Can I Disable Transcode / Stream

[naigy]

Hi,

I have had continual intermittent issues with a T4 crashing which after my earlier post appeared to settle down to a level it wasn't driving me nuts. It appears it is happening predominately when my kids have their TVs. I have these TV's connected to a samba share on my T4 via Plex running on a raspberry Pi but I also have them linked to the T4 via Live Channel (basically provides all the free to air channels from the T4 and pulls through EPG etc. Not 100% sure but thinking that this last point may be my issue (even though they hardly ever use that feature I think the TV is still trying to pull through data in the background which is causing the issue.

My query is how can I temporarily disable the ability of the T4 to stream / transcode. If I can do that I can check if the issue still continues in which case it is something I will need to dig into further perhaps in Plex (not sure where) but I am thinking this will solve it. If so will then look at other ways I can get FTA channels to their TV's (as there is no antenna in their rooms).

To clarify intermittently I have been disconnecting the ethernet from the T4 when it is bugging me and the T4 then runs without any issue so I am 99% confident that it is network related and the streaming link to Live Channels on the Android TVs I think is the culprit.

If I can't do it from the T4 side then I will do it by removing channels and apps etc. from their TV's but the easier option I think is to do it on the T4 side whilst doing testing

[prl]

You can disable the DLNA streaming server on the T4, if that's what your TV is using.

In MENU>Setup>Network>DLNA Server, press RED Remove Service. That will remove the DLNA service from the T4. It canm be reinstalled again by going to MENU>Setup>Network>DLNA Server and reinstalling it.

If that's two drastic, then you can instead do YELLOW Autostart to change the Autostart from Active with a green background to Disabled with a red background. If you also want to disable DLNA immediately, then press GREEN Stop.

Neither of those setting changes are saved by a settings backup, so you'll need to redo them if you ever do an install from USB.

[naigy]

Thanks for the reply Peter,

No its not DLNA and that is confirmed as switched off (with autostart disabled). I think it uses the streaming that is used by the openwebif. In the Main -> Television -> Favourites and you then click on the computer or mobile device option and it will stream that feed to your device by a .m3u8 file. Hope that makes sense.

Not 100% sure though.

[prl]

OK, but what is the streaming protocol between the Beyonwiz and the TV? If it's DLNA, then closing down the T4's DLNA server will prevent access from the TV. Have you tried it? Just stopping the DLNA server should be enough for you to check whether it's effective.

[naigy]

DLNA is switched off in the settings (including autostart)

[prl]

And does it help with the problem?

[MrQuade]

I am assuming that you are using the Plex "Live TV and DVR" feature, which leverages on the T4's ability to emulate a HDHomerun device via the "HRTunerProxy" plugin.

The Samba bit is a little less clear, but I am guessing that means that you are getting Plex to also share out recordings, and the Raspberry Pi is the one establishing the SMB connection to the T4, then itself sharing out those recordings using the Plex/DLNA streaming service.

Either way, the T4 would not be using DLNA for any of that functionality. The T4 would also not need to do any transcoding for this either.

As to the crashes, I couldn't say. I use the same type of setup at home on my U4, and haven't encountered any crashes.

Regarding your earlier thread, I have definitely seen issues with regular occurrences of the spinner appearing on screen. This was happening to me, when I used the Wiz as a backend for Kodi, and every time Kodi fetched the EPG, it would cause the spinner to appear on the Wiz. The access to the web interface to get the EPG data was a blocking activity for the Wiz. I have never seen this with Plex though.

One thing you might try, is to use an alternate source for the EPG, rather than the Wiz. You can point Plex towards a free online EPG source. I think IceTV even offers basic EPG access for free. That way, at least the EPG fetch will not bog your Wiz down.
I am not sure why that would only be a problem when the Client TVs are being used though. The EPG should be getting cached on your Raspberry Pi.

[naigy]

Hi,

Apologies I think I have caused some confusion with a previous issue. This is not part of my Plex setup which I was recently also asking a query about with regards to T4 crashing.

I have movies and shows on my T4 that are shared via a Plex server running on a raspberry Pi 4. That originally did seem to be causing some problems but I think with changing a few settings such as how often it rebuilds the library, turning off transcoding (Plex setting not T4) etc. has solved those issues.

The issue I am referring to here is completely separate from Plex and the raspberry pi (doesn't route traffic through the pi either for this). The streaming happens direct from the T4 to the TV via two apps which run on the Android TV. First one is PVR Live which acts as kind of a plugin for the main app which is Live Channels (now deprecated).

Link to PVR Live
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... lt.pvrlive

Link to Google Live Channels
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... android.tv

So the PVR Live app basically handles the link between the T4 (enigma2) and the Live Channels app which acts as basically the interface. I am not doing this functionality through Plex because for that functionality it requires considerable payment (and from what I had previously read it is no longer fully supported). I am guessing though that it likely pulling the stream through a same method as it appears to support the same series of boxes such as HDHomeRun etc. To clarify also I am not running anything extra on my T4 for this current functionality. Not sure if there is a way in PVRLive to disable the EPG or to link it to another source but will check into that (may even be on the Live Channels side I need to look for that so will check into that also. Based off you indicating similar issues with EPG caching though I think you may be onto it though as the TV likely is trying to do that in the background when it is first turned on as a "just in case" so that if you do open it that it is ready for you and not having to wait several minutes before it is ready.

Think I am starting to maybe push my T4 to its limits as the family gradually gets more tech!!!

[naigy]

In going through it I have found I can easily disable it from the TV side itself. When I re-enable it, it does almost every time cause the spinner and in most cases leads to a reboot (regardless of whether I am streaming a channel or not). As such suspect it is to do with the EPG caching (but can't find a way to be definitely sure).

Also I can't find any setting in either PVR Live or Live Channels to either disable the EPG or change the EPG source. In the settings of PVR Live all I set is the IP address of the T4 and that it is an enigma2 box.

Thinking I need to try find another app to replace PVR Live. Would ideally like to keep using Live Channels if I can though as it integrates well into the Android TV OS (including voice search which whilst not necessary is nice to have). As such I am looking into the IPTV Bouquet file (m3u8 - which I have downloaded from Openwebif interface) and finding a way to incorporate a separate EPG source.

In testing on a PC with an IPTV player I have it working with utilising a free xmltv source (xmltv.net though a little lacking in some channel detail) without causing any issue with the T4 in testing so far. Hopefully this is a good indication. Now just to seemingly find an equivalent app for the Android TV side hopefully that interfaces with Live Channels which supports a separate EPG. I know Kodi is an option as stated above but its a bit heavy to be utilised just as an IPTV Player / EPG for the kids particularly on a TV which doesn't have huge resources.

[MrQuade]

Thinking I need to try find another app to replace PVR Live.

Since you have the Plex server, you can try that.

Though downloading the hrtunerproxy plugin will be a challenge.
You may need to download that manually from another enigma repo.

[naigy]

Thanks for suggestion but Plex on a rPi 4 with everything else running on it (Home Assistant and various other home services) I don't think would handle the extra workload as it already does wig out a few times a week. Also to access the Live TV/DVR feature you need to have Plex Pass from what I have read and want to avoid spending money if I can on this functionality. Also don't think another plugin on the T4 is going to help with potential crashes then perhaps coming from that.

Last night found I could use the m3u8 and separate epg source in PVR Live (therefore also Google Live Channels) but doing it this way (instead of selecting Enigma2 source method) made it very slow to change channels etc. but at least didn't crash the T4. Found another IPTV app which was completely seperate to Live Channels which was faster with changing channels etc. but it didn't integrate with Google Live Channels (Ideally would like it to). Think I will stick with the IPTV (m3u8) / Separate EPG source and it is just a matter of working out the best fit with apps whilst still not having issues with the T4 crashing.

[naigy]

Has taken a while to get this all working and for all channels but I have settled on the following and fingers crossed it will continue to function as expected. Posting basic details in case anyones interested.

Downloaded the IPTV playlist from webif and changed the tvg-chno, program and tvg-id to match the LCN for the channels. This is then stored on my rPi webserver. Also added into this the epg url so it is hard coded

XML TV guide is is scrapped using Shepard on the raspberry pi. Have configured this so the channel id's are the LCN. That way the guide can be matched for all channels as the TVG-ID in the playlist and channel id in the XMLTV file match. This is generated daily via a cron job but downloads a weeks worth of data and loaded onto the web server. The upside of this is the downloaded guide is far superior to the guide I get on the T4 (has season and ep numbers for many shows). Only downside is it does take about 20 - 30 odd minutes for it to download as it pulls data from various sources and cross matches it all to improve the data.

Using PVR Live on the Android TV's (but via Playlist not the enigma2 option. This is slower (have to wait about 3 - 5 seconds when changing channels but hasn't caused a crash to the main box since I have been doing it this way. Suspect this is because I am forcing the EPG to be sourced from another source rather than it being pulled from the T4

Using Live Channels app on the Android TV as the user interface. As stated above it integrates in to the TV features really well.