Hi guys,
I live in the UK and watch Freeview DVB-T2 live TV and stream from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify. We started with a TiVo in the 90's in the UK for our TV PVR until the service was cancelled and then migrated through Windows MCE (now gone) and switched about 5 years ago to a MediaPortal backend server running on a PC with Kodi frontends around the house.
We have many frontend devices on multiple different platforms around the house running Kodi or other frontends LibreElec, iOS, PC. The new backend server will need to support streaming to multiple devices and simultaneous recording and storage of all our TV, it must have a web EPG so we can schedule recordings whilst mobile.
I am about to replace our server and it seems like an opportunity to look again at what options are out there as there are a couple of features we really miss in MediaPortal :
I would love to hear from people how some of the other media servers match up, I have been looking and here are my findings so far :
NextPVR - looks quite good but not sure about web EPG interface
PLEX - Live TV seems a bit of an afterthought / in beta, we don't have a media library and PLEX seems biased towards people who do
TVHeadend - I tried it years ago and didn't like the lack of any proper interface, I don't know much about it these days or how it has evolved
Emby - reviews seem to imply its not as good as PLEX and although it supports Live TV it seems limited compared to NextPVR / MediaPortal
MythTV - I really like Linux but last time I tried it was very horrible to set up and had nasty server interface and compatibility compared to Windows, I can't see wifey building drivers from source, using the command line etc ...
MediaPortal 1 - it actually works OK and does a lot of what I need but the web EPG is sadly neglected and looks likes its about to die at any moment, based on MPExtended, last update July 2013 ... lol. Also desperately needs better series links for UK TV - anyone fixed this?
If anyone has any comments or recommendations for our usage case I would love to hear them
*We have no real interest in internet streaming, just Live TV plus we already have Amazon Prime, Netflix and Spotify subscriptions to meet our streaming needs
Chunks
I live in the UK and watch Freeview DVB-T2 live TV and stream from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify. We started with a TiVo in the 90's in the UK for our TV PVR until the service was cancelled and then migrated through Windows MCE (now gone) and switched about 5 years ago to a MediaPortal backend server running on a PC with Kodi frontends around the house.
We have many frontend devices on multiple different platforms around the house running Kodi or other frontends LibreElec, iOS, PC. The new backend server will need to support streaming to multiple devices and simultaneous recording and storage of all our TV, it must have a web EPG so we can schedule recordings whilst mobile.
I am about to replace our server and it seems like an opportunity to look again at what options are out there as there are a couple of features we really miss in MediaPortal :
- A web EPG interface that is not buggy (WebMediaPortal is buggy and seemingly not supported)
- A proper "Series Link" functionality (not "record every time on this channel") so you can record by series number or new episode
I would love to hear from people how some of the other media servers match up, I have been looking and here are my findings so far :
NextPVR - looks quite good but not sure about web EPG interface
PLEX - Live TV seems a bit of an afterthought / in beta, we don't have a media library and PLEX seems biased towards people who do
TVHeadend - I tried it years ago and didn't like the lack of any proper interface, I don't know much about it these days or how it has evolved
Emby - reviews seem to imply its not as good as PLEX and although it supports Live TV it seems limited compared to NextPVR / MediaPortal
MythTV - I really like Linux but last time I tried it was very horrible to set up and had nasty server interface and compatibility compared to Windows, I can't see wifey building drivers from source, using the command line etc ...
MediaPortal 1 - it actually works OK and does a lot of what I need but the web EPG is sadly neglected and looks likes its about to die at any moment, based on MPExtended, last update July 2013 ... lol. Also desperately needs better series links for UK TV - anyone fixed this?
If anyone has any comments or recommendations for our usage case I would love to hear them
*We have no real interest in internet streaming, just Live TV plus we already have Amazon Prime, Netflix and Spotify subscriptions to meet our streaming needs
Chunks