More > JRiver Media Center 25 for Windows
NEW: Television tuners on clients are allowed to be used for recording
madbrain:
--- Quote from: Yaobing on March 04, 2019, 09:48:57 am ---Why? Does not make sense to me.
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To come up with a shorter use case:
I could be in my home theater downstairs watching TV live or time delayed using my HTPC and one of its 5 OTA tuners. It would be recorded locally. That would leave up to 4 ATSC tuners still available.
My husband might want to simultaneously view TV too from his laptop, which has a fast 802.11ac network connection, and a local SSD. He could decide to pause TV, and possibly record some programs to his local disk. He probably wouldn't be initiating an timed recordings from that laptop though.
However, there is also a second HTPC upstairs. It's a desktop, and just like his laptop, has 802.11ac wireless, and a local SSD. Since this one never moves, it could be set to use some of the tuners of the HTPC downstairs, and programmed to make some recordings to its local SSD.
My mother might come to visit with her tablet and want to view live TV as well. Maybe if there is something she likes, she can decide to record some shows to her tablet's (limited) local storage and take them back home with her to France. I can't stream the data to her over that distance, because Comcast has a ridiculous upload cap at 40 Mbps, and 1TB per month data cap. So, keeping the data in the same house as the tuners does her no good.
I hope that's enough possible use cases. When there are a lot of tuners in a single machine, and a lot of local network bandwidth, one can imagine many different scenarios. Not everyone is necessarily going to share the same tastes in programming and save programs into a single shared library, or store their library in a single location onto a single file server. So I can certainly see why one might want to record from different devices, and onto different storage locations.
RoderickGI:
The Server is, of course, the JRiver Media Center Server, which is MC running on a PC (Windows), Mac (OSX), or Linux box, with Media Network turned on. It doesn't even need the DLNA Server function turned on, when you are connecting from another MC installation, and you don't need Media Network turned on in the Desktop PC either. Just set up the Client Options under Media Network in the Desktop. When you do connect from the Desktop PC to the Library on the HTPC, the HTPC is acting as the Server, and the Desktop PC is acting as the Client.
Yes, it sounds like your Desktop PC is trying to use the local ATSC tuner, which it should only try to do if you have run TV setup on the Desktop, I think. Although my Workstation Client does see my local webcam, so maybe MC sees all devices whether TV setup has been done or not. It has been a long time since I set up tuners!
I think if you go into TV Options on the Desktop, click on the Tuner Profile at the bottom, then click Configure, you should be able to uncheck the local ATSC tuner, which will deactivate it. Then playing TV channels on the Client, when connected to the Server, should work.
--- Quote from: madbrain on March 31, 2019, 09:18:41 pm ---I can certainly conceive...
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All this is supported in MC now, but you do have to decide where you want recordings stored, and use a mapped drive or URI to point to that location. You could have a diskless MC Server, a diskless MC Client, and a Windows Server for storage of media files. However, it wouldn't be a good idea to have a diskless server, because it is best if MC stores its Library files (not the media files) on a local fast disk, if you want MC to be repsonsive. Best practice is to have at least a local boot drive with MC and its Library on it, and to use an SSD for that local drive.
Windows takes care of waking and sleeping any of those. MC prevents resources it needs from going to sleep while it needs them, but doesn't get involved in putting them to sleep. Just set up the sleep functions on each PC and let Window handle it. You certainly don't need any special script for it, just normal Power Management settings.
Whenever you are watching Live TV, or using Time Shifting, MC needs access to a disk drive, as MC saves temporary JTV files even when watching live, in case you want to rewind the program, and probably for some buffering.
--- Quote from: madbrain on March 31, 2019, 09:29:57 pm ---To come up with a shorter use case:
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Okay, so now you are pushing it a bit. I won't respond to all that, but much is doable if you understand how MC works. Probably not the recording locally to Mum's tablet, without any TV setup done on that tablet. I haven't played with this new functionality enough to work that out, but I think not. She can record the program to the Server, then copy it to her tablet before she leaves!
Yaobing:
--- Quote from: madbrain on March 31, 2019, 08:38:48 pm ---I'm not completely clear on what the distinction is between "client" and "server" here. What server are we talking about here ? Media Server ? Storage server ?
The place where my OTA coax cable comes is my home theater room. I have a HTPC in it running Win10, with 5 ATSC tuners. It records shows locally to a 1TB SSD using MC25. I normally watch TV in my home theater only, so this has worked for me so far. I just enabled the HTPC to share its library using the Media Network options. So I guess technically, you would now call this HTPC machine the "server" ?
I am typing this from a desktop PC in my home office, also running Win10 and MC25. It's connected to the HTPC via wired 10 Gb ethernet (there are two 10 Gb switches in between). I used the "Add library" feature to load the library from the HTPC. I am able to play TV shows from it just fine.
However, from my desktop PC, I can't use any of the tuners from the HTPC. When I go to the "Television" option on the sidebar of MC25 on my desktop PC, I see a list of all the TV channels that are configured on the HTPC. I double clicked one. It shows the name of the channel and program, and "Waiting for signal lock ...". And then nothing happens. Same is true on every single channel. Any idea why this is happening ?
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Your HTPC is the server, and your desktop PC is the client.
The client has been able to use its local tuner for live viewing for years, provided the local tuners are properly set up.
In your case, the single ATSC tuner on the client has not been properly set up (no antenna hookup), and MC does not know it. That explains the behavior your described. MC will always try to use a local tuner for live viewing (i.e. you double-clicking on a given channel, or clicking "Watch" button after selecting a channel). MC will ask the server to serve a channel only if it can not find a suitable tuner on the client. You need to hook up an antenna to that tuner if you want to use it. Otherwise you can just completely rely on the 5 tuners on the server, but let MC on the client machine ignore the single tuner that does not have an antenna. The way to do that is to run "Manage Devices" on the client and select the tuner, and click "Configure...". You then select "Disabled" from the drop down "Tuner Type" list
--- Quote --- I'm wondering if MC25 in this case is trying to use the HVR-1265 card that is in my home office desktop PC. I use this card only for video capture. It has one ATSC tuner, but no coax cable is plugged to the antenna input. If MC25 is trying to use the channel guide from the HTPC (server) with the local card in my desktop, that would certainly cause this "no signal lock" behavior. It also wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for it to be trying to do that, IMO.
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Most people who have tuners on the server would like to leave those tuners for recording purposes and use the tuner on the client for live viewing. This makes complete sense from the point of view of "saving" tuners. Since you have a tuner on the client, why not use it? The channels scanned on the server are "ATSC" channels and they should be playable from any computer that has an ATSC tuner. The second reason for using the local tuner is to reduce network load - when you do have a tuner locally, why bother going to the server with all that network load.
Since you have many tuners on the server, you probably do not care about "conserving" tuners (some people do care about it, even with more tuners than you have). Like I said above, you can hook up an antenna to the tuner on the client, or disable the tuner.
Yaobing:
Your husband can watch a TV channel on his laptop, utilizing one of the five tuners downstairs. I assume the laptop does not have a tuner, if it does, but he can not use it, it should be disabled. MC on a client first looks for a local tuner for playing a TV channel live (including time-shifted playback). If it does not find a tuner locally, it will ask the server to serve the channel.
Your husband can also schedule recordings from his laptop, but recordings will happen on the server. The recorded shows reside on the server and can be streamed to any client.
The same can be said about your mother's tablet, with one caveat - MC only supports TV functionality on Windows computers.
RoderickGI:
Ah yes, Manage Devices. I keep thinking about the old way of managing TV setup. Apologies.
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