What is Argus exactly? (1 Viewer)

[elsmandino]

As a user of Mediaportal for qutie some time now, I had heard of "4therecord" but never gave it much thought - until now that is. As I understand, it is now been re-named Argus.

I have had a look at the Argus wiki and am not entirely sure what the basis of this program is.

Am I right in thinking that it is a generic server backend but is able to fully work with more front ends than Mediaportal Server? - i.e. if all your client PCs run Mediaportal, you would just run Mediaportal Client on each but if you had one client with Mediaportal Client and another with, say XBMC (with PVR Support), it would make sense to use Argus instead.

Ultimately, can anyone tell me the pros and cons of considering Argus as opposed to my current use of MP Server?

Thanks very much

I wish I could stop playing around/experimenting with these things but it is just too tempting!!!

 

[Luca Brasi]

I think a lot of people have thoughts like that right now since watching tv in xbmc came closer with the latest releases.
Did you have a look at this page in Argus wiki? http://www.argus-tv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Modules_and_Setup_Types
Here you can find the understanding of what the different systems do and how they interact with each other....

 

[Benoire]

Argus is a two stage program, an advanced rule based scheduler and a tv engine (similar to TVE3). The scheduler can be run with either TVE3 or ARgus Recorder and is designed to act as an interface to allow recording, EPG display to be done quite easily. It then has a very bad hack (at present) in to MP to provide full TV functionality or can use other protocols for programs such as XBMC. The bad hack really means that it is a horrible way to implement the plugin (MP DEvs don't like it) but you do not see any different to the native TVE plugin.

I use Argus Scheduler and DJBlu's TVServer at present with MP as my front end. I don't see anything different within MP front end except that I now have more options for recording and reminding as well as a really good way to schedule outside of MP. Some people have issues with TVe3 and stability and so choose to use ARgus Recorder... Simply having the choice is good.

 

[logifuse]

You can run XBMC as a front end for TVE3 (MP TV Server). XBMC has a common PVR addon & from there you can select the plugin for your TV server (MP, Argus, TV Headend, Myth TV, etc.). It's very basic compared to the TV Plugin in an MP front end.

Why would you use Argus over TVE3? For me, it was stability, particularly in a multi-client environment. Once up & running, it's bullet proof. I've always found TVE3 to be flaky under pressure. The advanced scheduling rules are great too, & the standalone console (you can just use the MP interface if you like) is great. I tend to schedule via the standalone console on my desktop PC & delete recordings in MP after I've watched them.

Unlike TVE3, Argus is digital broadcast only (no analogue or line in support).

As for the very bad hack - the MP client for Argus basically over-writes the files for the TV client for MP. You're not going to use both, so what's the problem? You don't have to mess around getting Argus to be the default TV client in MP & the remote works properly straight off.

 

[elsmandino]

Wow - thanks very much for the comprehensive replies.

So, to summarise -

Argus TV Recorder is an equivalent of TVE3 and you can choose either.

Argus TV Scheduler is an advanced recording scheduler that can be used to enchance both Argus TV Recorder and TVE3.

Argus TV Recorder or TVE3 can both be used with either Mediaportal Front end or XBMC.

Is this correct?

I guess the best way to see how I like Argus is to give it a whirl - perhaps install Argus TV Recorder with the Schedler and then have a go with both XBMC and Mediaportal - I had not even heard of TV Headend so might even have a play with that.

One important issue that I came accross whilst using the latest version of XBMC with the Mediaportal Server plugin was that if I did something in XBMC (e.g. scheduled a recording, or watched 50% of a programme) and then used Mediaportal Client on another PC, I noticed that the Recording was not being show in the EPG and the Recording folder did not show that the programme was 50% watched, so I could no resume.

This is a bit of an irritation - both XBMC and MP Client are interacting directly with the server so why would the changes not show up in each. Is this an issue that Argus does not have?

One other important query if I may - what are my options for EPG if I switch to Argus TV Server. I currently use Miroslav's Sky Grabber, which has been great but is there anything equivalent for Argus. Also, would I lose the ability to series record?

Thanks again.

Alex

 

[Luca Brasi]

Is this correct?

Exactly!

This is a bit of an irritation - both XBMC and MP Client are interacting directly with the server so why would the changes not show up in each. Is this an issue that Argus does not have?

Don't know why it doesn't work. I would expect it to do so as well. Never tried it in that setup but it worked for me with Argus.

One other important query if I may - what are my options for EPG if I switch to Argus TV Server. I currently use Miroslav's Sky Grabber, which has been great but is there anything equivalent for Argus.

There are several possibilities for getting EPG data in Argus. It supports standard dvb epg data an there is the tv guide importer which I use for clickfinder data. And you will find other importers in the forum... You will have to look there if there is something already present for sky....

Also, would I lose the ability to series record?

The scheduler brings a lot of features to manage that. There is a plugin in the argus forums which will enrich egp data with season and episode numbers like there is one for mp.

 

[logifuse]

Argus has a rest API that allows XBMC to set & follow watched point markers. I don't think MP TV Server has that for XBMC (yet?). However, you can't look at XBMC as full featured for PVR use as it's limited to the features of the poorest TV server it supports (I think that's TV Headend - don't bother looking at that).

I used to get an XMLTV file from my EPG provider via a scheduled batch download & drop that in the designated folder in Argus (which then updates the guide). I now use broadcast EPG. Basically, if you can get an XMLTV file, you can use the data in Argus. It doesn't have the pretty XMLTV plugin to download the data that MP TV Server has, but as long as you can do that part yourself, Argus does the rest.