Impressions of a 4 week old Enigma2 newbie.

[George Kildare]

I am a newbie to Enigma 2 receivers have my Xtrend 10000 for about 4 weeks. I thought it useful to give some of my impressions. Note that the box was delivered with 2 satellite tuners and 2 cable tuners. OpenPLI was installed by the dealer, but after a week I changed to OpenVix Hades, because of the superior epg, autotimer and the Vix website.

In general I am extremely happy with the box. It took me about 2 weeks to get the settings to my liking, but now everything is generally working OK. I am also extremely grateful to the large number of enthusiasts who promptly react to my often stupid questions on the forum and for the excellent VIx manual.

However, I have some comments and suggestions.

1. Very occasionally the software hangs and I need to reboot the box manually. This may be due to some of the plug-in extensions, but it is not too bad and I haven’t had time to sort it out.
2. There is very little information about the plug-ins. Several years ago I had a Topfield 5000. I remember that there was a website with a list of the plug-ins with their category, a one line description about what they did and a rating + comments. It would be very useful if a similar website was available for the E2 plugins, including the image that they are known to work with a summary of stability etc.
3. There are so many possibilities with the various settings, that it might be an idea to have a few standard variations saved that (like skins) could be applied easily.
4. I have installed the KODI and TSMedia plugins, but neither of them seem to work flawlessly. The various add-ons to these plugins are difficult to get working or do not work at all. Maybe the problem is that I haven’t spent enough time to study them, but my feeling is that there is room for the development of a robust “Smart TV” type infrastructure that is easy to use. Maybe the Blackhole image is better for Internet apps, but I am reluctant to give up my OpenVIX epg.
5. It seems difficult to find IPTV and radio streams that work. There is room for an Internet Radio application like TUNEIN on my phone that has easy access to all the available web radio stations and allows selected ones to be added to bouquet favourites. There are also websites like Reciva and VTuner that enable radio stations to be added to many types of Internet radio. It would be good if there as an app so that we could use them with E2. Shoutcast does not work as well.
6. As was noted on another thread, it does seem a pity that there is so much duplication of work in developing all the applications for the various images at the same time that there seems to be a need for developments such as I described in 4. And 5. However, I realize that software developers frequently want to do there own thing rather than adopting the work of others!

Again thanks to all the volunteers that have made Enigma2 and OpenVix possible.

[DaMacFunkin]

Like you say Enigma 2 is an enthusiasts project, thousands of different people involved and contributing, getting any kind of overall lists and convergence between thousands of enthusiasts would be impossible, but in one of your points you seem to have answered your first point, i always tell people not to install TSmedia, it is the route of so many problems.

[ccs]

Regarding point 3., would it be possible to highlight the default values in the menus?
I found that when you looked for the alternative values, you had to remember the default, or cancel the page and start again.
It's easy to make errors when you're first starting up.
What would be really handy would be a utility which summarised all the settings you've changed.

[petehill]

i am a newbie too, and i would love a better description of the plugins and what their purposes are.

[Rob van der Does]

I've never seen a 4 week old writing so good English :D

[ronand]

Regarding kodi and tsmedia any issues should be directed to the authors of the plugins. Due to the dubious nature of the streams they often do not work for very long. The primary purpose of a satellite receiver is to view satellite/cable tv believe it or not (rather than streaming).

As regards a plugin list - many have requested it but no-one wants to do it. I doubt its a priority for the devs and most people find out what the plugins do from the forum or by trying them out themselves. One could make a list and share it for others as is nature of open source.

[judge]

5. It seems difficult to find IPTV and radio streams that work. There is room for an Internet Radio application like TUNEIN on my phone that has easy access to all the available web radio stations and allows selected ones to be added to bouquet favourites. There are also websites like Reciva and VTuner that enable radio stations to be added to many types of Internet radio. It would be good if there as an app so that we could use them with E2. Shoutcast does not work as well.

Try the OnDemand plugin available in the image feeds.
Has both TuneIn & Shoutcast included.

[George Kildare]

Thanks for your reactions everyone.

1. DaMacFuncin. I have removed the TSMedia plugin on your advice. I think that this emphasises the need for a short independent review of the various plugins (my point 2). It doesn't need to be elaborate and I realise that it would need a volunteer "editor". However, this did not seem to be a problem with the old Topfield plugins.

2. Judge. I have installed the "OnDemand" plugin. When I start it I see buttons on the right for several on-demand TV services (e.g RTE Player and 3), but no Tunein or Shoutcast. What am I missing?

3. Ronand. I realise that the Enigma box is primarily for satellite/cable viewing, just as a Smart TV is primarily for TV viewing, but IPTV is becoming increasingly important and I at least find it enormously useful to be able to mix satellite stations, cable stations and IPTV streams together in favourite bouquets. However, I am very conscious of the dependence of all our wishes on the efforts of the enthusiastic volunteers for whom I have a great respect.

4. Rob van der Does. Thanks for the comments on my English. The reason that I was able to learn it so quickly is that I am a Linux-controlled robot!

[judge]

2) Scroll down to the Internet radio part.

[Larry-G]

Thanks for your reactions everyone.

1. DaMacFuncin. I have removed the TSMedia plugin on your advice. I think that this emphasises the need for a short independent review of the various plugins (my point 2). It doesn't need to be elaborate and I realise that it would need a volunteer "editor". However, this did not seem to be a problem with the old Topfield plugins.

2. Judge. I have installed the "OnDemand" plugin. When I start it I see buttons on the right for several on-demand TV services (e.g RTE Player and 3), but no Tunein or Shoutcast. What am I missing?



1. Such a project would pretty much be a full time job for some one to do on their own so it is very unlikely to happen any time soon if ever.

2. look for the I-radio part of the OnDemand plugin.

[Rob van der Does]

There are also separate plugins 'ShoutCast'& 'WefRadioFS". Both do a fine job.

[2stein]

well, many of us had hoped that e2 would develop into an all-in-one solution for classical and ip tv. but it doesn't look like this is going to happen in the near future.
so, there will coexist several boxes in the living room in additon to the functions integrated in the tv for quite some time.
also: iptv still is a playground with no stability for free feeds. they come and go. this has nothing to do with e2. even the much hyped kodi boxes still fight with those instabilities.
restrict the usage of your e2 box to watching and recording classical tv and you will be happy.

[mfaraj]

i think you followed the wrong advice by removing TSmedia
as a user not coder of TSmedia i can say because nature of free streams you find many not working but also many are working including tunein radio ,shoutcast and numerous internet radio plugins.i listen to my classical music daily from tunein radio without any problem
TSmedia,kodidirect and even kodi are not perfect softwares but these are the top can be done for limited enigma2 and gstreamer enviroments.
if you give some time to customize TSmedia for your needs you will not be able to live with your box without it

[George Kildare]

1. Regarding info about Plugins, a compromise would be to have a section of the Forum devoted to Plugins, with a thread devoted to each of the Plugins that can be downloaded standardly from the image. This would leave it up to the users to record their experiences.


2. I have experimented with the On-Demand plugin.
None of the On-Demand TV services seem to be working properly for me.

Tunein radio is indeed present and working, but
(i) I cannot seem to be able to find every stations accessible to my iPhone Tunein app when I search (e.g. WCBM is not there).
(ii) I have saved several stations to a "Favourite" bouquet but there appears to be no way of changing the order of stations in the Favourites.
(iii) What would be really nice, would be a way of copying a station stream from the Iradio favourites to a normal E2 bouquet.
By the way, while I was playing with the Radio favourites my box seized up and I needed to reboot.

[Huevos]

i think you followed the wrong advice by removing TSmediaThat's a matter of opinion. Mine is avoid any plugins that hijack the remote control functions and therefore make parts of the image impossible to control properly.

[Rob van der Does]

Hasn't that been corrected in TS-Media?

[abu baniaz]

Hasn't that been corrected in TS-Media?
Yes .

[ronand]

TSMedia works fine for what it is. There are just too many leechers expecting all the links to be working

[Rob van der Does]

Hasn't that been corrected in TS-Media?


Yes.

Yeah, thought so. IIRC Mfaraj corrected that as soon as we mentioned it here on the forum.

[George Kildare]

I have tried the On Demand Plugin and found Internet Radio and Tunein.
None of the TV on demand services seem to work for me. They all hang up when I try to play a programme.

Tunein and Shoutcast do work. However, there are problems.
1. Not all stations can be found. On the Tunein app on my iPhone I can find WCBM, but not on the E2 app.
2. If I am playing a station in the INet Favourites, I cannot exit and return to the Favourites.
3. I find it extremely difficult to exit to normal TV
4. There seems to be no way of reordering the Favourites.
5. What would be really nice would be a way of converting the Favourite list to a normal bouquet of streams accessible from outside the plugin.

Regarding the plugin info, a compromise would be to give each plugin in the Vix compendium its own thread, where users could exchange information about it.

[George Kildare]

Sorry for the last contribution. It duplicates what I wrote yesterday because I thought that the previous contribution had not been added to the thread. I overlooked page 2.