This section describes fundamental operations, accessible via the toolbar above the TV screen. The icons provide a tooltip, when positioning the mouse pointer on it for 1 or 2 seconds.

Additional functions can be accessed via the main menu and the context menu. You may also assign functions to any key, have a look at chapter 7.

 

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The Status Bar

This symbol turns the status bar on and off. The bar informs you about

• the current channel
• the strength of the received signal
• the type of the audio signal (Mono/Stereo)
• the aspect ratio (4:3, 14:9, 16:9)
• the resolution in pixels and the number of frames per second (fps) of the transmitted television picture, followed by the bitrate of the audio signal (kbps, k-bit per second) and the sampling rate in kilohertz.

Left-clicking the signal strength field switches to a progress bar, indicating the actual play time in percent and. The next click shows the remaining play time. Correct values are only displayed in case EPG data is available for the transmission.

 

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Fullscreen Mode

This icon switches to fullscreen mode. You can do the same by double-clicking the television picture. Double-clicking it again, you revert to window mode. In fullscreen mode a control bar pops up when moving the mouse-pointer to the bottom of the screen.

 

Hiding Controls

This symbol enables/disables all controls - the title bar as well as the menu -, tool- and status bar. Only a thin frame bordering the television picture remains.

Yyou can enable/disable all controls by the View -> Hide All item in the context menu. Alternatively you can use the control bar when moving the mouse-pointer to the bottom.

 

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Channel List, Selection and Preview

Clicking this symbol opens the channel list, which shows all selectable stations sorted in categories. The multiple possibilities are described in detail in chapter 6. Here are only the most important operations: Double-clicking a category unfolds the list of channels sorted into it, double-clicking a station switches over to it.

The two symbols switch to the following respectively the previous station. As for the other controls, you can also assign keyboard shortcuts to these functions.

Useful at this point is also the last channel feature in the channel menu, which shifts back to the previous station or media-file.

The option Show EPG Info in the DVBViewer-menu displays a short info about the current channel, its name, the current time-of-day and additionally - provided the information is available - the current and following broadcast with their starting times. The same menu option switches the EPG Info off. In Settings/Options/Teletext & EPG you may select different styles and display types (opacity/transparency) for the OSD (On Screen Display).

After left-clicking a broadcast displayed in the EPG Info, additional information appear, e.g. a summary of the event. Another click into the info reverts to the standard display.

After switching over to a station, the EPG information automatically appear for a few seconds.

A highly interesting feature is the Preview function via the Preview Plugin. Starting Preview a new window opens. Now use the context-menu by right-clicking into it. All stations broadcasting on the same transponder are listed. Now you can select a channel. You can also set the render mode and the decoder besides some other options.

• Close closes the preview window.
• Close and Tune closes the preview window and tunes the previewed channel in the DVBViewer's main display window.
• Swap swaps the channel displayed in the DVBViewer's main display window with that in the preview window.

The preview window can be easily resized by dragging a corner with the mouse. If no channel can be tuned in the preview window, a second video decoder is probably necessary, because some video-decoders can run only in one instance. To solve this issue you may download and install the Elecard® MPEG2-decoder pack.

 

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The Favourites

The channel menu offers a list of popular stations for comfortable selection. By clicking the asterisk symbol you can access the favourites editor.

• You can add new stations to the favourites list via drag and drop from the channel list.
• New sub-folders are created with the command “new folder”.

The symbols switch over to the preceding or following station in the favourites list. By using the keyboard, the favourite channels can be selected with [shift key] + [digit key] (if you did not assign other keys to this function).

 

 

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Volume Control

The two loudspeaker symbols serve as volume control:

• Clicking the large loudspeaker increases the volume one step.
• Clicking the small loudspeaker decreases the volume one step.

In both cases the volume level is briefly displayed in the DVBViewer window. For switching the sound off or on, you may use the Mute Function in the context menu (right-click the DVBViewer window). By the way: The DVBViewer uses a logarithmic based volume control.

 

Start / Stop Recording

Clicking this symbol starts the recording of the current broadcast. A second click stops the recording.

The folder for recorded files can be selected in the options window on the tabsheet Recorder. By default the subfolder Capture of the DVBViewer folder is used. On the same tabsheet the file format for videos can be selected. The default setting is MPEG2-PS.

The DVBViewer automatically creates unique names for recorded files. They consist of the starting date and time, the channel name and the title of the broadcast (if provided by the EPG).

Additional information about recording and the Time Shift function can be found in chapter 5 and the following section.

 

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The Recorder Control Window

This symbol opens the recorder control window. It provides additional information and some special options for recording:

• The statistics area shows a graphical representation of the current bit rate in mbits per second.

 

• The area below specifies the recording status (running/stopped/paused), the free disk space, and the maximum recording time in hours:minutes (estimated, depending on the bitrate). The progress bar displays the occupied and free disk space.

 

• In the AV Control list you may disable audio and/or video playback, resulting in a substantially lower processor usage. It may be advantageous for using other programs while recording in the background.

 

 

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Brightness, Contrast and Color Settings

 

This symbol opens a window with four sliding controls for brightness, saturation, contrast and the hue of the television picture. These settings are also available via the context menu.

Please note that this window cannot be used in certain render modes. It will only work with the overlay mixer or VMR® 9 (video mixing renderer).

 

 

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The Teletext Window

This symbol opens the Teletext window. It provides the following possibilities:

• Select a page by clicking the digits in the toolbar. The eraser deletes incorrect input, just like the backspace key. Certainly you also may use the keyboard to enter the desired page number.
• If a teletext page number is displayed on the current page, it is particularly easy to select it: Simply click it, and that's all.
• Clicking the characters « and » switches to the preceding or following page. Also the subpages of a Teletext page can be displayed in this way. The same effect is obtained with the keys [+] and [-].
The left and right arrows are working exactly like the corresponding symbols in your browser. The left arrow leads back to the last visited page, the right arrow is responsible for the forward direction.
• Clicking the disk symbol opens a dialogue to save the teletext page(s) in a file. There are different formats available (txt, gif, html).

Additionally the DVBViewer provides the possibility to insert Teletext subtitles in the television picture. Select Show Subtitles in the view menu, and enter the number of the desired subtitle teletext page. The subtitles are faded out after selecting Show Subtitles again. You can move the subtitles with drag'n'drop.

To use the search-function click the binoculars to open an input field. The search-term will be highlighted in the text.

Please keep in mind that some stations do not provide teletext. In this case the teletext symbol is disabled – this is also the case, if no Teletext Pid has been entered in the channel list. Sometimes it can take a while until a page is transmitted. After having been stored in the page memory the pages are accessible without delay.

 

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The EPG Window

This symbol opens the so called electronic program guide (EPG). At the beginning it shows a list of the broadcasts of the current station. The current broadcast is highlighted.

Basically there are three EPG modes: A station-specific list (as shown above), as well as a time-specific list (full version only), which shows the broadcasts of different stations running at a certain point in time. Switching between these two modes is done by clicking the button "Whats now...". First the possibilities, which both modes are offering:

• Left clicking a title the entry is marked and more detailed infor­mation about this event are shown in the bottom part of the window (if available).
• The Save buttons opens a dialogue window for storing the EPG data as a HTML program magazine (you must also download the EPG2HTML converter at the members' area). The HTML file can be displayed, as shown on the right, in any web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer). You may also save the data in the XML-format for use with Paperless Movie Guide for example.
• The Send to PVR button adds the blue marked entry to the task list of the video recorder timer. After that it might be need;ful to increase the starting and ending times manually, because the broadcaster's information are often not that accurate. Unfortunately VPS is not available with digital video broadcasting.
• The button Send to FAV just notifys you about the beginning of the show.
• The filter button opens a menu, which offers some options for limiting the displayed selection, either to today's broadcasts or to broadcasts starting from the actual time (in the station-specific mode), or to radio or television stations (in the time-specific mode). Here you can also access the search function (see picture above “find in EPG”). With the search function you cannot only find certain broadcasts, the rerun dates are also shown. You can access the search function with a double-click onto the header of the "event"-column.

If the station-specific list is active, there are the following additional options:

• Clicking a station in the channel list (the tree structure on the left side showing all available stations) displays the EPG data belonging to the station, if already stored. Double-clicking a station switches over to it.
• The Whats now... button switches over to a time-specific list of all broadcasts running at present time. With right-clicking you can open a context-menu for easily setting another time.
• Double-clicking an entry switches over to a time-specific list of all broadcasts running at the same time as the double-clicked entry.

After switching to the time-specific list there are the following possibilities:

• Double-clicking an entry switches over to that channel.
• Right-click the list to open a menu, which offers several options for putting the point in time on or back. The Another Time... option opens a window that allows to enter a specific time or date. This also can be achieved by clicking the column title Time.
• If you want to exclude a station from the list, mark it first and then press the [Del] key. Cancelling this operation is only possible on the edit tabsheet in the channellist window.
• The Whats Now... button shifts back to the station-specific list.

Event and title show the title of the selected item.

There is also a graphical timeline mode:

Please note that some stations do not transmit EPG data. Also the range and the amount of the data may differ. Only broadcast information can be displayed. The EPG information are read out while a TV/radio station is tuned. After switching to another channel the data is kept in memory.

If you want the EPG data to be automatically stored on your hard disk when terminating the DVBViewer and reloaded when re-launching it, make sure that the Persistent EPG Data option is checked in Settings/Options/Teletext & EPG.

 

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Plugins

The full version of the DVBViewer features a plugin interface. With the Plugin SDK, downloadable via the Service Center (for registered customers only), you can create your own plugins. All plugins have to be put into the Plugins folder.

Currently there are the following plugins:

• GraphSelector Plugin

  This plugin lets you comfortably choose different filter-graphs for use with the source-filters (read more about filters in chapter 11.

• Video Recorder Plugin 3.0

  The VRP offers real transport stream recording and other different settings for the DVBViewer.

• Audio-Recorder Plugin 2.8

  With this plugin you can record directly in the MP3, Ogg Vorbis or Wave format. This is especially useful when recording radio broadcasts. Audio-recording can run simultaneously with normal recording of the DVBViewer. You will find a detailed description here.

• Multicast Plugin

This plugin enables UDP multicast network streaming with all source-filters.

• TVgenial® Plugin

  With this one you can comfortably program the recorder timer with the program guide TVgenial. You will find further details in chapter 11.

 

The Info Window

The Info option in the help menu opens a window, which informs about the program version. The tabsheet Credits lists all helpers, who contributed to the DVBViewer, by testing, providing language files etc; maybe you will be one of them soon?

When connected to the Internet, the tabsheet news informs about DVBViewer updates. No information is being sent to the DVBViewer- or any other site.

 

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