It's amazing that you got Multiview working so quickly. Android/Fire TV users are still waiting for Multiview.
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I'm using VLC as the backbone viewer and VLC's hardware acceleration helps with making it CPU friendly. At the moment, it is a basic select channels and play with no real options yet. Just getting it working was a sweet feeling though. Fortunately, others have already done this and have plenty of example of implementing it.
Have you tried time shifting live tv? I was attempting that with VLC when I came across your project. VLC did allow for pausing but the moving around within the buffer was problematic for me.
Will your program work if it is running on a different Windows PC than the Channels DVR server?
Yes. It connects to the Channels server over the local network.
I have it working on recorded content as well as commercial skipping. Live TV is going to be tricky though. I haven't really messed with that yet. I have been spending most of my time on getting the Live TV guide to work with remote controls, keyboards and my remote control app. That has been very time consuming.
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Great! I imagine that it will work remotely too if I create a Wireguard VPN to my router with local LAN access enabled, and I look forward to testing that functionality.
As long as the server is accessible on the local network and you clients connect to it locally, it should work fine. The app is connecting through Bonjour/Zeroconf. It scans the local network for the CDVR beacon and connects that way.
I asked Google if "Bonjour/Zeroconf works over Wireguard" and the answer I got back was 'Bonjour/Zeroconf (mDNS) generally does not work over WireGuard by default because it relies on local network multicast traffic, while WireGuard is a unicast Layer 3 VPN. To make it work, you must use a reflector/proxy (like Avahi) or set up Avahi, allowing allow-point-to-point=yes and enable-reflector=yes to pass multicast traffic."
I have seen something similar with the Fire TV CDVR app. I set up Channels DVR at a friend's house and wanted to access my CDRV server remotely using my Firestick, so I created a Wireguard tunnel to my router. Auto-discovery failed and then CDRV asked for a local IP address on my LAN, and that worked. Do you think you can ask for a local IP address if Bonjour/Zeroconf discovery fails?
I'll add that to my list.
Thanks. I think I would use that feature quite a bit starting in June when I am away for the summer.
The Fire TV CDVR app also saves previously entered local IP addresses, but that is less important when working from a PC with a keyboard since I can easily enter the local IP address. Normally, when I am away from home I use CDVR QR code sign-in process, which works really well. However, if there is already a CDVR server on the local network, the app automatically connects to it and I did not see a way to connect to my remote CDVR server without using Wireguard. Perhaps there is a way to do it and I have not figured it out yet.
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Does anyone use MusicBee for their music collection? I was looking at adding a music link to the HTPC down the road and they have a solid C# API that should work well with integration into the app.
I used MusicBee ages ago. It's always been a good Windows replacement for iTunes, and I loved it at the time. I just visited the website, and it looks better than ever, but I've long since moved on to Lyrion Music Server (formerly Squeezebox, LMS, etc.).
The project will be called Feral HTPC. I will start a new thread for this project when it is released. The first few releases will be Alpha releases and will be missing some features the Beta releases will have.
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Lol, I love it. Will definitely be a download for me.
Im very excited for this.
The web interface is useless for HTPC purposes.
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For windows purposes in general, the webui is useless for watching stuff. The only player I get luck on watching stuff at times is Jellyfin Media Player but even that player has its moments. Some of the channels don't pop up in the guide if you go over 450
I use jellyfin sever/client as well for my downloaded series management.
It can be a little clunky in the navigation department however.
Ive never used it for TV however.
My biggest issue with most of the HTPC solutions out there is really lousy recorded tv metadata management.
WMC was perfect. main sort by name or when recorded, drill down to series, then subsort by either recording date or original air date.
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I, too, am looking forward to this project. I often want to watch TV while doing other things at the computer. The Channels devs seem to care much less about the web viewer than they do about Android.