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It’s time for an update from the OpenELEC team on the Raspberry Pi version of XBMC. The first part of the update is that the PVR project and the ARM port for the Raspberry Pi have been formally accepted in to the XBMC master branch, which should mean more development and better bug fixing for the Raspberry Pi version.

The inclusion of PVR into XBMC master means we can also save some build cycles and reduce PVR related confusion over which OpenELEC image to download in the future. Going forward all OpenELEC images will be PVR ready – the PVR functions can simply be enabled (or disabled) in XBMC settings.

Also announced is that the OpenELEC version of XBMC supports MPEG-2 and VLC-1 decoders, I tested Media Center recorded TV files with the Raspbmc version of the Pi and the MPEG-2 decode does make a big difference so its good to seen OpenELEC working with the decoders.

Finally the most interesting for me is that PVR features work in XBMC so you can use a Raspberry Pi for recording TV, there is even a PVR server than can be installed on the Pi (HTS_TVHEADEND). My plan is to try and get this working with a HDHomerun and have a standalone Raspberry Pi PVR box.

If you want to try out the new features get the latest build of OpenELEC for the Pi http://sources.openelec.tv/tmp/image/openelec-rpi and please let me know how you get on with it.

Details from the OpenELEC blog:

 

PVR support for Raspberry Pi

Last but not least: the result of all above news is working PVR support for RaspberryPi on OpenELEC. If you want test these builds you can grab your copy at http://sources.openelec.tv/tmp/image/openelec-rpi/ (all builds after r11904). (Note: This builds includes a reworked RaspberryPi support and are development builds and can still contain bugs and issues, there is no stable XBMC release for RPi this time! To report issues use XBMC’s Trac for XBMC issues and OpenELEC’s github issue tracker for OS related bugs)

HTS-TVHeadend as a backend PVR server can be installed via XBMC’s addon system:

System/Settings/Add-ons/Services/hts-tvheadend

 

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