VDR Series Recording

[chrisbirkinshaw]

Is it going to be possible to choose to record a whole series in VDR? I can't see any way to do that right now.

Thanks,

Chris

[totallymaxed]

Is it going to be possible to choose to record a whole series in VDR? I can't see any way to do that right now.

Thanks,
Chris

Hi Chris,

We are exerimenting with the following patch to vdr that impliments the core of the UK's Freeview Replay functionality, the cut-down version of TV-Anytime (ETSI TS 102 323) broadcast in the UK.

The patch implements the low-level support needed for Freeview Replay. It captures the series and item CRIDs and stores the information in epg.data and channels.conf.

If your interested in playing with this and building high-level functions to make use of the data, the patch is here;

http://www.pickles.me.uk/vdrtva-0.0.1.tar.gz

Unfortunately the patch was prepared against vdr-1.5.13 and not the current vdr 1.4.7

Andrew

[colinjones]

Andrew - does this translate in anyway to DVB outside the UK, or is this a specifically UK feature? I guess you are going to say that it is standard feature of DVB so if it is used where I am, it will work! No idea how to find that out

[chrisbirkinshaw]

Freeview Playback is UK specific (like the Digital Tick and the D-Book), but there's no reason why the TVA spec can't be implemented outside of the uk.

It's not going to solve the problem totally though. For example for DVB-S in the Uk (the free channels off Astra) there is no TVA, as Sky use their own proprietary signalling.

The upcoming Freesat launch does mean that there is some standard EIT with series linking info in it, however it is tunnelled through the Sky network on non-standard pids, so I doubt VDR would get at the data. Also, the text strings are encrypted, though you'd still be able to get at the CRIDs.

So Freeview Playback support would be great, but it's not going to offer a complete solution - far from it. I'd suggest we look at some additional tool on the web side of things. I've heard there is something called Master Planner for VDR which searches the EIT for programs with similar names and schedules timers (like mythtv).

I'll dig a bit deeper...

[chrisbirkinshaw]

http://www.vdr-portal.de/board/thread.php?threadid=45022

[chrisbirkinshaw]

This is probably better as it's integrated into the GUI:

http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Epgsearch-plugin

[totallymaxed]

Andrew - does this translate in anyway to DVB outside the UK, or is this a specifically UK feature? I guess you are going to say that it is standard feature of DVB so if it is used where I am, it will work! No idea how to find that out

Yep thats about the size of it Colin and Chris has picked up some additional issues in his response here too.

[Viking]

Hi,

This is probably better as it's integrated into the GUI:

http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Epgsearch-plugin

Has anyone done any work on the EPGsearch plugin for VDR ?

I have been using VDR for 7 years and am now moving to LinuxMCE (with VDR) and I really like what EPGsearch can do. It has a lot of features that you can use to search the EPG and record series and so on.
Some examples. It will only record the same episode once - even if it is transmitted five times over the nex week. It keeps track of the recordnings that were OK. If recording was not OK, it will record the next schedule. It can record the news and then only keep the last X transmissions (old news are no news) it can stop recording after it has recorded X episodes of a serie. Good fot kids stuff if you don't want the disks to burst. And so on ...

And it is also usable from the vdradmin plugin

Greetings
Viking

[tschak909]

Guys,

Instead of trying to glob UI around the system, why don't some of you actually try to figure out how Orbiter works, and make an Orbiter UI to do these things?

Come on, guys. We've got a highly retargetable UI that scales onto EVERYTHING, and all I see you guys doing is just trying to avoid it and build around it!

STOP IT!

-Thom

[Viking]

Hi Thom,

well the UI can probably do a lot

Do you mean that the UI can already do series recordings with VDR ?

Sorry, as I am no programmer, I have to use whatever is already there. Or is there a no programmers way of realizing this ?

Greetings
Viking

[totallymaxed]

Hi Thom,

well the UI can probably do a lot

Do you mean that the UI can already do series recordings with VDR ?

Sorry, as I am no programmer, I have to use whatever is already there. Or is there a no programmers way of realizing this ?

Greetings
Viking

Hi,

No Thom does not mean that... it cant. We have this aspiration to move away from the current vdr osd based UI over time and Thom is trying to 'jump-start' that. Of course the vdr osd is a well proven light weight fully blended UI (with powerful and tightly coupled player code) aimed at STB style interaction... it does its job well but is very limited both graphically and in terms of 'hooking' itself into the the whole LinuxMCE environment. We'd like something that smoothly integrates what the vdr osd does today but allows us to bring that directly into the Orbiter based UI and allow it to 'live & breath' as a fully fledged component.

All the best

Andrew

[colinjones]

Hi Thom,

well the UI can probably do a lot

Do you mean that the UI can already do series recordings with VDR ?

Sorry, as I am no programmer, I have to use whatever is already there. Or is there a no programmers way of realizing this ?

Greetings
Viking

Hi,

No Thom does not mean that... it cant. We have this aspiration to move away from the current vdr osd based UI over time and Thom is trying to 'jump-start' that. Of course the vdr osd is a well proven light weight fully blended UI (with powerful and tightly coupled player code) aimed at STB style interaction... it does its job well but is very limited both graphically and in terms of 'hooking' itself into the the whole LinuxMCE environment. We'd like something that smoothly integrates what the vdr osd does today but allows us to bring that directly into the Orbiter based UI and allow it to 'live & breath' as a fully fledged component.

All the best

Andrew

Andrew, agreed, and in line with the discussions we have been having of VDR being fully integrated into LMCE and not using the OSD.... at the same time, it is naive to think that if a VDR plugin already exists for the function you want, and it is easy to install and use that plugin into LMCE, that non-programmers will sit around and think "no, I won't do that because it isn't the 'right way' to do things, I'll wait until someone integrates the functionality into the LMCE UI"!

I understand and appreciate that Thom is trying to force the issue here, still expecting users, with no hope of ever doing the required coding, voluntarily to deprive themselves of functionality in support of the idealism is a little unfair. The objective is perfectly sound, I just think the target wasn't

[Viking]

Hi,

OK, I can understand that that is what everybody want's me too

But as Colin says, there is no alternative at the moment and I really mostly use the epgsearch plugin in the background programming timers that I then "cleanup".

And by the way the plugin can be remote-controlled, so you can build an UI around it, just like vdradmin does
Unfortunately I can't do that as I am no programmer

Greetings
Viking

[totallymaxed]

Hi Thom,

well the UI can probably do a lot

Do you mean that the UI can already do series recordings with VDR ?

Sorry, as I am no programmer, I have to use whatever is already there. Or is there a no programmers way of realizing this ?

Greetings
Viking

Hi,

No Thom does not mean that... it cant. We have this aspiration to move away from the current vdr osd based UI over time and Thom is trying to 'jump-start' that. Of course the vdr osd is a well proven light weight fully blended UI (with powerful and tightly coupled player code) aimed at STB style interaction... it does its job well but is very limited both graphically and in terms of 'hooking' itself into the the whole LinuxMCE environment. We'd like something that smoothly integrates what the vdr osd does today but allows us to bring that directly into the Orbiter based UI and allow it to 'live & breath' as a fully fledged component.

All the best

Andrew

Andrew, agreed, and in line with the discussions we have been having of VDR being fully integrated into LMCE and not using the OSD.... at the same time, it is naive to think that if a VDR plugin already exists for the function you want, and it is easy to install and use that plugin into LMCE, that non-programmers will sit around and think "no, I won't do that because it isn't the 'right way' to do things, I'll wait until someone integrates the functionality into the LMCE UI"!

I understand and appreciate that Thom is trying to force the issue here, still expecting users, with no hope of ever doing the required coding, voluntarily to deprive themselves of functionality in support of the idealism is a little unfair. The objective is perfectly sound, I just think the target wasn't

Well all I was trying to do was to put Thom's post into context... I dont' have any problem with anyone choosing to add a vdr plugin to LinuxMCE's vdr implimentation whatsoever... we've (as in CHT) have done so with the IPTV plugin for example.

If you need EPGsearch then get adding it... you dont need to be a 'programmer' to do so... especially if your a 'long term' existing user of vdr and have a basic understanding what a vdr plugin is.

All the best

Andrew