[mythtv-users] What's the deal with Kodi?

[Michael Watson]

On 22/05/2015 10:50 AM, Eric Sharkey wrote:
> On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2015-05-21 at 13:08 +0100, Gordon McCrae wrote:
>>> OK, I don't get that at all, so I suggest your specific setup is causing
>>> the slowness (or mine is causing "fastness"?).
>> Or you just don't have as much data.
>>
>>> If I'm understanding you correctly, I select "Live TV / Recordings",
>>> then I choose "Default", "Horizon", "Horizon - Volcano Hell" ..... and
>>> the video starts immediately. No delays were experienced at all.
>> How many recordings do you have in your database?  I have 1886
>> currently.
>>
>> On a remote machine I get about a 20sec lag after choosing Recordings
>> and then I see my recording groups and a "Working" spinner on the bottom
>> right that never seems go to away.
>
> I haven't used it in a while, so I thought I'd try it again.  I just
> timed it on my cell phone (Samsung Note 4).  Remembering that Kodi
> doesn't work with the stylus and needs a finger took about a minute.
>  From touching "Live TV" to getting to the list of channels (waiting
> for the channels and EPG stuff to import) was about six minutes.
> Trying to remember where I was supposed to click to get to
> "Recordings" was about four minutes.  (Under a "settings" like gear
> icon?  Seriously?)  To get "Default" to show up was about 30 second.
> After that it was fairly quick to select a show and get it playing.
> Hitting the back button to try and select a different show brought up
> the working spinner for about a minute while the show played in the
> background.  I never did make it back to the program list and ended up
> quitting Kodi entirely.
>
> Starting it again I had hoped it wouldn't have to suck down the EPG
> data again, but it did.  It was faster on the second run but still
> took a couple of minutes.
>
> All in all, I find Kodi's user interface to be extremely
> counter-intuitive in just about every respect.  Everything I do seems
> to be the wrong way to do something and even when I eventually figure
> out what I'm supposed to do it takes minutes.
>
> (FWIW, I currently have 4354 recordings in the Default group which
> consume 7890GB and 291 unique xmltvids in the channels table.)
>
> Eric
>
MythFrontend essentially cheats, as its clearly part of MythTV it is 
allowed to access the database directly, where any "third party" app 
must use the limited functionality of the MythAPI - Not really forced 
to, but frowned upon if it does.

     It is my belief that MythTV should be split into two distinct 
projects (MythTV Backend, MythTV Frontend).   If the Official frontend 
was forced to use the API only, then we would see a lot more development 
of the API, thus providing faster and better features that any third 
party frontend can take advantage of, and possibly the ability to create 
"Official" android/iOS Frontend apps.

I think if nothing else, this thread has shown a real need/desire for a 
lightweight frontend capable of running on Pi/iOS/Android devices.

A point I find interesting between Kodi and Myth Frontend is:  On both 
my frontend PC's, after selecting a recording to watch and pressing play 
- Myth Frontend can take anywhere from 2 sec - 30 sec to start playing 
the recording, where Kodi will start almost instantly every time.  If 
only kodi-pvr-mythtv plugin cached the recording/guide content and 
updated in the background to provide a snappier experience, I would no 
longer be using Myth Frontend.