDD space

2x Xiaomi MiBox-S Android TV boxes

Everything just works!

Long term Id maybe install docker on the computer and run all my apps via that but its not really a biggie and it can definitely wait until the computer needs a rebuild!

Is it the perfect setup? Probably not? But it does what I want, eliminates the upset flatmates scenario when they bugger up changing inputs (from the old computer to the android TV and vice versa), it allows me one less app on my boxes.

While I did like Mediaportal and did run it for a good 15+ years I didnt see it really going in any real direction that was improving it. Mediaportal 2 just never really worked that well for me leaving me running 1 for pretty much the duration.

davidcole

6011 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#2918310 25-May-2022 12:03

I did look at letting jellyfin handle the live tv natively.....but it seems a little flaky and I didn't use recording enough to put nextpvr back down as another contianer.

Previously known as psycik

Home Assistant: Gigabyte AMD A8 Brix, Home Assistant with Aeotech ZWave Controller, Raspberry PI, Wemos D1 Mini, Zwave, Shelly Humidity and Temperature sensors
Media:Chromecast v2, ATV4 4k, ATV4, HDHomeRun Dual
Server Host Plex Server 3x3TB, 4x4TB using MergerFS, Samsung 850 evo 512 GB SSD, Proxmox Server with 1xW10, 2xUbuntu 22.04 LTS, Backblaze Backups, usenetprime.com fastmail.com Sharesies Trakt.TV Sharesight

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

PANiCnz

984 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2918535 25-May-2022 17:20

Did you consider using Kodi as your frontend? Its got plugins to integrate with both Jellyfin and NextPVR.

tuxfoo

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2919623 27-May-2022 23:54

I have been using Jellyfin for a few years, except I use it with TVHeadend (With IPTV and the TV tuner as a failover).

The live TV functionality with Jellyfin has improved.

There are some annoying issues I have noticed with LiveTV via the web browser and Jellyfin Roku app:

It is slow loading channels
Lack of rules based recording
Switching channels is a pain
Unnecessary transcoding, it should just direct stream from tvheadend.

I second @PANiCnz, at the very least kodi is an excellent Jellyfin Client.

The Jellyfin for Kodi app works really well as Jellyfin client, it syncs your watched list and everything.

There is also a TVheadend plugin(and probably NextPVR) for Kodi, it works a lot better than Jellyfin. No transcoding, easy rules based scheduling, fast loading channels, easy to switch between them and see whats on another channels.

askelon

866 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#2919671 28-May-2022 11:09

tuxfoo:

I have been using Jellyfin for a few years, except I use it with TVHeadend (With IPTV and the TV tuner as a failover).

The live TV functionality with Jellyfin has improved.

There are some annoying issues I have noticed with LiveTV via the web browser and Jellyfin Roku app:

It is slow loading channels
Lack of rules based recording
Switching channels is a pain
Unnecessary transcoding, it should just direct stream from tvheadend.
I second @PANiCnz, at the very least kodi is an excellent Jellyfin Client.

The Jellyfin for Kodi app works really well as Jellyfin client, it syncs your watched list and everything.

There is also a TVheadend plugin(and probably NextPVR) for Kodi, it works a lot better than Jellyfin. No transcoding, easy rules based scheduling, fast loading channels, easy to switch between them and see whats on another channels.

It is a little slow at switching channels - around 10 seconds. Compared with instantly on the uidroid. But its acceptable so far. I havent noticed anything unusual so far with scheduling recording. I tend to do it from the nextpvr web ui though as Im the only one that really records anything and I'll just set it from my desktop. I havent found switching channels / bringing up the guide etc to be difficult / problematic at all yet. Ive heard no yelling or complaints from the loungeroom so its pretty good. I thought about Kodi but really its overkill for what I want and more prone to issues. If it was just for me then maybe. But then again I like the simplicity of the Jellyfin client on Android TV.

davidcole

6011 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#2964917 9-Sep-2022 08:17

Anyone still using this? I just set up a nextpvr system (after not having one for a few years). Really impressed with that.

But got the jellyfin nextpvr plugin. I run jellyfin and nextpvr on same linux box.

One thing I cant seem to get working is recordings playback in jellyfin. And when I look at the logs I set it trying to pull a recording via http, I thought it would figure out the filename for it, as it's local.

Any thoughts?

EDIT: turned on unauthenticated access to recordings in nextpvr and that got playback working. Does anyone know if you can scrub through a video? ie I wantto jump to 27 mins and it doesn't seem to do it.

askelon

866 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#2964967 9-Sep-2022 10:21

I scrapped it and went back to seperate jellyfin / nextpvr apps on my devices. While it did work (except for recordings playback) it was more trouble than it was worth whereas their new app just works. I found jellyfin wanted to transcode the nextpvr stuff no matter what. While I was switching to seperate apps I also scrapped my DVB-T tuners and went pure streaming. Far far far less issues since then.

davidcole

6011 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#2965019 9-Sep-2022 11:53

askelon:

I scrapped it and went back to seperate jellyfin / nextpvr apps on my devices. While it did work (except for recordings playback) it was more trouble than it was worth whereas their new app just works. I found jellyfin wanted to transcode the nextpvr stuff no matter what. While I was switching to seperate apps I also scrapped my DVB-T tuners and went pure streaming. Far far far less issues since then.

Yeah Ok, yeah was considering that, as there is apple tv nextpvr apps. And swiftfin for apple tv doesn't yet support any live tv