Originally published at: How to Build a Whole-Home IPTV DVR
This video tutorial will teach you how to build a whole-home IPTV DVR system. One major drawback of using unverified IPTV services is the lack of recording capabilities. Even when IPTV recording does work, there are two major limitations. The first is lack of internal storage on most streaming devices. The popular Amazon Fire TV…
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Remember to leave you pc on for this as it powers the storage.
This a good option for anyone who wants to record a lot.
And when you use your computer as a whole home dvr the upgrades to storage are easy. Can get huge ssd drives and lots of space this way.
Thank you for the review. It’s what everyone needed who was asking about major storage when cord cutting.
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I am struggling with something that I am hoping someone can shed some light on for me. IPTV recording has been my biggest goal. I jumped on the Zima board after Troy’s post and have set it up per his instructions.
For some reason the recording folder setup works flawlessly for a brief period of time then suddenly the folder cannot be found. This does not seem to be a hardware or network setup issue as I can find files on the network storage via Plex both on local and remote. I have gone through the setup process three times now and every time the same issue occurs after a brief period of success.
- Zima board has a static ip on the network.
- SSD is connected via USB (possible issue?)
Any ideas on how to fix this would be appreciated.
The first thing that comes to mind is a permisiions setting, but as I have not acquired the parts and built one yet, am not positive about it. It’s worth checking i’d say; readng about how much you have dealt with gettng it configured correctly.
Best of Luck and please keep us posted.
are you using the casaos interface?
I am.
Could be several issues and the ssd via usb might be the problem. To save yourself lots of time try another device even another usb if you have nothing else. Also from your casaos web ui make sure the device is shown and shared, try creating a new folder with shared permissions etc. post back…but for now…night night time 
The issue seems to be a Tivimate problem. I setup and tested recording with Sparkle and have found the folder, recorded multpile, and have watched succesfully varying shows/sports without issue.
I have reached out to Tivimate support and they have opened a ticket to help identify the problem.
I followed the instructions, and it worked fine. but i miss place my casaos password. Are there any instructions to recover or reset password?
You might ask on their support forum(discord). The password is stored locally
Just to provide follow-up on the issue. I have successfully eliminated the issue by bypassing the VPN for Tivimate. For some reason having Tivimate running through the VPN is causing the issue, although through Sparkle and others I do not have the same issue. Hopeful someone here can shed light on what is happening and how to fix it.
I’m new to the forum. I saw on TiviMate’s website the recording feature advertised. I just purchased the premium version of TiviMate with the hope that recording feature would appear in the paid version. It did not. I chatted with support and they acted like it was never available but might be developed sometime in the future. Was the recording feature removed for legal reasons possibly or did I miss something?
Recording sure is available. No idea why they would tell you that. For example while watching a program you can click ok on your remote then the down arrow and choose recording. For scheduling open the left panel by clicking the left arrow while in preview mode>settings>other>scroll down to recording and click it.
Or in the left popout click Recordings, then the right arrow, then the up arrow and make your choices from there. That’s 3 ways. Use the search and you can lots of good info. As an example.
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After fighting to get DVR recording to work, at this point am confident about making it always work. It really depends on your hardware. Whether it NVIDEA SHIELD, or Formuler, or Fire TV, or UGOOS, or ONN, etc.
Sure some will claim nonsense
RULES:
1). USE Wifi 5 or WIFI 6 always. If you use wifi. You need to send a video stream of data too your device, And back from your device. Any glitch in communication will crash the stream and stop a recording.
2). USE Ethernet if it’s available. It’s good to have something that can’t not be stopped or interfered with.
3). Most apps have the ability to record to a NETWORK ADDRESSES SERVER (NAS) using the SMB communication method. As with any pushing of stream data two ways, you need to make sure no stream breaks happen. Is that going to be better with wifi or Ethernet in your house? Can you set up a NAS on your router or a workstation on your network? It will take some effort to perfect this.
4). Would you rather record to a local USB memory stick? Well that’s a problem. The memory stick typically uses FAT32 with its file limit size. Sure you can use it for half hour or one hour shows, but then you run into issues at anything over an hour. It will be a fight with using that USB as they can random disconnect also, depending on hardware.
5). Using the five to ten pieces of DVR software to make this work, as you experiment, will not be fun. Then you have to consider if you are using ANDROID 9, or ANDROID 11, or ANDROID 14 or the android tv version, or the proprietary fire TV android. The software and operating systems can fight with each other. Will the software allow you to watch something and record something else, without crashing the streams?
6). Your provider of internet programs will cause issues too. Are they rock solid every day? Do they have outages? Is their EPG up to date for a day or a week? Do you get one stream or two streams?
7). Finally the hardware. Many say just buy an Nvidia Shield Pro for $200 and be done with most of these issues. It runs older version of Android, and Nvidia made sure it’s all up to date with the ability to use NTFS USB attached devices. It’s an old hardware device though, and many want to try new hardware, where each platform still depends on the manufacturer.
It’s a rabbit hole of information. Good luck with the hobby.
Am speculating that this is the confusion between the paid stand alone version of TIVIMATE and the modified version that has a provider stream integrated into TIVIMATE. Am seeing these kind of messages throughout the history of folks looking for support for TIVIMATE.