Playing TV on Fire TV from network server

Back a couple of years ago <https://tvforum.uk/forums/post1015677#post-1015677> noggin said: "Kodi + TV Headend is a really good quality, low-cost PVR and TV viewing solution".

Now that's the configuration I have, but it has some problems. It plays recorded programmes served by tvheadend OK, or if I view them via an NFS export of the files. But it sometimes gets in trouble when I fast forward parts of the programme (spelled adverts?). The fast forwarding will go jerky and sometimes apparently freeze. When I press Play, sometimes it rewinds to the beginning of the programme, and occasionally the whole Fire TV resets.

It seems to depend on the particular programmes and I don't see the same problems if I use Kodi on my PC server. There's a wired ethernet connection between them.

Does anybody else recognize these symptoms or have any ideas on ways to overcome them?

The Kodi developers are close-to ignoring Fire TV since Amazon took the decision not to allow Kodi to be provided in their App Store. AIUI the Fire TV isn't a great platform for Kodi. I used to use a Raspberry Pi as my main Kodi platform for a long time and it works well with TV Headend, though I've never used WiFi for connectivity, always cabled ethernet.

There's a Kodi fork, without Add Ons (but with PVR support) that may perform better on Fire TV. It's called MrMC and they do develop for the FireTV (including support for the AFTV 3 4K frame-rate switching AIUI. I don't use Fire TV as my Kodi platform though so can't comment.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. It seems to require files to have particular names in a particular directory structure, though, which I think will be awkward to do (especially as tvheadend doesn't seem to extract any episode numbers at all). Plus the disincentive of costing money means I don't think I'll try. I see there's a 'lite' version, but that's got very poor reviews.

You can customise the file names and folder structure that TV Headend uses quite extensively in the web interface. But playing from within TV Headend's add-on is usually preferable to playing them directly from the folder (as it tracks watched status better)

https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend/wiki/Digital_Video_Recorder_configuration

TV Headend only - by default - uses the broadcast metadata sent via DVB-T/T2 - so if the broadcaster doesn't add episodes numbers, they aren't there (or are just part of the synopsis) Similarly programmes with "NEW :" added to their title can be an issue.

Thanks, yes I usually do use Kodi's addon for tvheadend. Playing them direct from the folder is simply a way to check that the basic underlying data is there and correct. But I think MrMC doesn't allow addons, so that doesn't help?


Indeed and the way some channels add New, then remove it, then add it back again is an irritation. But tvheadends regex searching can help there.

it doesn't allow Python add-ons, but binary add-ons such as the PVR ones are fine.