TV (Live and PVR)

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Intro

xStreamed has the ability to interface with TV/PVR software. xStreamed has been designed to work indirectly with GBPVR, or directly with MediaPortal using the xMPTV plugin. Depending on the TV package downloaded, users are able to launch the TV application of choice, and do all recording/TV viewing within that application. Recordings are then put into a database that the user can view within xStreamed. The user also has the option of transferring recordings to a different location, such as a remote server, which then could be viewed very easily across the home network.

Though xStreamed does work with both TV applications, at this time, only MediaPortal is fully supported.

Installation/Setup

Either option requires the respected TV application to be installed prior to use. This document will not explain how to install MediaPortal, or GBPVR, nor will it cover how to setup EPG, or how to operate those programs.

Goto my link: "Tried Frontends" to see what I think of both applications. There are direct links to the respected applications website so the user can download either from there.

Ensure that prior to starting Xlobby/xStreamed, the plugins folder is copied over from the skin/xStreamed directory to the xlobby/plugins directory if using the MediaPortal xMPTV plugin.

Default locations for recorded TV and server locations: Local recorded TV is based on the location defined in the TV app, and how the user sets up the same import location on the database called "recordedtv". I've called the server based recoredtv category/database "recordedtv_online"

The remote location is defaulted to \\Tower\disk3\recordedtv.

The event to change the move location can be done by opening Setup (F2), and click on Events. Choose the TV eventgroup and scroll to "move_recordedtv". The command is an os/execute file, and it defines to run a move.bat file with the following arguments:

"%recordedtv>parameter%" "\\Tower\disk3\recordedtv"

Incidentally forgotten to add to the install was the actual move.bat file.

Operation

After selecting the TV selection from the main menu, the user will be presented with the following screen.

The user has a choice of two selections:

Goto MP - clicking this button will start the MediaPortal application. If using GBPVR and the GBPVR module is installed (TVModule Option 1), then GBPVR will start.

Recorded TV - pressing this button will display recorded TV databases for both the local drive and server (if using remote server locations). This is shown below.

Navigating to the right will allows the selection of the media on the local drive. Navigating right again will move the selection to recorded media on the server. Selecting either will open additional overlays which allows the user to Watch their selection, Delete the selection, Refresh the database, and in the case of the local media, Transfer the selection to the server.

The TV Module (Option1), that uses GBPVR as the TV application can be downloaded from here: