Archive:PVR FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions for XBMC and PVR related.PVR/Contents

What is PVR? Link PVR (Personal video recorder) allows you to watch live TV, listen to radio, view an EPG, schedule recordings and enables many other TV related features

Which version of XBMC includes PVR support? The first official XBMC release to support PVR will be XBMC v12 Frodo If you cannot wait until the XBMC Frodo is released, you may use (unstable) nightly or monthly builds of XBMC Earlier development versions of XBMC with PVR support can be found on GitHub: Eden+PVR (11.0): https://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc/tree/Eden-pvr and Dharma+PVR (10.0): https://github.com/opdenkamp/xbmc/tree/Dharma

What is a PVR Backend and why do I need it? A PVR Backend is a TV streaming server which can support various input sources including DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C, DVB-T, ATSC, IPTV, and Analog video. A PVR backend is a second process/application that can either run on the same machine running XBMC, on a stand-alone device (able to feed several XBMC machines), or completely by itself with XBMC only running when neede

What PVR Hardware/TV Cards does XBMC support? XBMC itself does not support any specific PVR Hardware, it only outputs and interacts with TV streaming server i.e. PVR Backend Each PVR Backend has different hardware and operating system requirements. Please visit the webpages of the individual PVR Backends for more information

What are PVR add-ons and why do I need them? XBMC relies on add-ons to interact with each individual PVR Backends. Hence you need to ensure that XBMC has the appropriate add-on for the PVR backend you are using installed.

Do I need to separately download PVR add-ons or do they come bundled with XBMC? As of 2 October 2012, only the OSX nightly builds/alphas of XBMC bundles certain PVR add-ons. All other add-ons need to be downloaded separately Note that PVR add-ons are platform specific i.e. you need the correct version of the add-on for your operating system A forum user offers pre-compiled PVR add-ons for download at: http://www.dotnetdevelopers.net/XBMC/xbmcpvr.html

This does not seem straightforward: Backends, Hardware, Add-ons. What is the recommended setup to get PVR working? Currently there is no recommended setup. Until more development and testing has been done on PVR in XBMC, it will be difficult to say what setups are better or worse. This link to xbmc pvr example setups may be used to get a better idea

Do all XBMC skins support PVR? The default confluence skin of XBMC supports all PVR functions available [All skins in the official XBMC Frodo add-on repo will support all PVR functions]

Previous versions of XBMC already supported MythTV, HDHomeRun, Slingbox for live TV viewing, how is Frodo's PVR support different? EPG support, wider range of hardrware support by supporting multiple PVR backends via add-ons etc.