Thoughts on VDR evolution (was VDR recording glitches and others)

[Margit.Fiegert@t-online.de]

Hello to all,

even if it`s sometimes a bit frustrating, its really impressing and of
course very good to see all ideas being implemented, even before one has
time to ask for them :-) (Somone mention this alredy some time ago)

Since this mail got a bit long, here are the contents in short:
* some info about my mp3 jukebox
* late answer to Guido Fiala and thoughts about a LP-mode
* some info about work done/planned to program VDR via teletext
* other features to VDR I plan to integrate. 
Give me hints what you want, or are planning to do, then I`ll
concentrate on the things needed by many but on nobodys to do list.


--------------------------
I planned to integrate VDR in my current jukebox more closely next
weekend. Due to HITK (which I planned to integrate) and a perl interface
to LIRC I found in the net, the job may be get done tonight (ok, should
better go sleeping a bit, have to go to work in less than 3 hours - hmm
had to dec this after writing this mail).

Some of the ideas of Thomas Jagoditsch are done, most are in the top
region of my to do list.

"Thomas Jagoditsch" wrote:
> thoughts on VDR/DVB evolution:
> - teletext would be a nice thing, especially in combination with 
>   "point & click timer-programming"
> - integrated dvd/cd/mp3-playback (screen-output with random jpgs for 
>   cd/mp3) would make VDR a real multimedia-settop
> - vbox-integration is on my mind too, in the moment this is done by 
>   an old notebook - maybe some sort of easy "user-defined menus" for tv 
>   can accomplish such whishes
> - visually remote control of the other hifi-video components could be 
>   comfortable (i dig thru LIRC docs at the moment ;-), somebody could 
>   do nice things (back up VDR to a VCR, switch inputs on the 
>   receiver/amp ...)

What do you mean by vbox?

--------------------------

I have a really good working mp3 jukebox. I wrote some scripts to get my
several hundred cds grabbed very conveniently (several cd drives in one
computer, just have to change cd`s in drives with open trays before all
are open, no need for any console interaction, speech output to confirm
cd number or to call me if box has nothing to do anymore). I also had to
write a player frontend because xmms can`t cope with really big
playlists (They seem to go through the whole list quite often, no chance
on the Pentium90 machine, brings down even my Athlon 600. Looks like
O(PlaylistLenght^2) at least). 
This GUI also shows the cd covers and of course I thought of bringing
these on the TV screen via DVB, especially since I alredy connected
several TV Sets (living, sleeping, working -room) to DVB card. There are
radio controlled speakers in kitchen and bathroom. 
Maybe I should make a homepage with these things?  

I also collected a some current disco music (not my main interest but
sometimes quite welcome) from r@dio mp3, transmitting via VBI of NBC.
www.nbc-vbi.de.vu for the software seems to be down right now, and I
guess that doesn`t work anymore anyway since they  anounced a new
windows player for some time, "Und den alten schalten wir einfach ab".

--------------------------

Writing VDR recordings to VHS-VCR conveniently is really an urgent point
for me. I`m always at 0 Bytes disk free every other day. For a first
shot I thought of doing this by some scripts competely seperate from
VDR: 
* A script merging new recordings to a textfile with all recordings, 
* which I sort manually with any texteditor an mark everything I want to
go out to a tape. 
* Then start VCR by lirc, start several playbacks of VDR by just cat the
vob files to /dev/vido, stop VCR by lirc, 
* (delete recording by SVDRP)
* Write times and titles to Video database.
(should be done next weekend)

For the same reason I`m still interested in a "LP-mode" (my mail from
9.8.00). Of course I don`t want to loose quality in movies, but
politicians in a discussion look good enaough even if they get a bit
further compressed. I think of offline compressing to mpeg4 (and hope on
http://DivX.ctw.cc/index_main.html). Is realtime conversion back to DVB
stream reasonable?

Guido Fiala Wed, 9 Aug 2000 wrote:
>Does that matters: 40 GB (Maxtor) do cost only DM 370,- now 
Above is my late answer to this. 
> (i banged my head at the desk not to have waited one further month ;-)
I went to the shop in order to by exactly this end of june and was
highly surprised by finding a 60GB for 599.- DM.
So I think I had more luck I guess?

gee, I`m really going to by another of those 60GB HD`s soon, even if
that doesn`t really solve the problem.

And I`m really looking forward to a nice cutting GUI. Often I`m
interested only in small parts of programs (eg. nano)

-----------------------------

I have some really good ideas (I think) on how to find advertising
completely automaticly. Together with cutting (which I havn`t tried yet)
that should be really interesting. And also help with full HD`s, even if
it doesn`t catch all.

---------------------------

I did some work to collect the whole TV-schedule by collecting data from
all the teletext pages some years ago. There is also a perl skript in
the net which gets the EPG (Electronic Program Guide), sent throught VBI
by some networks (Pro7 for example). These contain information for a lot
of networks (not only Pro7) in standardized format.
I collect the data via analog Hauppauge Card right now, but there should
be no problem to adopt this as soon as videotext is extracted from DVB
Streams.

Ralph wrote to Jan:
>You can just set a PES filter and parse the packets according to the 
>DVB specifications. The specs are available for free on www.etsi.org.

I did this several weeks ago, but hadn`t time to really work it out by
now. But if you need help Jan: contact me.
 
I plan to generate a html page with all programs, sorted such that the
things i want to watch/record most likely are on top of the list and
with check-boxes to program VDR via apache by just one click. 
I did the sorting thing more than 10 years ago in Modula on an atari ST,
getting the teletext data from my TV-Set connected by i2c and self made
electronics. It was simple word statistics, but worked quite well.

Ralph wrote:
>It can do re-insertion but this is not supported in the firmware right now.

I would be very interested in that feature! Especially if this is
possible with vtx-information muxed or generated by the computer. 
Imagine all of the regularly visited pages cached by the computer and
repeated in a fast cycle out of the box, completed with some generated
by the box containing status information of all the background jobs
going on. Or database information like
*Current Playlist or even whole data base of jukebox or video archive
*new emails 
...
Gael wrote:
>access to the internet. But all this stuff displayed on the TV set (because of my couch potato behaviour (;-)) 

By the way: I did some of that with the mentioned atari setup. It`s
really a good joke to pop up a textbox (like in subtitles) with some
hints like "o, watching that supid soap again?" for example when
"Lindenstraße" is detected in page 333.
 
Ok, most of that can be better done with video overlay now. But just
getting some videotext information while watching via DVB would be very
useful.

-----------------------------
Another possible feature:
Just press one butten after finding something really interesting while
zapping to get informed if and when a program will be send again. I
planned to implement such a feature with the speech output of my
jukebox, but now that I have VDR that seems more appropriate. One could
even programm VDR immediatly with one other click on the remote.

Ok, and lots of other ideas, but I should really stop now.



Have a nice day, and don`t keep me busy with updating - you prevent new
features ;-)

  Michael