[mythtv-users] Anybody using an Nvidia Shield as an FE? Tegra X1, 3GB RAM

[Greg Oliver]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 1:44 PM, Mark Boyum <circushair at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> I run Kodi on Shields in a couple places.  I can give you a detailed
>> breakdown of why I hate it:
>>
>> 1.  Remote control interface sucks.
>>   - There is support for Logitech Harmony remotes, but there are only
>> 11 keys available and they are not easily re-mapped to other than what
>> nVidia decides they should be.
>>   - The nVidia remotes (handheld tiny remote) definitely lacks on what
>> you can do (skip commercials, etc) does not exist.
>>   - Game controller works fairly good, but who wants to control their
>> TV (and especially only the Shield) with a game controller
>>
>> 2.  It locks up *a lot* when it syncs with MythTV at startup and is
>> pulling guide data or scanning the library over NFS for Videos or
>> pulling recordings in.  Kodi is looking for volunteer android
>> developers.  There is currently a lack of..
>>
>> 3.  Sharing MySQL tables - if you have more than one Kodi, it is
>> beneficial to share a MySQL database - which in turn shares the
>> library between them.  This does not 100% work on Android, and I have
>> filled the space up with artwork for Music and Videos.
>>
>> 4.  Teaching someone how to restart a crashed Kodi on android (iPhone
>> users I'm referring to here) is a painful experience..  They are
>> accustomed to non-advanced features that Apple just makes work and do
>> not like to tinker.
>>
>> I probably have a few more items, but cannot think of them righ tnow.
>>
>> -Greg
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>
>
> Perhaps we have an overly simple setup compared to most on this list, but
> we've been using a Shield as our primary media consumption device on our
> main TV since December 2015.  I love it, my kids are wizards with it and my
> wife can usually get to what she wants to watch.  Her most common complaint
> is when the kids have played games on the Wii U and left the TV input set to
> that instead of the Shield.
>
> We stream most of our content from Netflix and Amazon.  Sometime last year I
> switched to SPMC (a Kodi fork) for MythTV recordings.  Although it is slow
> to open for the first run of the day while the PVR add-on syncs all the info
> from MythTV, once it is running we have no issues with it.
>
> We manually skip commercials by hitting right on the remote a few times and
> don't really miss the MythTV commskipping.  But I have been meaning to try
> out Kodi's integration with auto skipping, just not a high priority.  So at
> this time the meager amount of buttons on the remote is nice as the unit is
> easily controlled with onscreen buttons.  But again, we mostly just need to
> pause from time to time aren't often attempting more complicated actions.
>
> I've found that watching a recording in Kodi will mark it as watched in
> MythTV.  Which is nice as it then shows up as watched on our Windows PC
> running Kodi on our bedroom TV.  Mythweb also shows it as watched so I'm
> reasonably sure that MythTV is auto-expiring watched shows first.
>
> What little local video content we have is easily handled by Kodi's video
> manager.  This does not sync the watched status with anything but it's
> pretty easy to remember if we've watched a video or not.
>
> So if you don't have very demanding needs and  don't have a complicated
> setup (ours is just the Shield hooked up to the TV via HDMI, no other A/V
> equipment in the mix) the Shield may be a great option for you.  I was very
> happy to remove the HTPC from our family room and replace with such a small,
> quiet unit.
>
> -Mark
> Sorry about the rambling.  I just really like this device!

Your points are all true, but comm skipping is the single most thing
that keeps me running mythfrontend on every TV I watch - personally.
Kodi's auto comm skip is just that - it reads the cut points from the
myth server and auto skips them (without interaction).  That make it
hard to jump around since Kodi also does not have fine grained (or
configurable) ff/rew/skip setting.

I could definitely get used to using it, but the crashes are hard to
explain.  With the Jarvis and Krypton releases, when Kodi first
starts, and the pvr stuff is loading, menu changes, and especially
trying to watch a movie or something locks it up hard here.  The x86
version does not have this issue.

I do prefer Kodi when watching Movies, but not so much more to not use
MythTV to do it so I do not have to bounce around between apps to
watch what I want.  I have not tried the android app on Shield (but
have on my tablet), and it works well.  I am going to try it on the
Shield soon (next time I am over there).  Kodi's metadata grabber is
*waaaaaay* better than MythTV's as far as speed is concerned.  I can
re-scan my whole library in under an hour with Kodi.  MythTV takes
over a day to get all my Music and Videos (and of course correct the
erroneous ones which is far higher percentage-wise thank Kodi).

The Shield is a very sweet box - especially for the price.  I have put
in feature requests in the nVidia forums for remote control additions.
Let's see if they listen - I am definitely not the only one with
complaints in that area.