Diving back in to HTPC (well, a server) world...

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Ajkiwi001

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#296309 7-Jun-2022 12:11

Righto, I'm considering diving back in, after years of not running my own HTPC/server as vodafone TV is due to stop service later this year.

For a decade, we ran a Windows Media Center, recorded and timeshifted everything, skipped the ads. As streaming came in, and due to the random EPG (and therefore WAF) hassles with WMC, we moved to vodafone TV, which added the streaming services and mostly worked for timeshifting and recording. We haven't watched an ad, really, in 15 years.

(I'll just interrupt myself here and say that I'm a media studies teacher and watch NZ content, and the WAF for streaming NZ content is not high, as my wife has had 15 years without adverts and does not like being forced to watch them by TVNZ on demand. Hence the love of timeshifting and recording. Right, back on topic.)

We need to be able to watch live (very very occasionally), record and timeshift TV (daily). Also, need to access all my blurays and DVDs, many of which are no longer available in NZ, & they are backed up on a NAS. We don't need sky.

We've got a one-year-old Sony Android TV, so can run all sorts of apps through that; with VTV dying, I know a lot of people are in the same boat as me and looking for the all-singing, all-dancing media center, or server that runs content to their smartTV.

So, my knowledge is out of date and I need an update: What are people using now, and what are the good choices with a high WAF/Family approval?

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3004 posts

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#2923517 7-Jun-2022 12:35

I use Emby, others use Plex. Plex is more popular. Emby is better (and I'm not in any way biased 😀)

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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xpd

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#2923521 7-Jun-2022 12:41

Emby, Plex, Jellyfin all have their + and -..... check them all out before making firm decision.

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rb99

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#2923523 7-Jun-2022 12:47

I presume you'll need some kind of tuner card to put in a PC (or a usb equivalent ?).

I use Emby to watch Live TV, occasionally record, never bothered with timeshifting (so don't know how good or bad that aspect is). Ditto for the other options I guess.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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davidcole

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#2923541 7-Jun-2022 13:25

both plex, emby, and to some extent (I haven't) had great success) jellyfin all support tuners.

Potentially save yourself some bother and use your tv to watch, either natively or with a media streamer (apple tv, shield tv, or some of the smaller androind tv boxes) and run a "server) in the back room with a tuner on it if you absolutely must record something.

A decent streaming box, however, will have apps for all the channels on FTV anyway, and the need to record something drops to near 0.

Previously known as psycik

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askelon

795 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#2923544 7-Jun-2022 13:44

I use jellyfin with a plugin for nextpvr for live/recorded TV. Works well.

gbwelly

1206 posts

Uber Geek

#2923611 7-Jun-2022 14:50

Ajkiwi001:

my wife has had 15 years without adverts and does not like being forced to watch them by TVNZ on demand. Hence the love of timeshifting and recording.

We are in the same boat (allergic to adverts). I went with Plex with HD Homerun tuner in the back room, Nvidia shield in the lounge. Windows Media Centre was the gold standard for DVRs (when it was working 100%) in my opinion.

I stopped using free to air tv on Plex after a room layout change meant I would have to move the aerial socket if I wanted to continue using the tuner.

My memories of it were that you couldn't do things like start watching a show that you were half way though recording, you had to let the recording complete. I did use the automatic advert skipping and perhaps that is why I couldn't just start the show before comskip had a chance to look at it, but I think the Live TV vs Recorded TV wasn't as seamless as it was on WMC.

sparky1685

79 posts

Master Geek

#2923626 7-Jun-2022 15:29

We have a raspberry pi 4 as a TV server, with a couple of cheap aliexpress usb dvb-t tuners plugged in, runningTV Headend. It records to the NAS, and a different Raspberry pi 3 is connected to the TV, running OSMC (a Kodi based OS) as a frontend.

I haven't tried this (because I don't want to mess with a working setup), but I think a single Raspberry Pi 4, running LibreELEC (a stripped-down OS that runs Kodi), with one or two DVB tuners plugged in, could connect to your TV and run both the server and the frontend. For recording, you could either attach a USB hard drive directly, or connect it via ethernet to your NAS.

There is a bit of fiddling around to set things up, but I know that LibreELEC is designed as an 'appliance' installation, where you write a disk image to SD card, then boot it up and do everything from within Kodi. The hardest part might be finding a Raspberry Pi for sale at the moment...

davidcole

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#2923657 7-Jun-2022 17:25

askelon:

I use jellyfin with a plugin for nextpvr for live/recorded TV. Works well.

do you set up recordings in jellyfin, or have to drop into nextpvr to do this?

allio

864 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2923725 7-Jun-2022 20:39

Seconding tvheadend with a Kodi frontend. I've been using it for 10+ years and find it far more powerful than the PVR stuff built into Plex etc. And it doesn't need a subscription.

fe31nz

1081 posts

Uber Geek

#2923784 8-Jun-2022 01:35

MythTV has always been better than Windows Media Center ever was and is still being developed. But it does not handle streaming in any useful manner. For TV recording it is tops. Installing it is a pain. Skipping ads is brilliantly easy.

https://www.mythtv.org

The easiest way to make a MythTV system is to install Ubuntu (Xubuntu is probably best) and install the MythTV packages on that, using the Mythbuntu repository. Since it is based on Linux, you can use an older machine that is now insufficient to run Windows on. For a small system, 4 Gibytes of RAM. For a massive system like mine, 8 Gibytes is sufficient. Add some tuners (minimum 2 for any reasonable use) and storage - several terabytes recommended, but that depends on how you want to use it. And it does best with a decent video card that can offload a lot of the processing (H.264 specifically for NZ, MPEG2 and H.265 for content from other places). The cheapest Nvidia (GT1030, preferably fanless) is excellent - MythTV does not use much bandwidth to the video card. The builtin GPUs in modern Intel processors should also be fine, and reportedly also lower end AMD GPUs but I have never tried one myself. You do want to have an IR (or Bluetooth) remote - the MythTV interface is all oriented to use via a remote control ("10 foot interface").

askelon

795 posts

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#2923833 8-Jun-2022 09:27

davidcole:

do you set up recordings in jellyfin, or have to drop into nextpvr to do this?

Scheduling recording doesnt seem to work atm via Jellyfin with npvr. I only record a couple of shows and have them on a schedule anyway so it hasnt been a big problem for me so far. Playback is fine though. Only issue I have with it is if a user doesnt have delete permissions for their jellyfin account they cant delete the recordings! Which I guess makes sense - I have separate users so they have their own trakt accounts etc.

PANiCnz

936 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2924032 8-Jun-2022 17:48

I've personally found the Live TV capabilities in Plex/Emby/Jellyfin to be North America centric and a bit shit overall. Would recommend a proper PVR like TVHeadend, NextPVR or Myth.

Use something like Kodi as the front-end with something like Jellyfin for your Linux ISO's and TVH for Live TV. There is a TVH plugin for Jellyfin which is passable. I've used it in the past to watch TV when traveling.

Ajkiwi001

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2924176 9-Jun-2022 10:15

Hm. Yeah, I'd considered TVheadend after reading about it, but the thought of setting up a linux machine/stick in the house again after a decade escaping from linux just gives me the screaming heeby-jeebies.

Will check out jellyfin, nextpvr and plex as options. Plex needs a sub for recording live TV, yes?

Ooo thought: do either of them handle IPTV and recording from IPTV? I have a double tuner DVB-T card, but the antenna port is in the living room next to the TV, and I'm loath to dig out the old HTPC case, as pretty as it was, and set it up in the living room.

If I could set up IPTV and iptv recording, that could be a very slick solution. The NZ IPTV streams seem pretty stable.

davidcole

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#2924182 9-Jun-2022 10:54

Ajkiwi001:

Hm. Yeah, I'd considered TVheadend after reading about it, but the thought of setting up a linux machine/stick in the house again after a decade escaping from linux just gives me the screaming heeby-jeebies.

Will check out jellyfin, nextpvr and plex as options. Plex needs a sub for recording live TV, yes?

Ooo thought: do either of them handle IPTV and recording from IPTV? I have a double tuner DVB-T card, but the antenna port is in the living room next to the TV, and I'm loath to dig out the old HTPC case, as pretty as it was, and set it up in the living room.

If I could set up IPTV and iptv recording, that could be a very slick solution. The NZ IPTV streams seem pretty stable.

Jellyfin supports iptv....but I didn;t think much of it, even for nz freeview.

You'd be better with nextpvr for that I'd say. Depending on your tuner? you can run nextpvr as windows or linux now. If if you really have to, with a windows machine(10 and above) you can either use docker with WSL for linux, or a hyper-v. That woudl work with a network based tuner. Saves you needing a dedicated linux box if not extra hardware.

PANiCnz

936 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2924223 9-Jun-2022 12:52

If you go down the Linux route use Docker, its will make you're life 100% easier. Should be able to spin up Tvheadend and Jellyfin containers in a few minutes.

This is a good guide for doing NZ IPTV with TVH.

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