PVR/DVR Software for use on OMV?

  • I see this thread comes up on here about every six months, but each time the answer is a little bit different so I'm going to raise the issue once more.


    I have an HDHomeRun tuner and would like to setup a DVR for capturing over the air broadcasts and scheduling recordings to my OMV disk array. Ideally, I would like to run the PVR/DVR software on OMV so that I don't have to keep a Win 7 box running all the time to handle this task. Can anyone make any suggestions here?


    I know VDR allegedly works, but there are tons of threads about it not detecting HDHomeRun tuners anymore.


    Thanks in advance for your help.

  • You're right! I just checked the project's website and it does support HDHR.


    Once I install it on OMV, will I be able to use it headless or will it require me to install Gnome or another Desktop GUI on my server in order to configure everything?

  • As I said, I'm not familiar with TVHeadend at all, but is the update substantial enough to bother going through any trouble to get it?


    I know you can download it using apt-get from the repo, that sounds pretty straightforward. If there's a feature or compatibility issue that is resolved in the latest release, though, then I would go through the trouble to do an alternate install.

  • Also, I'm curious, does the TVHeadend DVR work well, or at all? Everything I've been able to find is that people use TVHE to pull in the signal/sift out weak stations/provide guide info, but Kodi seems to be the DVR of choice.


    As far as I know, KODI doesn't run on OMV because it requires a GUI and cannot be administered remotely via browser. So if the DVR function works in TVHE, that's the right answer. I wonder whether the issue with VDR not detecting HDHomeRun tuners would be resolved by using TVHE as a backend, similar to what people are doing with Kodi...then I could record with VDR right from the OMV interface. Hm. Interesting thought.


    I'll figure all of this out when I finally have a moment to play with it, I'm just excited and want to ask all of the questions. Any insight is, as always, appreciated.

  • TVH = DVR - receives signal and makes it available for clients. Also manages timt-shift, schdules and recordings
    Kodi = PVR client - gets all sources from TV, doesn't actually do anything besides playing a stream from TVH


    I not sure what u want to achieve!? Install TVH in your OMV server and configure it via its own web GUI to use HDHR and make a channel list (has a different name in TVH just can't remember it now).
    Then get 1, 2 or whatever PCs, HTPC clients and install Kodi with TVH-PVR plugin, configre and you are done.
    You can then watch and schedule via Kodi. In addition u can also schedule via TVH-Web-GUI


    If u use VDR you have to take a channel list, edit it via one of the available editors and copy it to VDR when service is stopped. For Kodi VDR needs VNSI which in debian 7.x repo is too old for Kodi so u have to compile the plugin yourself. Setting up VDR is more difficult on OMV as THV is because VDR lacks a web-GUI for setup - that has to be done via CLI. Once set up VDR is awesome.


    If u want to use Kodi on your OMV server u need to install a full x-server and GUI like KDE/Gnome or whatever and the Kodi on top - not sure if OMV s inteded to run that way smoothly

  • What an incredibly helpful reply!


    No, you're right about x-server. I've been down that road with OMV once before and it is a mess. It's best to keep the desktop GUI off of the server if you can, no doubt about it. It seems like you've got a lot of experience with all of those pieces of software, and at least now I know how they fit together.


    What I'm trying to accomplish is relatively simple, and I should have laid that out sooner. I have several client device (phone, laptops, one PS3, and one Roku). Right now everything is working brilliantly. I have Plex installed on all of the devices and I store all of my DVDs on my OMV disk array so Plex can serve them up to any of the clients as needed. My goal is to take that setup and just add recorded TV (not live and not time-shifted, those would be bonuses but they are not the real objective). I would like to have a DVR software on the OMV machine that I can access from my laptop via web to schedule new recordings. The plan is to treat the recorded TV shows just like movies. I'll make a new directory in Plex, point it toward the new stash of recorded TV, and serve it up to all of the clients through my preexisting configuration. I'm really looking for the DVR/TV Guide function. Anything above that is great, but not required.


    Based on this

    Zitat

    TVH = DVR - receives signal and makes it available for clients. Also manages timt-shift, schdules and recordings

    it sounds like TVHE is the right answer. Yeah?

  • What!? That live TV plugin looks neat! I'm going to install it just to see what it's like.



    I tried to install TVHE on OMV and it ended up giving me an error. I followed the official tutorial here.


    It looks like TVHE is not included in any of the default repos, so I had to add one. I didn't know how to do it via command, so I edited /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openmediavault.list to add the TVHE repo and that worked well. Other than that, I followed their tutorial to get the key and refresh the list of available packages. When I ran apt-get install tvheadend, I get the "unable to locate package" error, so...any suggestions on this?



    EDIT: Found an OMV specific guide. I'm going to try that now.



    This week has been bad for me and OMV. Nothing works like it should when I go to add features. Basics work great, but everything else...not so much! I tried to install a printer, that didn't work. I tried to install Docker, that didn't work. Managed to get docker to work accidentally, then tried to run a container, that didn't work. (Total invested time: 12-15 hours, no gain). And now I'm here with Tvheadend. The OMV installation guide has two options for installing the program, neither of which worked. It's astonishing how many hours it takes to get something really simple to function.

  • This week has been bad for me and OMV.


    Not for OMV.


    Basics work great, but everything else...


    ... is customizing and you have to know what and how you do it to get exactly the result you´re imagining.


    It's astonishing how many hours it takes to get something really simple to function.


    When something I say is simple, then I´m able to do it without problems. If you say this is simple, why are you wasting so much time in it? It is one thing to receive something absolutely for free (OMV, Plugins, the help here in the forum)... But it is another thing to blame something that really works great for hundrets of people without even knowing what exactly does NOT work for you. Every hardware and setup differs and the devs only can try it on their own hardware as well as a VM. So if you want to use it and you have problems with it you have two options. Post a thread here and accept that this is NO chat and you have to wait for hours or days to get a proper response or just use the basics.

  • I appreciate you joining the thread, but I disagree with your criticism. When I say something is simple, I mean that what I am trying to accomplish is not novel. It is a problem that has been solved before and many users (of OMV and of other NAS products) have the functionality I'm trying to add. It is not simple on OMV and that's the crux of the issue. Heck, it would be simple if any of the guides worked as intended.


    I understand that OMV is developed for "free", but I am not going to be using it for free. To me this is a product and, if it works, the project will be compensated. I've tested five NAS distros in the last two months. UnRAID works exceptionally well, but does not yet provide good data integrity checksumming, so I ended up with OMV because of the SnapRAID plugin. As such, I intend to donate what I would have paid to unRAID for my software, which is more than $100.


    Frankly, my experience has been less than stellar lately. That critique is honest, accurate, and more than fair to OMV. I'm far enough in at this point that I'd like to finish configuring OMV and get on with using it, rather than switching back to unRAID.


    You sound knowledgeable about the software. Perhaps you could also try to address the substance of the thread while you're here? This would be a good place to begin

    Zitat

    When I ran apt-get install tvheadend, I get the "unable to locate package" error, so...any suggestions on this?


    Cheers!

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    There is a custom repo tab in omv-extras to add the repo correctly. Look at my pic on how to configure. Apply and save. Then apt-get install tvheadend. Setup by going to http://OMV_IP_ADDRESS:9981/ in a browser. Login with the username and password it asked you for when installing tvheadend. I just tried this on my omv box and it worked.

    Bilder

    omv 7.0-32 sandworm | 64 bit | 6.5 proxmox kernel

    plugins :: omvextrasorg 7.0 | kvm 7.0.9 | compose 7.0.9 | cputemp 7.0 | mergerfs 7.0.3


    omv-extras.org plugins source code and issue tracker - github


    Please try ctrl-shift-R and read this before posting a question.

    Please put your OMV system details in your signature.
    Please don't PM for support... Too many PMs!

  • That is AWESOME! As I said above, I tried to add that repo using nano, but somehow or another it failed to pickup the package (I'm guessing the file I edited wasn't the right one). I didn't realize there was an easy way to do this in the GUI!


    I'll give this a go later. Thanks so much for posting this suggestion. I've spent so much time crawling around the forums and the UI that I'm starting to feel like I know something about OMV ;p


    Worked brilliantly! TVHeadend in a matter of minutes.


    Of course, this doesn't mean that my PVR is working. I downloaded the HDHR drivers and config-utility from the official source here, but the file is not useable. If I unpack it and run install, I get an error about a missing directory. If I try to use the version that's in the debian main repo instead by running apt-get install hdhomerun-config, it doesn't work either. It installs fine, but my tuner does not show up in TVHE. I've configured and tested my tuner on Windows and everything is good-to-go, but Linux (and therefore TVHeadEnd) can't find it.

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!