Issues with streaming E2 box from Kodi clients

[Morini]

Hi,

I've just cancelled my Sky Q to move back to an E2 receiver for FTA reception due to the ever spiralling cost. I have used E2 boxes previously many years ago before I signed up to sky, so I'm not coming in completely blind.

After some research I purchased a GigaBlue UA 4k (preinstalled with openvix) along with a suitable unicable LNB from the forum sponsor, they arrived yesterday. Box setup was very smooth, I followed the tuner setup guides for unicable on here, temporarily swapped out the sky wideband LNB for the GT-Sat one and it all worked first time. I'd like to thank the contributors on here for that unicable guide, saved me a ton of time! Great work

So far so good. My problem is to do with providing the household with a similar "multiroom" experience compared to the current Sky Q. I know it can be done streaming from the GBUA4K to clients across my LAN using openwebif, but I'm really struggling to get it to work. I have checked the openwebif plugin is enabled and I am able to view the openwebif interface in a browser from my PC. Kodi with the enigma2 pvr plugin will not work at all though. As soon as I enable the e2 plugin kodi crashes. I've tried Kodi on four separate devices, a google chromecast with google tv dongle, a cheap Chinese android TV box, my phone (google pixel 6) and lastly a windows 11 laptop. I get exactly the same behaviour when enabling the enigma2 pvr plugin on all of them, I see a message saying "pvr manager is starting up" then Kodi crashes.

I appreciate this is almost certainly a kodi / E2 pvr plugin issue, but I thought I would post on here to check I'm not missing something obvious. Failing that, is there another way of doing this without Kodi? I have an old E2 box kicking about, but I suspect it is too old to be useful.

[abu baniaz]

Not a solution to your issue, but until you solve it, you can use the old E2 box in client mode and stream from the main receiver.

[JonMMM]

The way I do it is to use kodi on firesticks or android boxes, Kodi comes with an Enigma2 PVR client which works perfectly and Kodi is free. Only issue is you cant pause live TV.

[Morini]

Thank you for the input guys.

Since posting I tried a couple of things and can confirm this isn't an E2 backend / openvix problem at all (didn't think it would be to be honest). I uninstalled the Kodi application on the windows 11 laptop and installed an older version (v19.5), just as an idea for something to try really. Anyway, the E2 pvr client works perfectly on this version of kodi, so I can probably work around the problem by sideloading an older version of Kodi on the other android clients. I can't experiment much more at the moment as I had to reinstate the Sky Q LNB so the family can watch stuff this evening. I will have another go at solving it properly when I get an afternoon with nobody else in the house.

I think I might mention it on the github for the E2 pvr client as I would prefer to use the kodi from google play store than having to sideload old versions.

Thanks Abu for the suggestion to use my old E2 box as a client. Not sure I could get an up to date openvix image for it as it seems to be out of support now. It is one of the original vu+ duo's, still works ok but the software version is too old I think?

[abu baniaz]

Try the ViX image on there at the moment. If there is no client mode, there will be an option to use fallback tuner.

You can also flash ATV 7.3 which will have the fallback tuner. They have gone down the satip route instead of Client mode.

[Morini]

Ok, cheers. I will dig it out of the loft tomorrow and see what's what.

[Morini]

So, I dug the old Vu+ duo out as I needed it to help me set up a second dish pointing at 19.2e (I took it outside with a small tv screen to find the signal). Anyway, it appears to be running openvix 5.0.13 and from what I can see it does offer client mode. I guess this will be ok as a client to the main box in a different room? I won't be able to test it all out properly until my Sky gets to the cancellation date though as my 28.2 dish has the original Sky Q wideband LNB until then. It is a bit of a faff to keep swapping the Sky Q / unicable LNB's over.

I have another question regarding the tuners on the Gigablue. I plan on hooking up the new feed from 19.2E to tuner B. Currently Tuner A is physically connected to the GT-S1DCSS24 (or it will be when Sky Q goes) and all other tuners are "Connected To Tuner A". This is all tested and working. What I would like to do is physically connect the LNB pointing at 19.2E (which is a normal universal LNB) to tuner B and leave the 7 other tuners as they are. Will this work ok? As in, is it ok to mix universal and unicable LNB's?

[twol]

So, I dug the old Vu+ duo out as I needed it to help me set up a second dish pointing at 19.2e (I took it outside with a small tv screen to find the signal). Anyway, it appears to be running openvix 5.0.13 and from what I can see it does offer client mode. I guess this will be ok as a client to the main box in a different room? I won't be able to test it all out properly until my Sky gets to the cancellation date though as my 28.2 dish has the original Sky Q wideband LNB until then. It is a bit of a faff to keep swapping the Sky Q / unicable LNB's over.

I have another question regarding the tuners on the Gigablue. I plan on hooking up the new feed from 19.2E to tuner B. Currently Tuner A is physically connected to the GT-S1DCSS24 (or it will be when Sky Q goes) and all other tuners are "Connected To Tuner A". This is all tested and working. What I would like to do is physically connect the LNB pointing at 19.2E (which is a normal universal LNB) to tuner B and leave the 7 other tuners as they are. Will this work ok? As in, is it ok to mix universal and unicable LNB's?

So as long as the C,D,E,F,G,H tuners are connected to A, and B is setup as 19.2E you should be OK.

[Morini]

Just thought I would post an update on the original Kodi issue in case it helps someone else out.

A couple of days ago the android TV box upstairs in the den auto updated the Kodi 19.5 I sideloaded to the current stable version 20.5 (at the time of writing). This causes Kodi to crash when loading the enigma2 PVR add on and means no live TV in that room. Rather than downgrade again I signed up to the beta program and the box then upgraded it's Kodi version to 21.0 RC2. Everything working again on this version, so the problem seems specific to Kodi versions > 19.5.