Why is KODI so much better than SageTV at ________ ?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Funny thing is I'm actually talking about the opposite. I want sage to talk to Plex kind of like the way sage talked to my moves. I want to be able to stay in the sagetv interface and play a movie, but let Plex manage the media for the simple fact that I've already got Plex doing what I want when it comes to movies.

My PC sagetv clients were never all that good at playing back movies, but the more I use my shield (thanks to you BTW) the more I love it. I still use my HTPC in the theater to control the projector and receiver, but if the shield could do that job I would have no need of PC clients.

Having said all that, my current TV plugin with sage seems to be dead since it wasn't migrated after google code went away. I'm hoping phoenix 3 or the new gemstone can take its place. The main thing I like about TV Explorer is that there are very few clicks to get what you want. That is the main reason it is so much better than Kodi or Plex for TV. Too many clicks drive me crazy.

I know this is a little OT.. but as for the google code hosted projects... I thought that I had migrated the stuff for phoenix, but I guess that is not the case (ie, most of it is, but there are few things that are not). I'll be looking at this soon to figure out what else needs to be migrated to get p2 working again.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

The main thing I like about TV Explorer is that there are very few clicks to get what you want. That is the main reason it is so much better than Kodi or Plex for TV. Too many clicks drive me crazy.

Have you tried all the skins and views? We went through every one to find one we could settle on and it was the one which most closely mimicked TVE. We're using Rapier, but you can get a similar "list view" in most of the skins.

The clicks are as follows from the main menu of Kodi: TV Shows -> [Show Name] -> [Episode Name]

At that point, playback has started.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I know this is a little OT.. but as for the google code hosted projects... I thought that I had migrated the stuff for phoenix, but I guess that is not the case (ie, most of it is, but there are few things that are not). I'll be looking at this soon to figure out what else needs to be migrated to get p2 working again.

In another thread a user mentioned that phoenix-core was still on Google Code. (My UPnP plugin uses phoenix-core.)

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

In another thread a user mentioned that phoenix-core was still on Google Code. (My UPnP plugin uses phoenix-core.)

I have to check this out... since I know I have phoenix core/api updated in the Sage 9 repo. But not sure if there were other dependencies that have not been updated. About a month ago I did a clean install of Phoenix on Sage 9, so not sure when the google code stuff went away. I don't intend to do any updates for Sage 7.

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by stuckless

I have to check this out... since I know I have phoenix core/api updated in the Sage 9 repo. But not sure if there were other dependencies that have not been updated. About a month ago I did a clean install of Phoenix on Sage 9, so not sure when the google code stuff went away. I don't intend to do any updates for Sage 7.

yes there is still a number of references. I tried to install gemstone on a client and the gson download failed

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Have you tried all the skins and views? We went through every one to find one we could settle on and it was the one which most closely mimicked TVE. We're using Rapier, but you can get a similar "list view" in most of the skins.

The clicks are as follows from the main menu of Kodi: TV Shows -> [Show Name] -> [Episode Name]

At that point, playback has started.

Nice find. I don't use Kodi or Plex for viewing TV at home, but if I could get that view replicated in sage I could stop using TVE

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Nice find. I don't use Kodi or Plex for viewing TV at home, but if I could get that view replicated in sage I could stop using TVE

Real easy to set up in Gemstone, and the 'TV Shows' view by default is just this (Grouped by Show, The displays the episodes). Onscreen layout would be different (quite a few flows to choose from in there), but the navigation is the same.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Real easy to set up in Gemstone, and the 'TV Shows' view by default is just this (Grouped by Show, The displays the episodes). Onscreen layout would be different (quite a few flows to choose from in there), but the navigation is the same.

I'll look at this.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I'll look at this.

The default Sage7 UI with Malore menus also gives you this navigation. The recordings screen is broken into 3 panes: left = list of shows, right = list of episodes for currently selected show, top = details of selected episode.

You can chose whether clicking on an episode starts playing immediately or takes you to a details page.

You have to add a plugin to get the Phoenix fanart. It doesn't look as polished as some of the other solutions, but it is very functional.

As a bonus, any recorded movies get grouped together under the show title "Movies" in this screen (but it does not include imported movie files, dvd rips, etc. - only recordings made by Sage).

[Phydeaux]

There seem to be a handful of responses to this thread which indicate a functional SageTV add-on for KODI would be a holy grail, and I agree. I would be pumped to hear about that project...

I was a SageTV fan for several years and owned a number of HDx devices. Unfortunately I just found the interface gradually becoming less and less responsive no matter what maintenance I did or how many times I did a clean install. And, visual tastes being what they are, I just found the look and feel of the presentation to be dated. I could jazz it up with a ton of fanart... but then I really got to enjoy the spinning circle. However... There is NOTHING even close to SageTV in terms of its PVR function, and for that it remains as a critical part of my media setup

I've been running XBMC/KODI for several years now and it's been a joy. It plays everything, is far more configurable than I'll ever need in terms of views, remains simple for unfamiliar guests to use, has never crashed or hung on me and has a clean interface which I can jazz up with enough fanart to make it interesting without becoming sluggish. I can't comment on the PVR front ends but I understand they mostly suck, at least in comparison to the SageTV function.

I run the LibreELEC flavor of KODI on small silent NanoPCs which contain no storage. They PXE boot LibreELEC off the network and their "hard disk" is on a NAS. They all look at the same library, which is MySQL on the NAS (which is also where the media is). It's all templated and I can spin up a new system in the time it takes to boot, about 45 seconds, with immediate access to all media. Setting this all up is surprisingly simple. Anyone who thinks having to use SQL for KODI is difficult probably hasn't done it. I'm practically a single cell animal, yet it was dead simple. The PCs cost the same or less than what I paid for my old SageTV Hdx units. They are controlled by the TV remotes that came with the TVs (huge WAF) using FLIRC devices.

Yep, it's all wine and roses... Yet I still love and need SageTV running headless on a server to record TV. I watch the recordings in Kodi, but to select new things to record and manage favorites I access SageTV via the web interface - but it's not ideal.

A fully functional KODI add-on for a SageTV back end would be a Godsend. And I truly believe it would bring more people, developers and attention to SageTV as a PVR. KODI will never have a native PVR function, the devs have stated this repeatedly. So with the existing PVR back ends all having a lame KODI interface, why couldn't SageTV become the premier ticket to adding fully functional PVR function and EPG to KODI?

⁣RLW ​

[wayner]

@Phydeaux - How does your Kodi setup work for:

(1) Playing back files which are still recording - I do this all the time as the bulk of my watching is sports in near real-time.

(2) Being very responsive to skip fwd to be able to skip over dead sections of a game, like the time between pitches in baseball.

[Phydeaux]

@Wayner. I have to admit that watching unfinished recordings is something I never do, preferring to let Comskip works its magic first. I haven't seen a commercial in years... Nevertheless, I have tried to watch a recording in progress with KODI only to validate that it's not ideal if you want to skip forward much. A 30 second skip here and there isn't a problem, but if you jump around too much you'll come to the "end" of the file and have to restart from the beginning (won't be a "resume watching from..." option).

Live TV and near-live are meaningless to me, but I understand the concern for sports fans.

Edit: I just re-read your questions:

1) Playback of in-progress recordings works fine.
2) Skipping forward during in-progress recordings, not brilliant. Completed recordings, fine.


RLW

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Tiki

The default Sage7 UI with Malore menus also gives you this navigation. The recordings screen is broken into 3 panes: left = list of shows, right = list of episodes for currently selected show, top = details of selected episode.

You can chose whether clicking on an episode starts playing immediately or takes you to a details page.

You have to add a plugin to get the Phoenix fanart. It doesn't look as polished as some of the other solutions, but it is very functional.

As a bonus, any recorded movies get grouped together under the show title "Movies" in this screen (but it does not include imported movie files, dvd rips, etc. - only recordings made by Sage).

There is a view in Gemstone that does this layout as well (Dual Pane Flow).

[ChePazzo]

Originally Posted by Phydeaux

I run the LibreELEC flavor of KODI on small silent NanoPCs which contain no storage. They PXE boot LibreELEC off the network and their "hard disk" is on a NAS.

Yep, it's all wine and roses... Yet I still love and need SageTV running headless on a server to record TV. I watch the recordings in Kodi, but to select new things to record and manage favorites I access SageTV via the web interface - but it's not ideal.

⁣RLW ​

How do you watch Sage Recordings on your Kodi?

I have a similar setup: 1 Headless SageTV server and 3 Kodi boxes running on OpenELEC (raspi), Fire Stick, FireTV.
But, Kodi requires that the TV Shows be in separate directories and SageTV lumps them all together in one. In Kodi, I can navigate to the folder and scroll through the enormous list of files in the recording directory, but when I try to scan it, Kodi doesn't find any TV Shows.

I wrote a small script to pull the metadata from SageTV, create subdirs in /var/media/tv, and create symlinks back to the recordings dir. In that case, Kodi scanning found the TV Shows, but for some reason wouldn't recognize the symlinks to add any episodes. In fact, the only way I could get it to work was to copy/move the video files to the subdirs. Moving files, of course, breaks all kinds of things, esp if comskip is in the middle of running.

anyway ... how did you get yours working?

[Phydeaux]

Well, I only use Sage to record "disposable" stuff, things I watch once and delete like nightly talk shows etc. The odd thing I record and wish to keep I generally strip the commercials out and crunch it down to mp4, then move it to permanent storage where KODI picks it up and adds to the library.

For watching the disposables... I just have the recording directory set as a media source but no media type defined since I don't need metadata for that and I don't have Sage set up to do Metadata at all. That's the key for me: just use Sage and it's great recording capabilities for recording only and use KODI for its scraping accuracy, flawless viewing and interface.

I'm sure you could script moving your recordings after ComSkip completes it's work. I've been told that Sage doesn't care if you delete its recordings outside of Sage, it just removes them from its database without trauma.

I personally would never consider long term storage of raw .ts files recorded by Sage as they are just to big for my storage investment.

Cheers,
Robert

[ChePazzo]

I, too, use Sage to just record disposable things, but at times life gets in the way and shows get backed up. Also, some shows I prefer to record the entire season and then binge. In both cases, the flat file list in Kodi just doesn't work so well.

Also, how does Kodi's playback of edl work for you? I watched a show on Kodi last night and skipping commercials was kind of crappy. I couldn't disable auto-skip (sometimes the edl isn't perfect) and it kind of froze and skipped at the barriers.

Anyway, I think I'll stick to SageTV for both recording and viewing disposable tv, and Kodi for stored video. SageTV is years ahead of Kodi for recording TV and comskip playback.

[Phydeaux]

I've never had any issues with KODI using EDL files. Its always been smooth and seamless for me. In the last year or so I find that ComSkip has matured and become more accurate to the point where it's 100% flawless with 90% of my recorded material.

I've read that the latest KODI, 17 (Krypton) has an issue with EDL in that it sees the marks but keeps playing through them. This has been addressed and solved (it was a regression error in the final release) in the latest stable version of 17.1. This is what I'll be moving to shortly after I kick the tires on it for a few days.

I wouldn't say SageTV is light years ahead of KODI in EDL usage, it's been on par per my experience. The only thing I prefer about SageTV with EDL is the way it highlights the skips in the time bar, but this is just a visual.

SageTV IS light years ahead for recording... but that is bound to be the case when KODI was never developed with recording in mind - that is left to user preferred back-end and community provided add-ons. Basically no much better than hacks from what I've seen. Its too bad nobody seems to have interest in developing a kick-ass fully featured SageTV add on for KODI.

Cheers,
RLW

[dgeezer]

ChePazzo, I agree about edl support being kinda crappy in kodi. And, if you think that's bad try watching an in-progress recording.

I've tried several different backends with Kodi in an attempt to simplify how we access our shows. I've used TVheadend and Npvr. Both worked well as a backend. Npvr actually has great playback of comskip videos if you are using a windows client. I'm just not sure that another backend for Kodi is really needed. There are several pretty good options already. The real problem is that the Kodi devs don't seem to see the lack of support for edl with a nice visual timeline or support for in-progress recordings as a high priority.

I'm pretty happy with our current setup. Sagetv miniclient with plite for recently recorded tv, kodi for archived tv and movies, Android live channels for live tv, netflix and amazon for streaming, all accessed through an Nvidia Shield.