Tvheadend

I'm no expert on the subject. But are you sure the you can use timeshift on your setup. I mean - is the bandwidth big enough on a USB2 connection (I presume you are using some kind of ext.hdd).

In Kodi, playing a Recording is more like playing a movie, not Live TV. Timeshifting has absolutely nothing to do with playing a Recording.

How is your Pi connected to the network? Also beware, the single 100Mbps Ethernet jack and all of the USB ports all share a single bus on all of the Pis, so there may be a bandwidth issue, too.

Robert Cameron wrote:

Timeshifting has absolutely nothing to do with playing a Recording.

That is not completely true if you are trying to do timeshift while recording. But in this case it appears he hasn't even been able to enable timeshift, so that is not the issue.

Aside from possible bandwidth issues, maybe when you start playing back a recording which is still in progress, it stops at the position the recording was at when you started the playback - it is not dynamically seeing that the end of the recording has changed?? I am not using Kodi, so I cannot test. Can you do some test and see if that is the case? (i.e. start a recording then after 1 min start playing back the recording and see if it stops at about 1 min.)

Otherwise we are just guessing if there are no logs...

Joe User wrote:

Robert Cameron wrote:

Timeshifting has absolutely nothing to do with playing a Recording.

That is not completely true if you are trying to do timeshift while recording. But in this case it appears he hasn't even been able to enable timeshift, so that is not the issue.

Not quite. In Kodi, if you choose a program that it recording in the guide, Kodi will ask you if you wish to start from the beginning. If you say Yes, it will play back the recording and use the recording stream, which does not use the timeshift buffer. If you say No, Tvheadend will open a new stream that does use the timeshift buffer; however this is not really a recording in progress now, but a separate stream.

So, I can't see how playing a recording in progress has anything to do with a timeshift buffer.

1. Why does Kodi seem to lose its connection to Tvheadend while playing back a recording in progress
2. Why does the timeshift setting not seem to remain set

For the latter, I don't have an answer other than where you are trying to save your timeshift buffer to may be a path the doesn't exist or the Tvheadend user does not have permissions for. For the former, it might be a bandwidth issue because USB and networking are all using the same bus which may be causing a bottleneck. (This is assuming you are storing the recordings on a USB or network drive, ...)

Alright, so since my original post, I switched over to OSMC running Tvheadend 4.0.9 on my server Pi. Seems to be a lot more stable and I actually have timeshift enabled now, so that problem is solved. I am curious to see if this will fix my issue or not.

My Pi is connected to the network via ethernet and I am recording to a USB HD, so that is disappointing to learn they run through the same bus on the Pi. Guess that is one of its limitations for what it is. Would this be solved if I instead connected it via WiFi?

Also I think I have now enabled logging so I can provide logs of what happens. Can someone check my screenshot I attached and make sure? There is a show we record tomorrow night that we do this exact situation with and if it happens again, I will post the log.

Thanks so much for the help!

I'm not sure if the wifi/Bluetooth is on a separate bus with the Pi3, so I can't answer that.

Robert Cameron wrote:

I'm not sure if the wifi/Bluetooth is on a separate bus with the Pi3, so I can't answer that.

Found this and the answer is yes: http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/44433/does-wifi-on-the-pi-3-reduce-the-ethernet-bottleneck-when-using-usb-device

Josh Crosby wrote:

My Pi is connected to the network via ethernet and I am recording to a USB HD, so that is disappointing to learn they run through the same bus on the Pi. Guess that is one of its limitations for what it is. Would this be solved if I instead connected it via WiFi?

While it is correct that Ethernet on the Pi shares the USB bus, there is plenty of bandwidth available for what you are doing, so despite what people are saying here, this is unlikely to be the problem.

Wireless will likely perform worse due to the increased latency.

Without further details, everything is guess work. Also, since the OP has changed OSes and builds of Tvheadend, if there's a problem now it'll likely be different from what it was originally.

Kept it plugged in ethernet and everything works beautifully now. Tried it over wireless just for kicks and there was a ton of latency.

I really think Timeshift was necessary to make it work properly and I guess it's just more stable on 4.0.9 in OSMC. Like Hiro said, I didn't run into any bandwidth issues or anything either.

Thanks everyone for your help!