NAME
nxtvepg - Decoder, Browser and Analyzer for the Nextview Electronic
Programme Guide
SYNOPSIS
nxtvepg [ options ] [ database ]
DESCRIPTION
nxtvepg is an X11 and Win32API application to decode, analyze and
browse TV programme schedules transmitted on analog TV channels as
defined in ETS 300 707: "Protocol for a TV Guide using electronic data
transmission" by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.
The Nextview standard was developed for use in TV sets, but the data
can be received and used in a PC, too - provided you have a Teletext
capable TV tuner card and are lucky enough to have a Nextview content
provider in your country.
nxtvepg enables you to obtain free TV programme listings for all of the
major networks in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium and Switzerland.
Currently Nextview EPG is transmitted by the following TV networks
(note that each of these EPGs cover not only the provider’s programme
but also that of many other networks):
· In Germany and Austria: Kabel1, RTL-II (coverage: apx. 32 networks)
· In Switzerland: SF1, TSR1, TSI1, EuroNews (coverage: apx. 37
networks)
· In France: Canal+, M6, TV5, EuroNews (coverage: 8 networks)
· In Belgium: VT4, M6, TV5 (coverage: 32 networks)
· In Turkey: TRT (coverage: apx. 17 networks)
For up-to-date information check the nxtvepg homepage in the Internet
(see the About popup in the Help menu). If you don’t receive any of the
channels listed above, you can only use the demo mode as described with
the -demo command line option.
OPTIONS
Summary of command line options:
-display display
UNIX only: The display on which the user interface will be placed,
for example localhost:0.0. Default: taken from environment
variable DISPLAY. For more info see the X manual page section
Display Names
-tvdisplay display
UNIX only: The display on which the TV application window is
searched, e.g. on a remote host or different screen on a station
with multiple monitors. Default: same as the main window’s
display.
-geometry geometry
Specifies the position of the main window, e.g. -geometry -0+0 to
put the main window in the upper right corner of the visible
screen. The size of the window cannot be changed.
-iconic
Start with the main window iconified (i.e. minimized).
For M$ Windows users this option may be esp. helpful when nxtvepg
is started from inside the Auto start group and Hide on minimize is
enabled: nxtvepg then will start almost invisibly in the
background, only with an icon in the system tray of the task bar
(see also "CONFIGURATION: Show/Hide").
-rcfile path
Specify an alternate configuration file. Default: on UNIX
$HOME/.nxtvepgrc, on Windows nxtvepg.ini in the current directory.
-dbdir directory
Specify an alternate directory for the databases. Default: On UNIX
/usr/tmp/nxtvdb, on Windows the current directory. Note that the
database management is not equipped for concurrent writing, so if
you have more than one TV tuner card in your system or network,
relocate the directory into the users’ homes.
If you’re using an acquisition daemon, the browser must be
configured to use the same directory as the daemon. If the daemon
is running on a different host, you need to mount the remote
directory, e.g. via NFS.
-card index
Specify which TV card hardware to use, if you have more than card.
Default: index 0. On Linux the given index is appended to the
device names, i.e. /dev/vbi and /dev/video (see also "FILES"). On
Windows index "n" means the n-th card found while scanning the PCI
bus for cards with a supported capture chip (e.g. Brooktree Bt878,
Bt878A, Bt848, Bt849, Philips SAA7134, Conexant 23881). If you
have more than one TV card with the same chip, the order between
those is undefined, but still constant (i.e. the order is
determined by the driver, not nxtvepg)
-provider CNI
Select a provider by its hexadecimal CNI (Country and Network
Identifier), e.g. -provider d92 for Kabel1. You can find out the
provider’s CNI during a provider scan or from the database file
names. Use keyword merged to dump a merged database (or use code
FF as required by earlier versions of nxtvepg.) Note before you
can use a merged database you have to configure it, see "MERGED
DATABASES". Default if this option is omitted: the last provider
selected during the previous session.
-noacq
Start with acquisition disabled. The acquisition can still be
started later from the Control menu (see "CONTROL: Enable
acquisition").
-daemon
Start without the graphical user interface. The process will detach
from the terminal (i.e. create an invisible window on M$ Windows)
and perform background acquisition. If no other options are given
the same provider and acquisition mode as configured with the GUI
will be used. If the -provider option is given acquisition will
work for this provider only (note the difference to non-daemon
mode, where that option selects the browser database). The -daemon
option cannot be combined with the -noacq or -demo options.
The daemon always creates a named socket in the /tmp directory
(UNIX only) plus optionally a TCP/IP socket to allow connects by
browser processes. While connected, the browser receives updates
for opened Nextview databases and reports about the acquisition
progress; if left unconnected, the browser listing might be
incomplete or outdated.
It’s important to note that the browser must use the same -dbdir
directory, because the daemon forwards only deltas to the database
files stored in that directory. For more details see
"CONFIGURATION: Client/Server".
UNIX Warning: for security reasons it’s depreciated to run the
daemon with root privileges, because nxtvepg has not been reviewed
yet for possible exploits. If you want to start the daemon already
during system startup, you should use su(1). Also note that you’ll
probably need to specify -rcfile because the $HOME environment
variable might not be (correctly) defined. Example:
su nobody -c "/usr/local/bin/nxtvepg -daemon \
-rcfile /usr/local/etc/nxtvepgrc"
For terminating the daemon process, see the -daemonstop option
below.
-daemonstop
With this option, a background acquisition process is searched and
terminated if found; then the program exits. Note you need
permission to send signals to the daemon process to be able to stop
it (i.e. it must run with the same user ID). This option is meant
to allow controlling acquisition by scripts which start and stop
acquisition automatically after a given time.
Note if the daemon is running on the same host and uid, it can also
be stopped by deselecting Enable acquisition in the Control menu
while being connected to the daemon. For more details see
"CONTROL" and "FILES".
-nodetach
UNIX only: In daemon mode this option prevents the process actually
making itself a daemon, i.e. it doesn’t fork and stays connected to
the terminal. Also all log messages starting with level warning are
sent to standard error out (e.g. configuration errors that lead to
an immediate exit). This mode is intended for debugging purposes
only.
-acqpassive
In daemon mode this option overrides the acquisition mode setting
in the configuration file and forces acquisition into passive mode
(see "ACQUISITION MODES"). The configuration file is not changed,
so that you can use different acquisition strategies for daemon and
GUI.
-acqonce phase
In daemon mode this option will automatically stop acquisition and
terminate the daemon after the given phase has been completed for
all providers. Phases are the same as defined in "ACQUISITION
MODES", i.e. now, near and full. Note it’s not useful to use this
option in acquisition mode follow-ui because acquisition restarts
after each provider change. This option is only useful with a
fixed list of providers.
If you want to run another program from inside a script after
nxtvepg has finished, use the -nodetach option (UNIX only) Then
the shell which is processing the script will usually wait for
nxtvepg to terminate before starting the next command. On Windows
there’s no simple way to achieve this (because non-console
applications are always run in the background), so you need to use
a script language which supports instructions which wait until a
running program (namely nxtvepg) has finished.
-dump mode
When started with this argument, nxtvepg will only export the
entire programme database, then exit. This argument must be
combined with -provider to specify which database shall be
exported.
To export the database in XML format, use keyword xml as mode. In
this case the last mode (i.e. XMLTV DTD version) which was used via
the main menu is used. To export the database in another mode, use
xml5, xml5ltz or xml6. For more details see "CONTROL: Export as
XMLTV".
To export the database into a plain text file (e.g. for import into
an SQL database) three mode keywords are supported: pi to dump
programmes (i.e. the complete TV schedules), ai to dump the
provider’s network table, pdc to dump the PDC theme categories
table. For more details see "CONTROL: Export as text".
For debugging purposes there’s also a mode raw which prints all
data in the database in a format which is closely related to the
internal data structures. This output should not be used for data
export. For more details see "CONTROL: Dump raw database".
The output is written to stdout unless you redirect it into a file
or pipe it into another program. See also option -outfile
-outfile path
This option allows to redirect output from -dump or any other modes
which print to stdout by default. It also works in normal operation
modes, but the created file will be empty. nxtvepg will abort if
the specified file already exists to avoid inadvertantly
overwriting other files. If you’re using the option inside a
script or batch file you should add a command to remove the target
file before invoking nxtvepg.
This option is especially helpful for M$ Windows users, since
output written to stdout is discarded by the operating system
because nxtvepg is not a "console application". This means for
exmaple, if output of the above -dump mode is not to be discarded,
you must either use this option or redirect output as below.
Note: instead of using this option you can also redirect output
with the ">" or "│" operators in UNIX shells or under M$ Windows at
the MS-DOS command prompt. For example you could use either of the
following:
nxtvepg -dump ai -prov d92 > networks.txt
nxtvepg -dump ai -prov d92 │ more
to write the network table of provider Kabel1 (CNI 0xd92) into a
file named networks.txt, or pipe it to the paging program "more"
respectively.
-remctrl command
Windows only: This option can be used to remote control an other,
previously started GUI instance of nxtvepg, i.e. to send the given
command to the other process and then exit.
The following commands are available: quit to terminate the other
nxtvepg process; iconify to minimize the window; deiconify to undo
a previous minimization; raise to deiconify the other window and to
bring it to the top (in case it’s obscured by other windows); acqon
to start acquisition; acqoff to stop acquisition.
-clock mode
When started with this argument, nxtvepg will acquire the current
date and time from teletext and then terminate. To specify from
which channel to acquire date and time use the -prov option option.
(If you want to use a channel which is not an Nextview EPG
provider, you’d have to use an external application to tune the
channel before you invoke nxtvepg; with the exception of Linux’
v4lctl setstation command this mode is unsupported though and may
not work, depending on the external application you’re using it
with.)
Important restriction: nxtvepg is able to retrieve the clock only
from channels where the so-called teletext packet 8/30/1 is
transmitted, which contains date, time and local time zone offset
in a binary format. nxtvepg will never attempt to retrieve times
from teletext header lines. All Nextview EPG providers transmit
packet 8/30/1, and a few other networks do too (e.g. ARD and ZDF in
Germany.)
With mode print the date and time will be read and printed. The
output is written to stdout unless you redirect it into a file or
pipe it into another program. See option -outfile for details.
With mode set the time is set as system time, provided the calling
user has the necessary priviliges (e.g. you’d need to be root on
UNIX; since it’s depreciated to run nxtvepg with root priviliges,
it’s recommended to first print the time into a file and then pass
it to date).
UNIX users should also note that the set mode does not update the
battery powered hardware clock (aka Real Time Clock RTC), so the
correction will probably be lost with the next reboot. To update
your RTC, call hwclock --systohc or your operating system’s
equivalent after nxtvepg. Some Linux distributions automatically
take care of this during shutdown.
-demo path
Load database given by path and enter demo mode. In this mode all
entries of the database are shifted into the presence, i.e. just
far enough so that none are expired. Hence the entries’ dates and
times are not for real and acquisition or database reselection is
not possible.
-help
List all available command line options.
After the options you can add a database filename. This is equivalent
to specifying -dbdir and -provider. The provider CNI is taken from the
file name. If the file name does not have the format as defined in
"FILES", it’s assumed to be a demo database and loaded just as with the
-demo option. The database filename argument silently overrides any
previously given options.
This is particularily useful for users of graphical file managers (like
the Windows Explorer) who can just drag and drop a database file onto
the executable. When used on Windows systems the working directory is
set to the one that contains the executable, because the Explorer seems
to set it to the user’s desktop root, so that none of the DLLs and
drivers are found.
Note to Windows users: all these options - unless otherwise noted - are
available in the Win32 version too. You can supply the options either
from a "MS-DOS" command prompt or batch file, or by appending them to
the executable in a shortcut definition.
GETTING STARTED
Before you can start reading in TV programme schedules (called
acquisition from here on), you have to do just a few configurations.
Which ones depends on your setup and will be described in this chapter.
As long as your browser window contains no data, there’s also a
recommondation how to get to data in the browser window, highlighted by
a yellow background.
This manual describes all features of nxtvepg in detail. You do not
have to read all of it at once to operate the software. However it’s
recommended to skim at least through "BASIC BROWSING", "DATA
ACQUISITION" and "FILTERING".
TV card Setup on M$ Windows
Windows users first have to configure the driver for their TV card in
the ’TV card input’ dialog from the Configure menu (for additional
information see also "CONFIGURATION: TV card input"). UNIX users can
skip this section.
To start card configuration, press the Configure card button in the
middle of the dialog window, which will open another dialog. If no
supported TV capture chips were found in your system, the button will
be disabled. In case you see a message claiming PCI scan failed, this
means the TV card driver could not be loaded. In this case close all
other video applications and try again or look up a detailed
description of driver error messages in the README file.
First press the Autodetect button to the right of the dialog window;
this will read certain parameter values from non-volatile memory on
your card (EEPROM) to determine the manufacturer and model. Optimally
this will allow to derive all required parameters automatically. If
this succeeds, all your card’s parameters will be set and you’re done
and can close the configuration dialog with Ok. If you wish you can
still override automatically derived values (e.g. tuner type) with the
options described below.
If you get a message that says the card, but not the tuner, could be
determined you can skip the next paragraphs and continue with the
manual tuner selection.
If your card type could not be automatically determined, search and
select your card type in the listbox at the left and then press the
Pick from list button or double click on the listbox entry. Note: The
card list is identical to the DScaler TV application (also very similar
to K!TV); the same is true for the tuner list. Hence if you’re unsure,
the easiest way is to look up your configuration in DScaler and just
copy it here.
For certain card types, the card is queried for the tuner type after
manual card selection. If this fails, you’ll get a message and have to
select the tuner manually.
To configure a tuner type, open the tuner selection popup menu by
clicking on the Configure button and select one of the entries. For
many cards the tuner type is printed on the outside of the retail
packaging. Yet a better way is to read the tuner type from the metal
shielding box on the card itself.
Some hints for figuring out your settings: For many cards the selected
card type is not relevant to nxtvepg (i.e. only tuner and for Bt878
cards the PLL). Hence if you don’t find your card in the list don’t
worry, just use any PAL or SECAM card entry in the list and set the
other parameters manually. To check your configuration start an EPG
scan. Before you do so you must leave the configuration sub-menu with
OK so that the changes are applied. For your convenience, you can open
the card configuration dialog with a button in the EPG scan dialog
window.
Hints for tuner selection: If you live in Germany, Austria or
Switzerland you probably have a PAL tuner, in France it’s one of the
SECAM types. If you select the wrong tuner, you can have either no
reception at all (the EPG scan will just run through and suggest to
check your antenna) all or no reception just on a few channels.
For cards built around a Brooktree chip (Bt878 et.al.) the type of PLL
initialization also needs to be set. This setting is directly tied to
your card selection, hence usually you will not need to set it
manually. Usually the correct value for PLL initialization with PAL
and SECAM cards is either No init or 28 MHz. (If you select the wrong
value you have no reception at all.)
Video input configuration
Before nxtvepg can start acquiring EPG data, it must be told if the
video feed is provided by your TV card’s internal TV tuner (if you’re
connected to your city’s TV cable network or a terrestrial antenna) or
an external source (usually satellite receivers connected via Composite
or S-Video cable). This can be configured in the TV card input dialog
in the Configure menu (for more in-depth information see also
"CONFIGURATION: TV card input").
By default nxtvepg assumes input via TV tuner. This is the preferred
mode of operation, since nxtvepg can change channels between multiple
Nextview providers, while with an external source you have to switch
channels manually (see also "DATA ACQUISITION"). If you’re living in
France you should tell nxtvepg to use the French channel table (which
implies using the Secam TV norm instead of PAL B/G/I); this information
is required for the next step: the EPG scan.
If you cannot use the TV tuner but have instead connected a satellite
receiver through the Composite or S-Video input, select the respective
setting in the video input drop-down menu. Then close the dialog with
Ok and open the aquisition mode configuration dialog from the same
menu. There you should change to the external mode: in this mode
nxtvepg will switch to the configured video input channel during
startup of acquisition, but afterwards expect you to tune in a Nextview
provider’s channel at the external video source. To load all provider’s
inventories in the way the EPG scan does, you have to tune in all
provider channels (for a list see the intro of this manual or the
Internet homepage) and wait until the status line changes from
"starting up" to "working on".
Note that you can also connect your satellite receiver via antenna
cable. However this variant is highly depreciated, because the signal
is often degraded so much that nxtvepg is not able to decode the EPG
data stream any more. But if you still want to go that route, you’d
keep the tuner as input source and start an EPG scan to find the
channel your receiver is transmitting its signal on. Make sure to
disable the Use .xawtv option in the provider scan dialog, unless your
satellite receiver’s channel (i.e. the frequency onto which the
satellite signal is modulated) is defined as an input channel in xawtv.
Before you start the EPG scan you need to tune in a Nextview provider’s
channel. The scan will only find that one provider. If you want to
load all providers you have to continue manually as described above.
For an acquisition mode it’s recommended to stay with Follow browser
database. Although nxtvepg will not be able to actually "follow" your
provider selection with the acquisition since it can’t switch the TV
channel at your external input, this mode will tell nxtvepg to set the
TV tuner onto your receiver’s channel (see also "ACQUISITION MODES" for
more details.)
EPG scan: Search for Nextview providers
This section only applies if you chose to use your TV card’s internal
tuner. In this case the next step to get started is to run a provider
scan from the Configure menu. During the scan all TV channels are
checked for Nextview transmissions and a list of Nextview providers is
built from the result.
You can speed up the scan by using a TV application’s channel table; in
this case the scan is limited to TV frequencies defined in the TV app’s
channel table. This mode is enabled with the Use TV app freq. table
checkbutton. This button will be disabled until you’ve selected a TV
application in the TV app. interaction dialog described in the next
chapter. You can open this dialog by pressing the button at the bottom
of the EPG scan dialog window.
At the end of the scan there’s a short summary which tells you how many
providers have been found. If there were any, you can close the dialog
window and open the provider selection dialog from the Configure menu
and select you favorite one. Then wait a little while the provider’s
TV channel is tuned and data being loaded.
If the provider scan does not find any or not all Nextview provider
channels (possibly due to weak reception - this is a very simple scan
that does not attempt any fine-tuning) enable the Slow button and try
again. If this does not help, you can still add the missing providers
manually. set the acquisition mode to external or passive (UNIX only).
Then use an external application to tune the channel (Windows users
have to stop acquisition first; then start the TV application; then
tune the channel; then quit the other application; finally start
acquisition again).
In external mode nxtvepg will not touch the tuner and wait infinitly
for Nextview reception on the current channel. On Windows (and Linux
with bttv drivers version 0.7.50 and earlier) this method has the
disadvantage that no channel number or frequency will be known for this
provider so you have to tune the provider’s channel manually whenever
you start acquisition.
Acquisition of a complete database takes about 20 minutes. However
programmes that are nearer in the future are available much faster,
since they are transmitted more often. The currently running and
directly following programmes of all networks are usually available
after about 2-3 minutes max.
Configuring a TV application
nxtvepg can cooperate in the following ways with TV applications:
· Loading the TV application’s channel table: use of the TV tuner
frequencies can significantly speed up the EPG scan (already
mentioned above.) The TV app’s channel names are used by the
Network name dialog in the Configure menu (see "CONFIGURATION:
Network names") to synchronize network names between nxtvepg and
the TV application.
· Interaction between nxtvepg and the TV application, to provide you
with convenience features like an on-screen display of the current
programme title after channel changes, changing the channel from
inside nxtvepg with the TuneTV button, and background Nextview data
acquisition while you’re watching TV.
The first one is a passive feature, i.e. only nxtvepg needs to be
adapted to the respective TV applications. The secind one however
requires cooperation of both sides. For this reason the number of TV
applications for which the passive features are supported will always
be much larger. On Windows the interaction features are currently only
supported by K!TV.
On UNIX only xawtv and xawdecode are supported currently. With both
all the features listed above do work.
On Windows several freeware TV applications are supported for the
passive features; you must select which one you’re using. If you’ve
loaded TV card settings from a TV app in the TV card input dialog, then
the TV app type and path is already configured. Else, or if you want
to use a different app as source for the channel table, open the TV
app. interaction dialog (see also "CONFIGURATION: TV application
interaction").
Regarding the second feature, i.e. the "active" one: You can check if
nxtvepg is able to interact with a specific TV application by starting
both, and then opening the TV application interaction dialog in the
Configure menu. The connection status is indicated in the middle of
the dialog window. Usually nxtvepg will already display an error
message when it’s started while an unsupported TV application is
running, complaining "Capturing is already enabled in the TV card" or
another driver error message. Only with cooperating TV apps nxtvepg is
able to automatically free the card when the TV app is started (TV
viewing is always given priority over EPG data acquisition.)
Important: On Windows you must not run nxtvepg with acquisition enabled
at the same time as a TV application. If you ever accidentially do
that, immediately terminate both applications. When two applications
access the TV card hardware at the same time, the resulting conflicts
can crash your system.
After setting up the TV app type and path, you should open the Network
name configuration dialog to synchronize network names between nxtvepg
and the TV app. Even if interaction is not possible, it may still be a
good idea to have the same network names in both applications. See
"CONFIGURATION: Network names" for details.
BASIC BROWSING
The browser mainly consists of two windows: the upper one contains a
list of programme titles, sorted by start time. All currently running
programmes (or rather: all programmes that should be running according
to their start time) are marked by a light blue background color. One
line in the list is selected by a cursor; the lower window contains the
attributes and description for this selected title. The amount of
information available here depends entirely on the content provider.
The basic browsing of programme information works very
straight-forward. You can either use the mouse or the keyboard cursor
keys:
With the mouse, you can click on any title to select it and display its
description in the lower window. Use the scrollbar to the left to
scroll the listing forward to programmes farer in the future, or the
weekday scale on the right to jump to a specific time and date.
With the keyboard, use the Cursor up/down keys to select any title.
For fast scrolling use the page up/down keys. With the Home key you
always get back to the first title. With TAB and SHIFT-TAB you can move
the keyboard input focus to other input elements, e.g. to the network
and shortcut lists; to apply a selected theme or shortcut as filter
press the Space key. The first 10 shortcuts can also be enabled
directly from the main window with the digit keys 1-9 and 0. Control-C
in the main window opens the context menu; Control-F opens the text
search dialog; the Escape key is equivalent to the Reset button. The
menus can be accessed by pressing the ALT key together with the
underlined character in the respective menu button.
You can restrict the programme selection in many ways to make it easier
to find what interests you. For example, you can restrict the list to
programmes of a certain network; or you can restrict the list to movies
only. This process is called filtering and explained in detail below,
see "FILTERING". For the most common filter options there’s a list of
Shortcuts at the left of the main window. Note you can freely modify
this list, see "FILTER SHORTCUTS".
Since version 2.5.0 nxtvepg offers two different layouts for the TV
schedules: By default programmes of all channels are combined in a
single list sorted by start time, i.e. one big table. Alternatively
programmes can be separated so that each network has it’s own column.
This format is very similar to most paper-based TV magazines. In this
layout you can scroll both vertically by start-time and horizontally by
networks.
When you resize the main window vertically the difference in height
will be added to the info text window at the bottom. You can adjust
the proportions between program listbox and the info text with the
"panning" button inbetween, i.e. by dragging the button you can resize
the programme list.
nxtvepg can interact with TV applications (e.g. xawtv on UNIX; requires
initial setup, see "GETTING STARTED") to provide a connection in both
directions: Firstly you’ll find a Tune-TV button in the main window
below the clock. When you press it, the network of the currently
selected programme will be tuned in the TV application. This also
works with a double-click on the programme or pressing the Return key.
By clicking the right mouse button above the Tune-TV button you can
also pop up a small menu which offers basic TV controls. Secondly,
when you change the channel in the TV application, the cursor in the
nxtvepg main window will automatically jump onto the programme
currently running on that network. You can manually trigger this
reaction by pressing "i" on your keyboard. For more details see
"CONFIGURATION: TV application interaction"
At the bottom of the window there is a status line which informs you
about the state of the browser database and background acquisition.
It’s basically a very dense summary of the Statistics popups from the
Control menu and is especially useful to warn you about the database
age or stalled acquisition.
Note: For most providers it holds true that programme content
descriptions (i.e. the texts in the lower nxtvepg window) are available
only for currently running programmes and those whose start time is
very close. This time span for full coverage can be as short as 2
hours, or 3 titles per network. As a consequence you should enable data
acquisition as often as possible; consider running the acquisition
daemon permanently in the background. For details on the acquisition
process see the following chapter.
DATA ACQUISITION
As long as acquisition is enabled, programme titles are constantly
being acquired or updated in the background. You will notice that all
incoming programme information is instantly inserted to the programme
listing. Every effort is taken to not alter the cursor position or
title selection, except if the cursor is on the very first item - then
the cursor stays on top.
By default, the acquisition always works for the provider whose
database you have loaded into the browser. Therefore, upon program
start or whenever you switch providers, the TV tuner is set onto the
frequency of the provider’s TV channel. Please note that this mode is
only possible after a provider scan, because that’s the only way to
find out the frequencies. Check out "ACQUISITION MODES" for more
sophisticated acquisition strategies.
If you do not choose the TV tuner as input (e.g. if you choose an
external source via the Composite or S-Video input sockets), or if the
TV tuner is kept busy by another application (UNIX only, e.g. if you
watch TV) data is still being acquired, but it’s no longer possible to
automatically change the TV channel. Hence you are resposible for
selecting the channel of the provider who’s database you want to load
or refresh. If a transmission belonging to a different provider than
the one selected in the browser is detected, a second database is
automatically opened in the background to store the incoming data.
The transmitted database is constantly in change: Elapsed titles are
removed, new titles appended, and the titles closest to the current
time updated with an increased amount of description. (The reason that
the complete description is not transmitted for all titles is simply
that the size of the database has to be reduced - it shall be
transmitted in 20 minutes maximum.) So you should start the
acquisition as often as possible, about every 2-3 hours, at least a
couple of minutes before you browse.
You can monitor the progress of acquisition with the timescale and
database statistics windows from the Control menu. See "STATISTICS" for
details.
ACQUISITION MODES
The acquisition mode configuration dialog enables you to control for
which providers data is collected, and in which order. It’s mainly
intended for users who use more than one provider’s database, i.e. in a
merged database, or want to optimize startup time. If you’re happy with
a single provider or don’t want to browse immediately after program
start, you should keep the default, which is loading data always for
the provider selected in the browser.
Passive
UNIX only: In this mode the software never accesses the video
device and never changes the input channel or tuner frequency.
It’s useful if you want to set up the source with command line
tools like v4lctl. If you’re using applications which keep the
video device busy (e.g. a TV application) you don’t need this mode,
because when nxtvepg detects an unsolicited channel change, it
automatically switches to the passive mode for as long as the video
device remains busy.
Please note: when nxtvepg does not control the input channel, it
can not automatically take care of updating your databases. Even if
the browser database should be completely empty, no data will
appear until you tune in the provider’s channel manually with an
external application. Because of this, passive mode is depreciated.
External
This is the recommended mode for Composite or S-Video input
sources. Only the input source will be set; the tuner is not
touched. Hence the provider channel has to be selected either
externally (e.g. in a satellite receiver connected to the Composite
or S-Video input sockets) or by a different application (e.g. TV
application, UNIX only), just like in passive mode.
On Windows systems this mode can be used if your tuner is not known
to nxtvepg, i.e. if the EPG scan does not find any channels with
all of the available tuner types. In this case tune in the provider
channel with a TV application; then quit this application and start
nxtvepg. When you view the acquisition statistics from the Control
menu, the VPS/PDC code of the tuned channel should appear in the
lower half of the window.
Follow-UI
This is the default mode: the acquisition always works for the
provider you have selected for the browser (i.e. user interface).
If you change the provider in the browser window, acquisition
follows by tuning the new channel. Of course this requires to have
performed an EPG scan at least once, so that the tuner frequencies
of all providers are known. When you use a merged database in the
browser, acquisition works on each of the merged providers, one
after another, just like in the mode described next.
Manually selected
This mode enables you to manually select for which providers the
acquisition should work. If you select more than one provider, they
are loaded one after another, in your specified order. Warning: if
you choose a provider for the browser that’s not on the list, no
data will be loaded into the browser, even if it’s completely
empty.
Since transmission errors have to be considered, it’s not attempted
to load every single block of a provider before acquisitions
switches to the next. Instead a statistical criterium was defined,
that regards the variance in coverage of all networks contained in
the database, and the slope of that variance.
Cyclic: Now - Near - All
Like the previous mode, this one enables you to specify a list of
providers to load data for. However they are not just loaded
completely one after another. Instead, a 3-staged round-robin is
implemented. In the first stage, only Now data is loaded, i.e. the
currently running and next 2-3 programmes. When this has been
completed for all providers, the next stage begins, which loads
Near data, i.e. all programmes running in the next 12-24 hours.
When that was completed, the final stage loads the outstanding
blocks for all providers. See below for an explanation what this
mode is good for.
Cyclic: Now - All
This is the same as the previous mode, except that the Near stage
is skipped.
Cyclic: Near - All
This is the same as the mode before the previous one, except that
the Now stage is skipped.
Which mode is best for you depends on how you use the browser. As said
above, if you’re mainly using a single provider, stick with the Follow-
UI mode. If you use a merged database, data is automatically loaded for
all contained providers. However if you switch manually between
multiple providers, you should choose one of the manual acquisition
modes.
The Cyclic modes enables you to optimize startup time. While in
standard manual mode, the first database is loaded completely before
the next one is started, in Cyclic modes you can specify to load only
Now data of all providers first. Hence already after a couple minutes
you’ll have updated Now information for all providers. If you require
more look-ahead than the next 2-3 programmes, e.g. the complete
evening, use a Cyclic mode that starts with the Near stage.
If you use manual acquisition together with a merged browser database,
make sure to put the same provider at top in both lists, i.e.
acquisition should always start for the "master database" of the merge.
Please note that the time until all databases are complete is longer in
the cyclic modes than in standard manual mode. In general, the time
used for the Now and Next stages just adds to the time to complete the
database.
Also note that the cyclic modes depend on the transmission cycles of
the providers. Firstly this means that the time ranges covered by the
cycle stages may differ between providers. Secondly, the cycle times
may vary. In the worst case the Near cycle runs as long as the cycle
for the complete database (e.g. the German provider RTL2). In this case
you don’t win anything by selecting a mode that contains a Near stage.
STATISTICS
There are currently three ways to obtain information about the state of
the databases and the acquisition process: the first and most obvious
is the status line at the bottom of the main window (only if enabled,
see "CONFIGURATION"). The second one are the timescale popup windows,
which visualize for each TV network the time ranges which are covered
with TV programme data. The third one are the database statistics popup
windows which offer technical details about the database, e.g. which
percentage of entries is already loaded etc., both in textual form and
as charts.
The latter two windows are available separately for the browser and
acquisition databases. (By default both are the same databases, but you
can configure background acquisition on multiple databases, see
"ACQUISITION MODES"). All types of statistics are regularily updated
while acquisition is running. While connected to an acquisition
daemon, all statistics output refers to the acquisition running in the
daemon (see "CONTROL: Connect to acq. daemon")
Status line
The status line separately summarizes the state of the browser database
(unless it’s a merged database) and the acquisition process. Since
there’s not much room only the most relevant information is included
there, i.e. the kind of information presented depends on the current
state.
For the browser database you’ll normally just see the name of the
content provider network and a percentage that describes how many of
the blocks (i.e. TV programmes) in the provider database already have
been received.
If more than 10% of the blocks in the database lie in the past, you’ll
additionally see a note about this percentage of expired blocks. Note
that a 100% loaded database may appear completely empty when all blocks
are expired. As soon as you start acquisition the fill percentage will
drop to 0 because a new inventory will have been loaded which no longer
contains the expired blocks.
When acquisition for the browser database stopped more than 60 minutes
ago, a note is added to the status line. In this case it may be
advisable to start acquisition for this database to load descriptions
for programmes that are now included in the "Near" time range (see
"DATA ACQUISITION").
If acquisition is currently not active you’ll see a note about that,
often together with a reason, e.g. "no reception" when you’ve manually
tuned a station that doesn’t transmit Nextview.
Else you’ll see the name of the content provider network and a
percentage that describes the progress of acquisition. Note that this
percentage may be different from the overall fill percentage given with
the browser database, as it also reflects blocks that have to be
reloaded due to version changes.
Additionally there may be a note about the current mode of acquisition,
like the current phase for cyclic acquisition modes or "forced passive"
when nxtvepg is not able to change the channel, maybe due to a TV
application running in parallel. See "ACQUISITION MODES" for details.
Timescale popup windows
You can monitor the progress of acquisition with the timescale windows
which can be opened from the Control menu. There’s one window for the
browser database, and one for the acquisition database. The acquisition
window is updated whenenever new EPG blocks are received.
The timescale windows have one scale for each network covered by the
selected provider. The left end of the scales refers to the start time
of the oldest TV programme in the database. Depending on how long ago
the database was updated and the current expiry removal delay (see
"FILTERING: Expired Programmes Display"), some or all TV programmes may
lie in the past. The exact dates are printed in the date scale at the
top of the window, the current time is additionally marked with a small
arrow labeled "now".
Ranges that are covered by programmes of the respective network in the
database are marked in shades of red or blue, uncovered ranges are left
black. The different colors reflect the stream in which the data was
received, or an error status; the shades age and version. Stream
numbers are directly connected with the cycle phases mentioned in
"ACQUISITION MODES"; besides this the difference is not relevant during
normal operation.
red:
PI blocks received in stream 1, i.e. cycle phase ’Near’.
blue:
PI blocks received in stream 2, i.e. cycle phase ’All’.
dark red or blue:
PI blocks from an earlier database version.
orange:
expired PI blocks from stream 1.
cyan:
expired PI blocks from stream 2.
yellow:
invalid PI blocks (overlapping or zero run-time, block number not
in the range given in inventory, etc.)
gray:
missing PI blocks. Note that the range can only be roughly
estimated, as the time range a block covers is not known until the
actual block is available.
black:
time range which is not covered by the provider.
Programmes for which description texts are currently available are
additionally marked by an increased height of the scale in the covered
time range. For short-info the area is extended towards the top, for
long-info towards the bottom (the distinction between short and long
info is only related to the Nextview transmission specification and
does not neccessarily relate to the length of the description texts;
also note that for the merged database there’s no distinction between
short and long info because all texts are concatenated into one.)
In front of the scales there are 5 separate boxes, which refer to the
first 5 programmes (PI blocks) in the inventory (AI block). They have
two purposes: firstly, during acquisition you can see when the ’Now’
cycle phase is complete; secondly you can check if the data from the
Now cycle is expired (marked orange). If all 5 are orange, it’s time
to update the database.
Database statistics
There are two popup windows available from the Control menu which
contain statistical information about the browser database and the
acquisition database and progress. The window is horizontally divided
in two parts: the upper part lists static information; the lower part
lists dynamic info and is available only while acquisition is active.
The acquisition statistics are updated every time a new AI block
(inventory which lists all covered networks and block counts per
network; usually transmitted every 10 seconds) is received.
Last AI update:
The (local) time when the last inventory block was received. Since
this block has to be transmitted on a regular basis it tells you
when acquisition was active for this database.
Database version:
The version number is incremented by the provider every day or
after content changes. A version change forces a complete reload
of the database.
Blocks in AI:
How many blocks are transmitted in total. This number is taken from
the provider’s AI block, i.e. the inventory. Additionally listed
separately for stream 1 and 2 (swo).
Block count db:
How many blocks are in the local database. At maximum this can be
the number of blocks given in the AI block.
Current version:
How many blocks are in the local database and have the latest
version.
Filled:
Percentage of blocks in the database in respect to the total given
in the AI block, i.e. "Block count db" divided by "Blocks in AI".
The second percentage in the line only reflects blocks of the
current version and hence the degree of completeness of
acquisition.
Expired stream:
Number of programme blocks which have a stop time that’s in the
past but are still registered in the provider’s inventory (AI).
When acquisition is stopped, this number can be large. During
acquisition expired programmes are usually stripped by the provider
with the start of every cycle, i.e. usually every 20-25 minutes.
The percentage given here is in respect to the actual number of
blocks in the local database (all versions), not the AI.
Expired total:
Total number and percentage of expired blocks in the database.
This value depends on the expire "cut-off time" configured by the
user, i.e. on how long expired blocks are kept until they are
removed from the database. Normally such blocks disappear from the
programme list, but this can be changed with the expire time filter
in the Filter menu (see also "FILTERING").
Defective blocks:
Number of blocks with invalid or overlapping start time. These
blocks do not show up in the browser (as it would be impossible to
handle if there is more than one "now" entry for a network). The
percentage given here is in respect to the actual number of blocks
in the local database (all versions), not the AI.
The pie chart on the left on the window visualizes these numbers. The
circle represents 100% of the blocks listed in AI. It’s divided in
stream 1 (red) and stream 2 (blue). The shaded segments represent the
blocks that are still missing in the local database. The yellow
segments the percentage of expired and/or defective blocks.
When you interpret those values, please remember that blocks may be
appended to the transmission cycle when programmes have expired (in a
slight violation of the Nextview standard this is done even without
changing the database version). So you might see from time to time that
the fill percentages take a step back down during acquisition. Also
note that expired PI are not accessible from the user interface,
however they are included in the database dump from the Control menu.
Acquisition statistics
Acq. runtime:
How long the acquisition has been continuously running for this
database. This timer is reset upon provider or database version
changes or when an external channel change is detected.
Channel VPS/PDC:
The VPS/PDC code that has last been received on the currently tuned
channel. Usually this will be the same as the provider CNI given
in the database statistics, but you might see different values here
when you manually tune in a different channel with an external
application.
If a valid VPS/PDC code (Programme Identification Label, PIL) was
received together with the CNI it is appended after the CNI in
decoded format (i.e. DD.MM HH:MM with day, month, hour and minute).
Note: the VPS/PDC codes are used to uniquely identify the current
programme on a given network. You can display the codes for all
programmes in the database (if you enable them in "CONFIGURATION:
Select attributes") or pass them to external applications (see
"CONFIGURATION: Context menu configuration")
TTX data rate:
The rate at which teletext data lines are received on the current
channel in baud, i.e. bits per second. Each teletext line counts
as 45 bytes.
EPG data rate:
Same as TTX data rate, however only teletext lines that belong to
the page which transmits Nextview are counted.
EPG page rate:
The per second average of received teletext pages with carry
Nextview data. Many provider transmit one page per second during
the day and up to 1.5 or 2 pages per second during the night.
AI recv. count:
The number of AI blocks received since acquisition start. As long
as this counter remains at zero, no data is added to the database
(because the AI block is mandatory to identify the provider.)
AI min/avg/max:
The minimum, average and maximum distance between reception of AI
blocks. The average should usually be 10 seconds. The maximum
should not be much higher or else an EPG scan might have a hard
time finding this provider; also the acquisition start-up time
would be higher because at first an AI block must be awaited.
PI rx repetition:
The average of the number of times each block in the AI was
received since start of the acquisition. Divided in Now, stream 1
and stream 2. This value is used by acquisition control in the
termination criterium for acquisition phases, if the acquisition
mode is cyclic.
Decoder quality:
Reception and loss statistics: Count of received EPG teletext pages
and count of complete EPG pages missing in the sequence. Count of
received teletext packets (usually 23 per page) and missing
packets. Note: page and packet loss is usually caused by decoding
errors in packet and page headers (which carry a 50% redundancy so
this is a strong indication of weak signal quality) or when a TV
application running in parallel interferes with capture
configuration (i.e. when not all required lines in VBI can be
received)
Next is the number of received and dropped blocks. Blocks are
usually assembled from data received in several teletext packets
and have to be dropped if packets or pages inbetween are missing.
Blocks may also be dropped due to decoding or check-sum errors
(above note regarding these errors applies here too)
The final line lists the number of decoded text characters (e.g.
programme titles and descriptions) and how many decoding errors
were detected. Forward error protection used for text is pretty
weak, so you may see errors here even with relatively good signal
quality. With bad signal quality the actual error rate might be
higher then displayed, since the protection cannot detect double-
bit errors.
Acq mode:
The current acquisition mode as configured by the user, or forced
passive if nxtvepg failed to switch the channel.
Network variance:
The variance of block coverage across all networks. This value is
used by acquisition control in the termination criterium for
acquisition phases, if the acquisition mode is cyclic. It’s
calculated by separately counting the number of blocks in the
database for each network; then for each network calculating the
percentage of available blocks in regard to expected blocks; then
calculating the average and finally variance of these percentages.
The diagram at the left displays a history of fill percentages for
stream 1 and 2; the meaning of the colors is the same as in the
timescale windows.
MERGED DATABASES
If you compare databases of different Nextview providers, you will
often find that each has one or more nice features, or covers networks,
that the others lack. Instead of changing back and forth between
several providers all the time, database merging allows to select and
combine features or networks from several original databases into one
newly created database.
When you select the Merge providers entry from the Configure menu, you
will get a dialog with two listboxes: the left one contains a list of
all currently available databases. The right one is the list of
databases you want to merge. You can add, delete or reorder the entries
is this list. When you’re done with your selection, press Ok to start
the merge and switch the browser to the new database.
By ordering providers in your selection, you assign priorities which
are important for conflict resolution. A conflict occurs when programme
start and stop times differ between providers. The likelyhood of such
conflicts depends on the quality of your providers; theoretically they
should never happen except if there are late program changes. In
reality, conflicts are not that unlikely, particularily for programmes
early in the morning. You should put the most reliable provider in the
first position, because conflicting programmes from providers further
down will be rejected, i.e. not added to the merged database.
The Configure button in the dialog gives you fine-control over the
priority of providers during the merge of all distinct programme
attributes. You can even completely remove a provider for an attribute,
e.g. if they transmit false data (e.g. the Sound attribute was at some
time handled wrong by the former German provider 3Sat: they did swap
stereo and surround). An exception is the title, where you must not
delete any providers.
Attributes that cannot be merged, e.g. editorial rating, are fetched
from the first database in the list that contains the attribute for a
given programme. An exception are sorting criteria and series, where
only the first provider in the list is queried (i.e. even if the first
provider does not have a sorting criterion for a given programme, the
further databases are not searched) because these types of attributes
cannot be mixed between providers (see also "FILTERING").
Note: If you use a manual or cyclic acquisition mode, you should take
care to include all providers of your merged database in the same
order. Else, program changes will not appear in your database until the
provider with highest priority is loaded. If you stay with the default
Follow-UI, acquisition control will automatically cycle across all
merged providers in the correct order.
NAVIGATE
The Navigate menu contains a tree of filtering options, that’s
transmitted by the selected provider together with the programme data.
Filtering enables to restrict the listing of programme information to
those titles matching the selected menu entry.
The extent and content of this menu depends entirely on the provider.
Unfortunately most providers supply only a very limited menu, so you’ll
probably want to define your own filters, as described in the next two
chapters.
Any filter selection can always be undone by the Reset menu entry or
the reset button in the main window.
On Windows this menu is en entry inside of the Filter menu for
technical reasons (the concept of danamically created menu hierarchies
seems to be foreign to Windows, so a popup menu has to be used for the
Navigate menu).
FILTERING
Similar to Navigate, this menu allows to control which of the
programmes in the database are presented in the listing. However here,
you are not limited to a preselection of filter options. There’s a
filter for every kind of attributes that can be attached to a program,
e.g. it’s network, start time, theme descriptors, and so on.
Filters can be undone either singularily by selecting the same filter
menu entry again, or globally by clicking on the Reset button.
You can combine as many filters as you want to build a complex filter.
If you combine two filters of different types, only programmes that
match both attributes will be listed (logical AND). If you choose more
than one filter of the same type, all programmes that match either
attribute will be listed (logical OR). Note some filter types also
support multiple "classes" which allow logical AND within a category;
this is explained in more detail in the filter types list below.
Examples: If you want to get all programmes listed for either network A
OR B, simply select both networks in the filter list. If you want to
see all movies scheduled on A, i.e. all programmes which run on network
A AND are flagged as movies, select network A and theme "movie -
general".
Filter Types
The following filter types are available:
Theme categories
Restrict the listing to programmes that have any of the given theme
categories attached to them (logical OR). The Nextview standard
contains a list of 76 predefined themes, which are structured into
11 main categories and subcategories. A programme can have up to 7
theme descriptors attached.
If you want to restrict the listing to programmes that have more
than one of the given themes (logical AND) you need to specify them
in different theme classes. For example: to get a listing of all
programmes which are both Sci-Fi and Comedy, select theme category
Sci-Fi, then switch to a different theme class, and select theme
category Comedy. The actual class numbers do not matter, you just
need to use two different ones (i.e. you can use either #1 and #2
or #5 and #6 etc.)
Series
Restrict the listing to programmes that belong to any of the
selected series. A series code always implies a network
specification (even if the same programme is transmitted on
different networks).
Note: This filter type is only available for providers that assign
series codes; also not all series may have a code assigned. For
other ones you can use text search among programme titles.
When series and theme or likewise series and text searches are
combined, programmes which match either of both filter types are
listed. This is an exception from the general rule of combining
different filters with a logical AND.
Networks
Restrict the listing to programmes of one or more given networks.
The filter is disabled when all checkbuttons are deactivated.
You can also add a network filter listbox to the main window by
enabling one of the Show networks checkbuttons in the Show/Hide
sub-menu of the Configuration menu (see "CONFIGURATION:
Show/Hide"). Also note that selection, order and names of networks
are all configurable, in particular you can permanently suppress
uninteresting networks from the list.
Text search
Restrict the listing to programmes who’s title or description (or
either if both options are enabled) contain one of the given
character sequences. If you enable the match complete text option,
an exact match will be required, i.e. a search for "heute" will not
match on "heute journal" (intended for title-only searches, as
started from the context menu). If you enable option match case,
character case is relevant, i.e. a search for "heute" will not
match on "Heute Abend".
You can search for more than one text at the same time; you’ll get
all programmes that contain any of the given texts (logical OR).
The listbox above the text entry field lists all currently active
texts. You can double click on the options in the list to toggle
them between "yes" and "no" (i.e. option enabled or disabled). The
entries also have small context menus which allow to remove single
texts or toggle options.
Press Click here to open... to open a small dialog which allows to
swiftly add a large list of texts (e.g. a list of your favorite
movie titles.) You can paste text for example from a text editor
into the dialog or load them directly from a file. Each line in
the text fields will be added as a separate search when you press
OK and all new entries will have the same options. Blanks at the
beginning or end of lines are automatically removed and lines
starting with # are skipped when loading from a file.
A history of the last 50 searches (manually entered ones only)
including options, are stored and available in the drop-down menu
below the search text entry field (opened with the arrow button at
the left or one of the up/down cursor keys) and the last 10
searches are also available in the Title column header menu in the
programme list (the latter in "single list" layout only).
Note: use of this search filter type is depreciated for permanent
series searches saved in shortcuts if your provider supports series
identifiers (see above). In this case should use those instead
because the numerical identifiers have a better protection against
transmission errors. A text search can fail due to a single
erronous character.
Features
Restrict the listing to programmes that match all given attributes
(logical AND), i.e. sound format, picture format, analog/digital,
encrypted yes/no, live/new/repeat and subtitles yes/no.
If you want to allow more than one value of the same attribute
(e.g. picture format wide OR Pal+) you have to put them into
different feature classes (e.g. first select format wide, then set
filter class to 2, then select format PAL+)
Parental Rating
Restrict the listing to programmes that are suitable for children
of the given age or elder, e.g. when you select 14, you get all
programmes that are rated general or between 4 and 14.
Editorial Rating
Restrict the listing to programmes that are rated (by the content
provider) to have at least the given quality. The range of rating
values is 1 to 7. Note that some providers do not use all values,
e.g. only 1, 3, 5 (thumb down, middle, thumb up)
Start time
Restrict the listing to programmes who’s start time lies in the
interval specified by start, stop time and relative date.
Following options are available: If you enable Start at current
time the interval start is fixed to the actual time when the filter
is set and the value given as stop time is interpreted as duration,
i.e. it’s added to the interval start. If you enable Stop at end
of day the interval end is fixed to 23:59 of the same day.
For the date you can chose between the following modes: Ignore
date: the filter allows programmes that start on any day (in the
time window given above). Relative date: allow only programmes
that start N days from today, i.e. for zero: today, for 1: tomorrow
etc. Weekday: allow programmes starting at the given day of the
week (the scale runs from Saturday until Friday.) Day of month:
allow only programmes starting the Nth day of any month (the scale
runs from 1 to 31.)
Note that the main intention of this filter is to support time
restrictions in the provider’s navigation menus (see "NAVIGATE") or
shortcuts. For manual navigation there are more practical
alternatives, e.g. the weekday scale and drop-down menus in the
main browser window above the time and date columns (not available
in grid layout.)
Program index
Restrict the listing to programmes who’s index is in the given
range. The currently running programme of each network is given
index zero, the following programme of each network index one etc.
The three most important combinations are available as radio
buttons: now (range 0-0), next (range 1-1) and now or next (range
0-1).
For merged databases only indices 0 and 1 are supported.
Duration
Restrict the listing to programmes whose duration (i.e. difference
between start and stop time) lies in the given range. When the
maxium is set to zero, the filter is switched off.
You can specify the time values either by use of the scales or by
entering a value in the format MM:HH into the text fields and
pressing the Return key.
Expired Programmes Display
Unlike all other filter options this one is used to enlarge the set
of matching programmes. It allows to include expired programmes
(i.e. those with a stop time in the past) into the list; they will
be marked with a yellow background (you can change that color, see
".Xdefaults" and "nxtvepg.ad" in "FILES".) With the sliders you
can set how many days plus hours to shift the expire time
threshold. By default the threshold is zero so that expired
programmes immediately disappear from the list.
Note you cannot add more programmes than are stored in the
database; usually programmes are removed after 4 hours. There’s a
second tab called Configure in the dialog which allows to change
the delay after which expired programmes are automatically removed.
Press the Update button to set the new value. If it’s lower than
before, programmes will immediately be removed from the database;
this operation cannot be undone (unless the progammes are still
registered in the provider inventory, which may be the case if you
haven’t updated the database in a long time. In this case you may
get a confusing warning that programmes are about to be removed
although they won’t.)
Sorting Criteria
Restrict the listing to programmes that have any of the given
sorting criteria attached to them; every programme can have 0..7
sorting criteria attached to it. They work very much like theme
descriptors however their meaning is not predefined by the Nextview
standard. The content provider can use arbitrary numbers to
represent an attribute. Attributes usually are themes that are not
in the predefined catalog, e.g. current events like the Olympic
Games, but could also be not content related at all. The meaning
of these numbers is usually defined by the provider’s navigation
menus (see "NAVIGATE").
Equivalently to themes, you can assign sorting criteria in
different classes to implement a logical AND, i.e. only programmes
that have at least one of the sorting criteria specified in every
used class will match. Example: to get all programmes that have
0x01 attached plus either 0x10 or 0x11, specify sorting criterion
0x01 in class #1 and 0x10 and 0x11 in class #2. Note that the
dialog displays all values in hexadecimal format, i.e. with digits
0-9 followed by a-f.
The Load all used button in the sorting criteria filter dialog
fills the selection listbox with a list of all codes that are
actually used in the current database. This allows a quick
overview which filter criteria will produce any matches.
VPS/PDC
Restrict the listing to programmes that have a valid VPS/PDC start
time label attached (VPS/PDC allow to start a video recording at
the exact time a programme starts even when delayed; the labels are
broadcasted currently in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and
England). Additionally you can filter for programmes with a label
which differs from the actual start time; these are usually
programmes whose start time changed or which were scheduled later
(usually the VPS/PDC label then is the actual start time minus one
minute)
Note that the interpretation of two filter types depends on the
provider: sorting criterion and series. That’s because those are just
arbitrary numbers which only have a meaning in the context of the
provider’s navigation menu.
Hint: the filter menu can also be used to examine the filter options
that are invoked by the entries in the Navigate menu.
Inverting filters
Near the end of the filter menu there’s the Invert sub-menu which
allows to invert the outcome of filtering. There are two levels of
inversion: global and individual.
When you select global inversion, you’ll get exactly the programmes
that otherwise would have been filtered out (except for programmes
which are permanently filtered out by your network and air-time
selection). In other words, all programmes which match your current
filter setting are removed from the list. Note: due to the way filter
shortcuts are merged when more than one is selected at the same time,
it’s in most cases not recommended to use global invert for filter
shortcuts unless you change the combination rule (see "FILTER
SHORTCUTS: Shortcut combination modes".)
The invert menu also allows to individually negate certain filter types
(there are also invert buttons in some filter sub-menus which have the
same function). The logic of combining flters is the same as without
inverting, i.e. there’s a logical OR between filters of the same type
(e.g. network A OR network B) and a logical AND between different
filter types (e.g. network A AND theme category movie).
Example 1: If you want all programmes which are neither categorized as
sports nor as children’s programmes, select theme filters sport and
children’s and then invert the current theme filter (usually class #1;
you can equivalently use the global invert if themes are the only
filter).
For the theme and sorting criterion filters it’s possible to invert
only parts of the selection, so that you can require that a programme
has a certain attribute and at the same time require that it doesn’t
have another attribute.
Example 2: If you want all programmes which are movies but NOT adult
movies, select theme category Movie, switch the theme class to 2,
select theme adult and then invert theme class 2.
Note: although the Feature filter offers the use of different classes
so support a logical OR, the inversion is not based on classes. This is
due to the fact that there’s a logical OR between feature classes (in
contrast to the logical AND between theme classes).
FILTER SHORTCUTS
There’s a number of predefined filter options in the main window below
the clock. These shortcuts enable you to invoke filters by a single
click of the mouse. You can freely add, change or remove entries in
this list.
When you want to add a shortcut, first set the filters up in the way
you want to save them, i.e. either choose existing shortcuts or select
an entry from the Navigate menu and/or add filters from the main or
context menus. When you have found an interesting selection, invoke
Add filter shortcut from the shortcuts menu.
This will open the shortcut edit dialog (which will be described in
detail below) with your new shortcut at the start of the list at the
left. You should change the shortcut label in the field at the top
right; by default it’s just "new shortcut". The label will be
displayed in the shortcut list in the main window. When you’re done
press Save, or Abort if you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to add
this shortcut after all. If you want to define multiple shortcuts you
can leave the Edit dialog open and save just once when you’re done with
all changes.
You can invoke several shortcuts in parallel by moving the mouse with
the left button pressed or by pressing the CTRL or SHIFT keys when
selecting in the main winddow’s shortcut listbox. See the chapter
below for possible side-effects when combining shortcuts.
The shortcut list has a small context menu which shows when you click
with the right mouse button into the shortcut list. If offers faster
access to the same commands which are available in the main menu plus a
Delete command; the shortcut above which you press the mouse button is
pre-selected for the chosen operation.
When you Update a shortcut and your current filter setting contains
different filters than the previously stored setting, you’ll be asked
if the filter mask should be automatically adapted (e.g. if your filter
previously searched for theme category ’movie’ but your current filter
consists of a text search). See below for more details on filter
masks; unless you have manually edited this shortcut’s mask before, you
can safely press "Yes".
Editing Filter Shortcuts
To change names and/or organisation of your shortcuts, open the edit
dialog (e.g. via the main menu.) On the left of the dialog window
there’s a list of all your shortcuts. In the middle there’s a row of
command buttons which operate on the shortcut selected at the left
(explained below). At the right there’s an editable field with
shortcut name, a read-only display of the filter settings currently
assigned to the shortcut, and popup menus to change the filter’s mask
and combination rules (also explained in detail below.)
The buttons with up/down arrows will move the selected shortcut up or
down. The buttons with arrows pointing to the upper left and lower
right are used to move a shortcut entry out of or into a sub-folder
respectively.
The Delete button removes the selected shortcut from the list (the
deletion won’t affect the main window until you press Save, so you can
leave the dialog with Abort to undo the operation.)
The Invoke button will apply the shortcut’s filter setting to the main
window just as selecting the shortcut in the main window’s list. You
can then change the filter settings via the filter menus. Use the
Update button to assign the main window’s filter settings to the edited
shortcut.
You should be careful with the update button since it’s easy to
overwrite the wrong shortcut. If you notice such a mistake, you can
undo the change either by leaving the edit dialog with the Abort button
or selecting the respecting shortcut in the main window and assigning
the original settings via Update.
Filter Masks
When you deselect a shortcut, either by selecting another shortcut or
clicking on it a second time with CTRL held down, all it’s filters will
automatically be undone. Hence when you have two themes shortcuts, e.g.
"Movies" and "Sports", and select first Movies, then Sports, you’ll see
only sports programmes afterwards. However if you had selected theme
movies manually, e.g. by the context menu explained in the next
chapter, the movies filter might remain set, so that you’d get all
programmes of theme movies OR sports. Since that is usually not what
one expects, a filter mask has been introduced to the shortcut setting.
The filter mask is defined in the shortcuts dialog with a checkbutton
for each filter category. By default, the mask is enabled for every
filter category you’ve included in the shortcut filter setting. When
you invoke the shortcut from the main window later, all filters of the
given categories will be cleared (masked out) before the shortcut
filters are added. To return to the above example: if the "Sports"
shortcut is defined with a themes mask, the manually set movies filter
would be cleared before the theme filter is set to sports.
The masking can also be enabled when no filter of that category has
been chosen. This can be used to define undo shortcuts. E.g. choose the
mask ’Themes’ if you want a shortcut that allows to clear all theme-
related filters at once. Or enabled all masks for a Reset button (the
only difference to the pre-defined Reset button would be that the
cursor does not jump to the first Now programme.)
Shortcut combination modes
By default when combining multiple shortcuts, all filters of all
selected shortcuts are simply thrown together (i.e. "merged") and then
processed as if they belonged all to one shortcut. The same
combination rules apply as described in "FILTERING".
For example, if one shortcut searches for movies, another one
subtitles, the combination will search for programmes which are movies
AND have subtitles. Also, if you have one shortcut which filters for
movies and one that filters for your favorite series, the combination
will filter for all programmes which are either movies OR among your
favorite series.
For such simple shortcuts which consist of a single filter type this
behavior is usually intuitive. When combining complex filters the
result of merging however might not match your expecations. For
example, if you have a shortcut "movies on network A" and one "series
on network B" merging would result in "either movies or series on
either network A or B", i.e. the list would also include movies on
network B.
Hence the shortcut edit dialog has a Combination rule option where you
can change the mode into OR or AND. If you put a shortcut into this
mode, it’s filters will be handled separately from all others.
The only drawback is that the shortcut’s filters will not be editable
via the filter menus. If you ever want to change the filter settings
without creating them from scratch, use the Invoke and Update buttons
in the edit dialog (see "FILTER SHORTCUTS: Editing Filter Shortcuts".)
Shortcut update dialog
When you select the Shortcut Update command in the main menu, there
will be a small dialog with a list of all shortcuts. The filter
settings of the shortcut you select in this list will be overwritten
with the currently active filter setting once you press the Update
button. You can also use the Update & Edit button to jump directly
into the filter edit dialog (see further above in this chapter)
Note that while the shortcut edit dialog window is open, updates (as
well as deletions or additions) will only affect the temporary list in
the edit dialog window until you press the it’s Save button. Also the
list offered for shortcut updates consists of the shortcuts as they are
defined in the temporary list.
Note that a faster way to change a single shortcut is to use the
context menu, since it allows to skip this intermediate dialog.
COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTES
By default the TV schedule contains for each programme "basic"
attributes like its date, starting time, title, TV network in a pre-
defined textual format. By using composite attributes you can
customize the TV schedule according to your personal preferences. For
example you could (1) alter the display format of pre-defined
attributes (e.g. use colors for highlighting), (2) add new attributes,
for example with images as markers for favorite programmes and/or (3)
compact display by combining several attributes into one.
Composite attributes replace single attributes in the display (e.g.
only the theme category column.) Newly created composite attributes
will be appended to the list of pre-defined attributes. You can then
configure your programme list as a mixture of pre-defined and composite
attributes (see "CONFIGURATION: Select attributes")
Composite attributes are created and edited via the Attribute
composition dialog in the Configure menu (see "CONFIGURATION: Attribute
composition")
The "heart" of attribute composition is a list of filter shortcuts and
reminder groups, which you build as a subset of your personal filter
shortcuts and/or reminder groups (see also "FILTER SHORTCUTS" and
"REMINDERS".)
Whenever nxtvepg displays a composite attribute in the browser, it
matches the programme’s actual attributes (e.g. theme categories or
assigned reminders) against the shortcuts and reminder groups
associated which the respective composite attribute, in the given order
(top to bottom in the dialog’s list - so order is important). If a
match is found, the text, image or attribute which was assigned to that
specific shortcut match is displayed in the column with the format
specified for this match. If none match (and there’s no *no match*
entry, see below), nothing is displayed in place of the composite
attribute.
Note in this context matching means that a shortcut’s filters are tried
against the TV programme, i.e. a programme "matches" a filter when it
would remain displayed when you enable that filter shortcut in the main
window. A reminder group is considered matching when the respective TV
show is programmed as a reminder in that group (or matches a shortcut
which is assigned to the given reminder group - but let’s ignore that
for now to avoid confusion.)
Example: to create a personalized version of the Editorial rating (ER)
column, you could create three shortcuts: one with the ER filter set to
">=6", one with ">=4" and one with ">=2"; then you’d create a new user-
defined column and insert the three shortcuts in this order; to the
first shortcut match you’d assign the text "great", to the second "ok"
and to the third "bad". As a result you’d have a column where the
numerical ratings are replaced with your texts.
There is also a special entry at the end of the dialog’s shortcut list
called *no match*. It acts as a catch-all (i.e. wildcard) if none of
the shortcuts in the column matches the current programme entry. In
the above example this would be all programmes with an ER below 2 or
without a rating.
The catch-all is particularily useful to overlay standard columns with
alternate texts for selected programmes. To stay with the ER example,
you could define a column with two shortcut entries: ">=6" and
"*no-match*". To the ">=6" shortcut match you could assign an image
marker; to all other the "ER" attribute. Hence programmes with an ER
>=6 (i.e. all "great" programmes) would have an image displayed and
hence clearly stand out from all other programmes, which get the
regular content of the ER column (i.e. the numerical rating or an empty
column for unrated programmes).
You can also use this machanism to combine several columns into one, to
keep the listing compact. For example you can combine the ER column
with the theme column, so that for movies with ER >= 6 the text "great
movie" is displayed, for all others the regular theme description.
REMINDERS
Reminders allow to mark TV shows which interest you and have nxtvepg
mark them in the programme list and display a message or execute an
external command when they start. You can select either individual
programmes in the programme list or complete filter shortcuts, e.g. for
TV series.
To set a new reminder simply select it with the cursor in the programme
list and choose Add reminder for selected title from the Reminder menu.
The same command is also available in the context menu, i.e. by
clicking on the selected title with the right mouse button. To remove
the reminder, simply select the title again and choose Remove reminder
for selected title.
By default nxtvepg will display a message popup for every reminded
programmme 5 minutes before and directly at the start time. You can
change this in the Configure reminder groups... dialog described in a
separate chapter below.
If you want to set a reminder for an entire series, you need to create
a filter shortcut first which matches the series (either by searching
by series ID or by title). To reduce the overhead you can create a
shortcut which matches all your favorite series and set a reminder for
this collection. To assign a reminder to the shortcut use the Edit
reminder list described in the next chapter.
Note you can add a single reminder for entries which already match a
shortcut reminders. This allows to assign an additional, specific
action for that TV show (if you use different groups.) Additionally
you can suppress handling of reminders for individual shows; this
option if offered in the Reminder and context menus when applicable.
This option may help to get around excessively complex or restrictive
shortcut filters.
By default nxtvepg has (in the single list layout) a column titled Mark
which contains a red dot for all programmes which have a reminder
registered, i.e. both single programmes and those which match shortcuts
with associated reminders. You can also set a filter which will
display only programmes with reminders in the proramme list by
selecting Show reminder matches from the Reminder menu.
Edit reminder list
Opens a list of all reminders. Single programmes and shortcuts are
listed in separate "tabs"; switch between them by clicking on the
buttons at the top.
The single programmes list is sorted by start time and network. When
you double-click on a reminder, the respective network will be filtered
for in the programme list and the cursor jumps onto the programme (if
it’s present in the current database.) To delete a reminder click on
the Delete button or press the delete key on your keyboard. You can
also select the reminder’s "group" (see below) either by selecting a
group in the popup menu from the Set group menubutton or by clicking
with the right mousebutton into the group column.
The list will normally not contain reminders for programmes which are
already expired. You can use the Display popup menu at the right to
change that. You can also include "suppressed" reminders, i.e. entries
which where created via the respective entry in the main menu to
supress shortcut matches; those will appear with the virtual suppress
group in the list.
When you switch to the Shortcuts tab, you’ll see a list of all
shortcuts for which you have added reminders. The first time you open
the dialog it will be empty. You can add shortcuts by selecting them
from the popup menu at the right. Equivalently to single programmes
you can change the group or delete the reminders again. All changes to
the lists are immediately saved and the markers in the programme list
updated.
All changes you make in this dialog take effect immediately.
Reminder group configuration
Opens a configuration dialog for reminder groups. Every reminder is
assigned to exactly one group which determines which actions are
executed at the programmes’ start time. Having groups allows to change
actions (and especially: disable them if you’re not in the mood to
watch TV) easily without having to edit every single reminder. When
you create a new reminder with the simple "add reminder" menu command
it will be assigned to group zero.
By default nxtvepg has only one group which pops up a message 5 minutes
before and directly at the start time. You can change this by
selecting the group in the list at the left and then modifying the
parameters at the right. Or create a new reminder by clicking New.
You can also change ordering of groups (only available for your
convenience; except for group zero ordering is not relevant.) The Show
buttons sets a filter for the programme list so that only programmes
matching reminders in the same group as the currently selected shortcut
are displayed.
At the top of the parameter input section is the Label entry field. It
allows to give the group a name, which is then used in the reminder
lists and in reminder confirmation messages. Below is a checkbutton
called Disable all group events. When enabled all actions for that
group are suppressed, i.e. you’ll get no popup messages and scripts are
not executed. The programmes are still marked in the listbox though.
Further below is an entry field where you can give a list of comma
separated values which define at which offsets reminder messages are
displayed; offsets are substracted from the start time, i.e. when you
enter "5" a message will appear 5 minutes before the programme’s
nominal start time. You can use negative values (e.g. "-5") if you
want reminders to appear later than the start time. In addition you
can set start times for commands. Commands are silently executed in
the background, unless you enable Ask before executing script.
Note configuration changes (including group additions or deletions) are
not applied before you leave the dialog with OK.
Reminder Messages
Once the nominal start time of a "reminded" programme (minus the
configured time offset) is reached, a message window will appear. If
there’s more than one message triggered at the same time, or if you
leave the window open and reminders for additional programmes are
triggered, they will all be collected in this window; in this case
there’s a cursor which determines to which reminders the controls
explained below apply. When you press Ok all messages are marked as
"done" and will not appear again. With a double-click or the Tune-TV
button you can switch the channel of a connected TV application to the
selected programme, just as in the main programme list.
For message windows there’s several buttons which allow to control
further reminder processing. Suppress will prevent any subsequent
messages for the programme. (Note that this is not the same as
suppressing reminders in the main menu, since here you supress only
messages but the programme remains marked as reminder). Repeat allows
to schedule additional reminder messages at arbitrary time offsets.
Note that messages configured for the group are suppressed until the
manual repetition but will re-appear afterwards.
CONTEXT MENU
Another quick way to select and deselect filters is by using the
context menu, which is opened by clicking with the right mouse button
onto a programme entry in the main browser window.
This menu consists of several parts, separated by horizontal lines,
which depend on the currently selected programme and hence are not
always present.
Undo currently selected filters
The first section holds entries which allow disable currently
selected filters either one by one or globally (reset). See also
"FILTERING: Filter Types"
Add new filters
The second section offers a number of possible new filter options,
which depend on the currently selected title and the already
selected filters. The offered filter types include: themes and
network of the selected programme title, it’s series code, repeat
or original transmission suppression (only in cunjunction with
series or title text filters) and last but not least the title
text.
The title text and series filters allow to check very quickly for
repeats of a programme. These filter options are included only if
there is a match, i.e. if there’s another programme with the same
title or series code respectively.
Add reminder
This menu entry will add a reminder for the currently selected
programme. The reminder will have the default reminder group. To
create reminders in different groups use Add reminder into group in
the reminder main menu (see also "REMINDERS")
User-defined entries
The optional fourth section is empty by default, but can be used to
invoke user-defined external commands on the selected programme.
More precisely, you can execute any command with properties of the
selected programme (like title or start time) on its command line.
The user commands can be added via the Configure menu (see
"CONFIGURATION: Context menu configuration").
CONTROL
Summary of commands available from the Control menu:
Enable acquisition
Toggles acquisition on or off. When you start the browser, acquisition
is automatically enabled (although failure to do so is silently
ignored). You can suppress automatic start with the -noacq command
line switch. Switching off acquisition allows other applications (e.g.
a teletext decoder) to use the TV card while you browse the database,
if you have only one TV card.
You will get an error message if the device is already busy by a
different application (there are some applications which cooperate well
with nxtvepg, but if in doubt you should quit all other video related
applications before starting acquisition) or if you don’t have
permission to access the device (UNIX, see also "FILES") or to start
the driver (Windows). If you’re experiencing problems that might be
hardware or Operating System related, test with a TV application or
teletext decoder first, because these usually allow for easier
debugging (e.g. due to the visible TV image). See also "GETTING
STARTED".
UNIX: When acquisition is switched off, the /dev/vbi device is freed.
Acquisition can also been switched on and off automatically (i.e. from
a shell script) by sending signal HUP (e.g. with the kill(1) command)
to any of the nxtvepg processes or threads. If you’re using a daemon
for acquisition (see the next command) you have to send the signal to
one of the daemon processes/threads. To simplify this, the pid of the
process which needs to be signalled is stored in /tmp/.vbi.pid while
the device is in use.
Connect to acq. daemon
Connect to or disconnect from an acquisition daemon, running in the
background on the same host, or somewhere else in the network. The
address of the daemon and other parameters are configured in the
Client/Server menu (see "CONFIGURATION: Client/Server"). By default
the daemon is started on the local host. The main advantage of using
the daemon is that you can keep running acquisition permanently in the
background, even if you terminate the browser, or on UNIX even the X11
server (i.e. the windowing system). On M$ Windows the daemon is
terminated when you log off.
If you attempt to connect, but no daemon is running, you’ll be offered
the option to automatically start the daemon and retry the connect,
provided you have configured server hostname localhost. The daemon
will be started with the same database directory and rcfile as the
browser.
Note that disconnecting from the daemon or terminating the browser does
not stop the acquisition and hence does not free the device. If that’s
what you want, choose the Enable acquisition command instead, which
terminates the daemon. Of course this option only is available if your
daemon is running on the same host and with the same user id as the
browser process.
Dump stream
UNIX only: All incoming Nextview blocks are dumped to stdout in an
ASCII format. This is mainly intended for developers, but it may also
help to debug reception problems, because in the dump you’ll find any
block that could be decoded without hamming errors, even before an
inventory block (AI) has been received. This may help if you have very
bad reception, because it may take a long time until a error-free copy
of the usually large AI block is received.
When connected to a acquisition daemon, blocks are only dumped if they
are new to the database or their content changed (because only those
are forwarded by the daemon to the client.)
Dump raw database
Open a dialog that allows to dump all blocks in the database to stdout
(UNIX only) or into the named file in a raw text format, which is
actually the same as with the Dump stream command. This feature is
mainly intended for developers. To understand all the infos in the text
dump, you’ll have to look at the source in epgui/epgtxtdump.c in the
nxtvepg source package.
The array of checkbuttons allows to control which kind of blocks will
be written. The programme information blocks (PI) do contain the actual
programme descriptions; Defective PI contains those PI which were not
accepted into the database because of inconsistencies like a zero or
overlapping running time. For an explanation of the other block types
please see the ETSI specification 707.
You can also export the database in this format via the command line by
using option "-dump raw". In this case the options last used in the
dialog are effective.
Export as text
Open a dialog that allows to export the complete database into a text
file. Each line in the file will represent one item in the database.
The item’s different fields are separated by TAB characters; the line
is terminated by a single new-line character (no line feed character,
even on Windows). In some cases missing values are represented by "\N"
which is the MySQL NULL identifier (currently only used for the VPS/PDC
field).
The generated text file can be loaded directly into a relational
database. It’s not formatted for viewing in a regular text editor.
Networks and themes are represented as numerical indices into the
network and themes table respectively. Hence these tables are required
in addition to the programme table. To load them into a database, you
need to export them into different files.
For MySQL you could create the following tables:
CREATE TABLE PI (
netwop smallint(2) unsigned NOT NULL,
Dstart date NOT NULL,
Hstart time NOT NULL,
Hstop time NOT NULL,
vpspdc_pil datetime,
prat tinyint(2) unsigned,
erat tinyint(2) unsigned,
sound enum("mono","2-chan","stereo","surround"),
is_wide BOOL,
is_palplus BOOL,
is_digital BOOL,
is_encrypted BOOL,
is_live BOOL,
is_repeat BOOL,
is_subtitled BOOL,
theme_0 tinyint(3) unsigned,
theme_1 tinyint(3) unsigned,
theme_2 tinyint(3) unsigned,
theme_3 tinyint(3) unsigned,
theme_4 tinyint(3) unsigned,
theme_5 tinyint(3) unsigned,
theme_6 tinyint(3) unsigned,
title varchar(40) NOT NULL,
descr text,
PRIMARY KEY (netwop, Dstart, Hstart)
);
CREATE TABLE AI (
netwop_idx smallint(2) unsigned NOT NULL,
cni smallint(5) unsigned,
lto_mins smallint(5),
daycount smallint(5) unsigned,
alphabet smallint(5) unsigned,
addinfo smallint(5) unsigned,
name text,
UNIQUE netwop_idx (netwop_idx)
);
CREATE TABLE pdc_themes (
theme_idx smallint(3) unsigned NOT NULL,
cat_idx smallint(3) unsigned,
name_eng text,
name_ger text,
name_fra text,
UNIQUE theme_idx (theme_idx)
);
Export as XMLTV
Open a dialog that allows to export the complete database in XML
format, as defined by the xmltv.dtd version 0.5 (see xmltv project on
http://sourceforge.net/) The generated file contains both the channel
table and the complete TV schedule, including any networks you might
have suppressed from the listing inside nxtvepg.
Hint: If you want to restrict the amount of exported data, configure a
merged database. This is possible even for a single provider. This
way you can exclude certain networks or attributes, e.g. to omit theme
categories from the output (see the "Configure" sub-menu in the merge
configuration dialog.)
Some TV applcations are known to not parse XMLTV timestamps correctly.
As a work-around for such buggy applications, there’s an option which
allows to export dates and times in local time instead of UTC (also
known as Greenwhich Mean Time or GMT.) If all programme data appears
shifted by one or two hours in your TV app’s schedule, try this option.
Note that the database can also be exported directly from the command
line by using the -dump xml switch (see "OPTIONS").
Export as HTML
Opens a dialog that allows to export the complete database or selected
programmes into a file in HTML format (Hypertext Markup Language) which
can then be loaded into a WWW browser, e.g. Netscape or Opera. This is
particularily useful if you want to print out TV descriptions.
At the top of the dialog window you have to enter the output file name;
if you don’t include an extension, .html is automatically appended.
Click on the little folder button to the right for a file selection
dialog. Press the Export button to create the HTML document and
Dismiss to close the dialog window.
By default the checkbutton All matching programmes, but max ... is
enabled. In this mode all programmes that match current filter setting
will be exported, but only up the given number of programmes. It’s
recommended to limit the number of programmes because else very large
HTML documents are created which may take a long time to load into your
Web browser.
Use mode Selected programme only to export only the programme which is
currently selected in the main window. In combination with the Append
to file mode this allows to incrementally build a document with exactly
your programmes of interest.
In the box below there are three radio buttons with which you can
select the output format. If you choose Write titles you’ll get a table
in the same configuration as in the programme title list in the main
window. If you want to have different column types, you can build a
separate column configuration by selection Different columns than main
window and then pressing the Configure button to select which column
types to display.
If you select Write descriptions you’ll get for each exported programme
a feature summary and description, similiar to the info in the lower
part of the main window.
If you select Write titles and descriptions you’ll get the title table
on top and all descriptions separately below. In this mode you can
select Add hyperlinks to titles to add hyperlinks from titles in the
table to the descriptions.
The look of the generated document is almost entirely determined by use
of an internal CSS stylesheet. If you don’t like the look you can
override it with your own stylesheet. Save it to a file named
nxtvhtml.css and put it in the same directory as the generated HTML
file. For more information on HTML and style sheets see
http://www.w3.org/. If your column configuration contains images (see
"COMPOSITE ATTRIBUTES"), you have to put them into a subdirectory
called images; also your browser has to support the PNG image format.
View statistics/timescales
The following four commands are used to open windows with statistics
about the databases and acquisition progress. See "STATISTICS" for
details.
View timescales
Toggles the timescale window for the browser database. The window
reflects for each network included in the selected database, which
time ranges are covered by programme information. If acquisition is
working on the database, you can watch how more and more of the
scales get covered. See also "STATISTICS: Status line"
View statistics
Toggles the browser database statistics window, which informs you
about number of program entries in the database, fill percentage,
expiration percentage, date of last update etc. If the acquisition
is working on the same database, it also contains information about
state and progress of acquisition. See also "STATISTICS: Timescale
popup windows".
View acq timescales
Toggles the timescale window for the acquisition database. This
entry is only available if the acquisition uses a different
database than the browser (e.g. when using a manual or cyclic
acquisition mode, see "DATA ACQUISITION")
View acq statistics
Toggles the acquisition statistics window, which informs you about
state and progress of acquisition. If the acquisition control
mechanism switches to a different database, the acq statistics
window will automatically follow.
Quit
Close all windows and terminate the application. If you have started
acquisition as a daemon, it will not be terminated (see "CONTROL:
Connect to acq. daemon").
CONFIGURATION
Summary of commands available from the Configure menu:
Select provider
Open the provider selection dialog. This dialog lists all TV channels
from which Nextview data can be received. When you select a channel
name on the list, you’ll see the name of the Nextview service that’s
transmitted there and a list of all networks covered by it on the
right.
If you leave the dialog with Ok, the selected provider’s database will
be loaded into the browser. If the database hasn’t been updated for a
long time, the programme list might initially be empty, but if you have
selected "Follow-UI" acquisition mode, the provider’s TV channel will
be tuned to update the database content (see "ACQUISITION MODES" for
more details.)
To remove obsolete providers (i.e. such which have ceased to provide
Nextview service or which you can no longer receive), you should start
a provider scan in refresh mode (see "CONFIGURATION: Provider scan")
You cannot remove active providers even if you’re not interested in
their EPG information, because nxtvepg would add them back
automatically in the next scan or when their TV channel is tuned
externally.
Merge providers
Open a dialog that allows to merge several databases into one. See
"MERGED DATABASES" for details.
Acquisition mode
Open a dialog that allows to control the background acquisition
process. See "ACQUISITION MODES" for more details.
Provider scan
Open a dialog that allows to start a scan across all TV channels for
Nextview transmissions. You should perform this search at least once,
firstly to find out which providers are available in your area, and
secondly to determine the TV frequencies of all EPG providers. Those
are required for most acquisition modes, and due to driver limitations
often not available without a scan (e.g. on Windows or Linux with bttv
driver <= 0.7.50). Note that the provider scan only works if you use
the internal tuner as input source. See also "GETTING STARTED" and the
subsequent chapter on TV card configuration.
If you live in France or Belgium, select the French frequency table
(which implies the Secam L TV norm) to be used for the EPG scan; else
use the default frequency table which covers common cable network
frequencies in Western Europe with the PAL TV norm. Other countries
are not supported, since there currently are no Nextview providers. If
you live in an area where you receive both PAL and SECAM stations, you
should perform the EPG scan twice with different channel tables.
The Use TV app. button is automatically checked if an xawtv
configuration file is found in your home directory (on UNIX) or a TV
application was set up in the TV app. interaction dialog (or initially
in the TV card input dialog). Instead of searching all possible TV
channels or frequencies in all bands, nxtvepg then just checks the TV
channels defined there, which usually saves a lot of time.
Check the Slow button if you have bad reception on some channels. In
slow mode the scanner will not skip channels with "unstable" video
signal (i.e. no PLL H-lock within 0.150 seconds) and wait twice as long
as normal for everything, i.e. up to 4 seconds for a VPS/PDC channel
identification and up to 90 seconds for EPG for known providers or if
potential EPG data packets were found. Note that you can change this
setting while the scan is running.
Use the Refresh only mode if you deleted your database files (or if you
upgrade from an incompatible software version) or if you want to
identify or remove obsolete providers. In this mode only the channels
on which Nextview data was received before are checked (the frequencies
are kept both in the databases and your rc/ini file). This allows to
regain your complete provider selection very quickly. If no data
transmission is found on a provider’s channel, a Remove this provider
button will be added to the output window, which you can use after the
scan has finished to remove the database and any information recorded
about the provider. Note that removal will fail if the database is
currently in use, so you may have to stop acquisition and select a
different provider.
Technical background information on how the EPG scan works: The scan
will visit every physical TV frequency (or subsets thereof if you use
one of the options described above) and check for a TV signal. If one
is detected within 150 ms or if at least one teletext packet was
received, the scan waits up to two seconds for a valid VPS/PDC channel
identification. At the same time it receives packets from all
potential EPG teletext page addresses. If a VPS/PDC code is read that
belongs to one of the known EPG providers or valid data packets have
been received (which does not necessarily mean it’s EPG, because other
services could use the same encoding) the scan waits up to 45 seconds
for EPG inventory messages (BI and AI blocks). You can watch these
proceedings in the message output window.
Even though the scan tries very hard, it can not warrent that every EPG
provider is found every time. For example some providers do have pauses
of more than 45 seconds in their EPG transmission; or they might have
technical problems. So the safest way is to check the nxtvepg web site
(see About in the Help menu) for a list of known Nextview EPG
providers. If you receive TV channels for which a provider is listed,
repeat the scan until they are found, e.g. at different times of the
day. If you find new providers not listed on the web site, please let
me know.
TV card input
Open a dialog where the TV card hardware parameters can be configured.
This dialog contains more options on Windows than on UNIX platforms
because on UNIX the driver is part of the operating system, whereas on
Windows it’s part of the application and has to be configured
separately for every application. Hence, before you can use nxtvepg
you must configure your card in the Configure card sub-dialog. Please
refer to "GETTING STARTED" for a description of this dialog.
Video source allows to choose which video input source to use, i.e.
where you have connected an video input cable to the TV card: Tuner or
Television refer to input via antenna cable (also known as RF cable,
i.e. terrestrial reception or cable TV); Composite refers to a cinch
video cable as used by satellite receivers or cheap video records;
S-Video is an variant of Composite with improved image quality (often
wrongly called S-VHS cable since it’s mostly used by S-VHS video
recorders) and easily recognized by the Sub-D connectors (called
"Hosidenstecker" in German). Depending o your hardware you may only
see a sub-set of these input types, or additional ones (e.g. Radio,
which will obviously not work as input for nxtvepg.)
Note if you don’t choose a TV tuner as input nxtvepg will not be able
to automatically switch to your EPG provider’s channel. See also "DATA
ACQUISITION".
If you have more than one TV tuner card, you can also choose which one
to use, just like with the -card command line option (see "OPTIONS")
The popup menu will list all card types as configured in the driver.
Note that changing the card may also affect the input selection, in
particular if the cards use a different ordering for input types.
The slicer quality option selects between different algorithms by which
teletext is extracted from the analog video signal. The simple
algorithm works only for excellent TV reception, but has the advantage
of using very little CPU resources. The elaborate algorithm (copied
from zapping’s libzvbi and originally developed for the Linux teletext
viewer alevt) is much more error tolerant. When you select automatic
acquisition will always start with the simple algorithmm but switch to
the elaborate one when the transmission error rate is above recommended
limits (see also "STATISTICS: Acquisition statistics").
Windows only: at the bottom of the dialog window there are additional
options, which you only need to try if acquisition does not work
correctly.
If you experience data loss due to heavy system load, you can raise the
acquisition thread priority (may require special privileges on certain
Windows versions.) Default is normal, i.e. the same as for all user
applications.
The second checkbutton allows to enable logging during driver startup
and shutdown. The output is appended to a file named dsdrv.log in the
nxtvepg working directory. Enable this option if you’re not able to
start the driver and cannot find out why. But first see the
explanation of driver error messages in the README file. Note that the
logging option is not remembered across program starts, i.e. to make
use of it you have to enable the acquisition via the Control menu and
not by restarting nxtvepg.
The third option currently only applies to CX23881 based cards: it
allows to disable a vendor’s WDM driver for the same card. This is a
work-around for the fact that CX23881 WDM drivers are known to access
the TV card even while no application is using them. You should only
use it as a last resort, i.e. when you can’t get the card to work at
all. It’s still an experimental feature, some users have reported that
their card configuration was lost or WDM drivers remained disabled even
after nxtvepg was stopped (in both cases other applications will
probably not work properly anymore.) You can verify if the WDM drivers
are cause of acquisition problems by de-installing them, rebooting and
then trying nxtvepg again (note nxtvepg doesn’t require any vendor
supplied drivers.)
Client/Server
Opens a dialog that allows to configure the connection between browser
and an acquisition daemon (i.e. a separate instance of nxtvepg which is
running in server mode, see -daemon command line switch in "OPTIONS")
The daemon allows to forward all newly acquired EPG data to one or more
connected browsers and to monitor the it’s acquisition progress.
The dialog contains settings of which some refer to the server-side
only, some to the client-side only and some to both server and client.
To avoid confusion, there are three radio buttons at the top of the
dialog which allow to grey out items that do not refer to the client or
server respectively. Note: for server configuration changes to take
effect, the daemon must be restarted. If it’s running locally, you can
do this via the Control menu (see "CONTROL: Connect to acq. daemon")
Enable remote control
Note: this feature is not yet implemented. By enabling remote-
control you can stop acquisition, change acquisition mode, TV
card parameters or any parameters configured by this dialog in
a running daemon via the network connection.
Enable TCP/IP
By enabling connections via the TCP/IP network protocol, you
allow connections from remote hosts. Since there’s currently
no access control in nxtvepg, these hosts can be anywhere in
your network, or anywhere in the world if you’re connected to
the Internet. If you don’t have a firewall which prevents
incoming connections of untrusted hosts, this mode is highly
depreciated, because nxtvepg is not in any way secured against
malicious client connections.
Note: on Windows currently only TCP/IP is supported, i.e. you
have to enable this option if you want to start the daemon.
Server hostname
Client-side only: this setting identifies the host on which the
daemon is running. You can enter either a hostname in "dot.com"
format or an IP address in "127.0.0.1" format. If you set it
to localhost the connection is automatically established via
UNIX domain sockets (i.e. pipes), which is more efficient than
TCP/IP. You can still use TCP/IP locally if you set it to the
name of your local host, as returned by hostname(1).
Server TCP port
If TCP/IP is enabled, this setting tells server and client
which port to use. You can enter an arbitrary number between
1024 and 65535 here, but you have to make sure no other server
is using the same port. Make sure you configure the same port
number for client and server. The default is 7658.
Bind IP address
If TCP/IP is enabled and your server host has more than one IP
address, you can select here on which one to listen for
incoming connections. Make sure you use the same IP address as
server hostname on client-side, or a hostname that resolves to
that IP address. This setting is optional; if you leave the
field blank (default) the server will bind to all IP addresses.
Note: on systems that support it, TCP/IP sockets are created in
the IPv6 domain (PF_INET6) by default. On some systems (e.g.
NetBSD) you cannot connect via IPv4 to an IPv6 server and vice
versa, i.e. you need to use the same domain on both ends. If
your client only supports IPv4, you can force your server to
create an IPv4 socket by binding to an IPv4 address. If you
fail to connect to a local IPv6 server via the IPv4 loopback
address 127.0.0.1, use the IPv6 equivalent "::1".
Max. connections
This setting limits the number of client connections the server
will allow. Once the limit is reached the server will stop
listening for new connections.
Log filename
If you enable log generation by the following option, you can
choose here where the log will go. Make sure the file is
writable to the uid under which the daemon process is running.
The file opened and closed for each appended log line (usually
there’s very low traffic into that file) so you can operate on
it (e.g. truncate it) without restarting the daemon.
File min. log level
Here you can choose if log information should be written to a
file. If you run nxtvepg with TCP/IP disabled, you don’t need
to use logging; but if you allow remote connections you should
keep log files at "info" level to be able to check which hosts
connect to your server.
The following settings are available: "no logging" disables
logging; "error" enables logging of internal errors that lead
to an immediate exit of the daemon; "warning" additionally
enables logging of unexpected events, i.e. internal errors
which do not lead to exit; "notice" additionally enables
logging of server status changes, i.e. startup and shutdown;
"info" additionally enables logging of connection establishment
or shutdown.
Syslog min. level
Here you can enable or disable logging to UNIX syslog and
Windows application event logging (application name is nxtvepg
daemon; this feature is not supported by Windows 95). See UNIX
man pages syslogd(8) and syslog.conf(5) or the Windows event
log help for details about the syslog facility. The log levels
you can choose here are the same as described in the previous
paragraph for logging to files.
Note that while network mode is enabled configuration of acquisition
mode and TV card input has no effect and no EPG scan is possible. If
you use the same rc/ini file for daemon and GUI the changed settings
will however be used by the daemon upon the next start.
TV application interaction
Opens a dialog that allows to configure the interaction between a TV
application and nxtvepg. On UNIX this menu entry is available only
when a .xawtv configuration file is found in your home. On Windows you
should at least configure your TV application type and path here if
you’re using one of the supported applications; this is a recommended
step during the initial installation to speed up the EPG provider
search, as described in "GETTING STARTED".
The first four (only three on UNIX) options allow to switch interaction
features on or off. If you want to improve startup time on UNIX, turn
them all off; in this case nxtvepg does not need to search for the
xawtv toplevel window (which can take up to several seconds if you have
many applications running or a slow connection to your X server.) By
default all interaction features are enabled.
General enable
Windows only: the option allows to disable or re-enable the
allocation of communication resources, and implicitly to switch off
or on all interaction features. While disabled, nxtvepg will be
invisible for the TV application. The use of this option is
depreciated, as nxtvepg won’t automatically free the driver when
the TV application is started, and nxtvepg will fail to start
acquisition when a TV appliaction is running. Use this option only
if you suspect compatibility problems between the TV app and
nxtvepg, e.g. if one application hangs or crashes during startup
if the other is already running. (Not that such behavior is to be
expected, but it’s better to be prepared for anything.)
Tune TV button
This option allos to hide or show the equally named button and it’s
little popup menu (accessed with right mouse button) below the
clock in the nxtvepg main window. If you’re not interested in
remote-controlling the TV application, switch it off.
Cursor follows channel changes
While this option is enabled, nxtvepg will monitor TV channel
changes. Whenever such a change is detected, the cursor in the
programme listbox will be set onto the title currently running on
that network. During EPG acquisition VPS/PDC is used to exactly
determine the current programme (only on networks which support
VPS/PDC); however if the nominal running time is in the past it’s
currently not possible to display the programme in the listbox.
This info may however be sent to the TV app (see next option). If
you have just a network filter enabled, it will be switched to the
new network so that you’ll get a complete listing of that network’s
programmes, starting with the currently running one. This works
even when you have excluded this network in the network selection
configuration. If there are more or other filters than network
enabled, then they will remain unchanged. If the current programme
on the new network does not match this filter setting, then neither
cursor nor listbox content will be changed.
Display EPG info in TV app
While this option is enabled, nxtvepg will monitor TV channel
changes. During EPG acquisition VPS/PDC are also monitored to
determine newly starting programmes. VPS/PDC also allows to detect
channel changes on an external input source, e.g. a satellite
receiver connected via the Composite socket. After a change of
channel or current programme title, the info about the currently
running title will be displayed in the TV application. On Windows
it’s entirely up to the TV application how this information is
displayed.
On UNIX the display format can be selected by the following radio
buttons:
With Separate popup nxtvepg will generate a small popup window and
put it right beneath the xawtv window. The blue area in the small
bar on top represents how much of the (nominal) running time lies
in the past. With Video overlay nxtvepg will generate a similar
popup, however it’s placed on top of the video image (please note
that this option only works properly with XFree86 version 4 and the
XVideo extension; use the xvinfo command to check if your server
supports this feature). You can change fonts and colors in this
popup via X resources (see "FILES" for details.) Video overlay, 2
lines is the same except that it writes running time and title in
separate lines and additionally contains the percentage of expired
running time. With Xawtv window title the info will be sent to
xawtv and displayed in the window title. Except for this last
option, you can configure the desired display duration with the
slider at the bottom of the dialog. A duration of zero means the
display will never be removed.
Windows only: in the middle of the dialog there’s one line that
indicates the current TV application connection status. It contains
the name of the connected application, or not connected wither if no TV
application is running or if it doesn’t support interaction with
nxtvepg (see also "GETTING STARTED: Configuring a TV application".)
You can connect to different applications than configured below, but if
the network names are not synchronized with nxtvepg, the interaction
will not work optimally (i.e. nxtvepg might not be able to identify all
networks, and hence not be able to provide programme titles).
In the lower part of the dialog window you can configure type and path
of your preferred TV application. This information is used to access
the TV app’s channel table (i.e. TV tuner frequencies and station
names) during an EPG provider scan (see "CONFIGURATION: Provider scan")
and in the network name configuration dialog (see "CONFIGURATION:
Network names"). After you’ve changed the setting, you can press the
Test button to check if nxtvepg can parse the channel table correctly.
It will complain if it fails to open the file or registry key and if no
channels are found. After the test was successful, you shoud open the
network names configuration dialog and synchronize network names with
nxtvepg.
If your TV application is not supported, choose none. (If it’s a
freeware application feel free to mail me a download URL and I will
consider supporting it. However I will not support proprietary closed-
source software, unless on request by the author.)
Note that not all of the TV applications listed in the popup menu can
currently interact with nxtvepg. The interaction requires
modifications in the TV applications; it’s up to the respective authors
if they want to implement these. (If you are an author of a TV app,
feel free to mail me if you want to add EPG support to your
application; a demo application and reference implementation source
code are available on the nxtvepg home page.)
Select attributes
Open the programme attribute display configuration dialog, which allows
to select which attributes are displayed for the listed TV programmes.
In the listbox on the left of the dialog window there’s a list of all
available attribute categories, e.g. title, running time, weekday, TV
network name, ratings, ... i.e. mostly the same which are available for
filtering. You can create your own attributes to extend this list with
the dialog described in the next chapter.
The listbox on the right contains the types currently selected for
display. The topmost entry appears on the left side of the listbox.
Press Apply to refresh the browser listbox with the new column
selection and save the new configuration to the config file.
In the "single list" layout (see "CONFIGURATION: List layout") each
attribute has it’s own column in the TV schedule and and associated
filter menu in the button on top of the column (provided column headers
have not been disabled, see "CONFIGURATION: Show/Hide".) You can
change the width of each column by moving the mouse pointer to the very
right of the menu button and then dragging the border to a new position
while keeping the left mouse button pressed down.
In the "spearate network columns" layout attributes are printed beneath
each other in separate lines in the TV schedule’s network columns,
unless you select No new line after element while the respective
attribute is selected in the right listbox. Empty rows are
automatically suppressed, e.g. in contrary to the "single list" layout
the number of attributes actually displayed may vary. This is
particularily useful for user-defined attributes, e.g. you could
specify that theme categories are only printed for movies to keep the
listing more compact.
Attribute composition
Open the configuration dialog for composite attributes, which allows to
create new column types for the "single list" TV schedule layout (see
"CONFIGURATION: List layout") or new rows respectively in the "spearate
network columns" layout, which can afterwards be selected in addition
to the predefined attribute types (e.g. "Title" and "Theme") as
described in the previous chapter.
For a general description of composite attributes see "COMPOSITE
ATTRIBUTES". This chapter only describes usage of the configuration
dialog. This chapter also assumes you’re familiar with the concept of
filter shortcuts (see "FILTER SHORTCUTS") and reminders (see
"REMINDERS")
The dialog consists of three sections: at the top to the right there is
a drop-down menu which lists all currently defined composite
attributes. Here you select which attribute definition you want to
edit. Below to the left is a list of shortcuts and reminder groups and
4 buttons to edit the list. On the right side of the shortcut list
there are various controls for defining how programmes matching
shortcuts or reminder groups should be displayed.
Note that there are dependencies between those sections: when you
change to a different attribute definition with the drop-down menu at
the top, the rest of the dialog is immediately updated to display the
current definition of the composite attribute (you’ll get a warning if
there any unsaved changes in the previous assignments). Also, when you
select a shortcut in the listbox, the display attributes at the right
are updated.
To create a new composite attribute, you will start by selecting the
Create new definition command in the menu at the top right of the
dialog window. You should give the label right away, so that you can
keep your definitions apart, see "CONFIGURATION: Select attributes".
You should also assign a column header text (only used in the "single
list" layout), which will appear above the programme list in the main
windiw; you’ll probably use a shorter text here than in the label.
Then you add one or more filters to the list by use of the Add shortcut
or Add reminder drop-down menus to the left of the listbox. New entries
are always appended at the end of the list, but you can change the
ordering by use of the up/down arrow buttons. To remove a shortcut or
reminder group from the list, first select it then click the Delete
button or key. Note: ordering is important when a programme is matched
by more than one shortcut, or if you mix shortcuts with reminder
groups, because the display format will be determined by the first
matching entry in the list, strting at the top (see also "COMPOSITE
ATTRIBUTES".)
At the right of the shortcut list there are controls which defines
what’s displayed in the programme list depending on a shortcut or
reminder match (for programmes which don’t match any of the given
shortcuts nothing will be displayed, unless you have a *no match*
entry.) By default a match is displayed as the name of the matching
shortcut or reminder group, but you can easily change that with the
controls to the right of the listbox. The choices are: freely defined
but static text, one of the pre-defined images or one of the
programme’s attributes (i.e. if you select Time the programme’s start
time will be displayed).
In case you chose to use text (including attributes), you can select
bold, underlined or overstrike font and the text color. For all types
you can also select a background color. Colors can be applied either
just to the user-defined attribute itself, or the entire column (in
single list layout; or the entire element in grid layout) The resulting
appearance is shown in a Text sample above the controls. These display
options can be configured separately for every shortcut match. An
exception is the entire-column background color; if such a format is
found in multiple attributes, the last one counts.
When you want to try out your attribute definition, press the Apply
button at the bottom. The definition is saved and the browser content
is updated. If the attribute is not currently used in the browser,
you’re offered in a popup message to automatically append the attribute
to the TV schedule. You can later change it’s position by using the
Select attributes configuration dialog.
There’s also a Delete button at the bottom which allows to remove
obsolete definitions. If the composite attribute is still displayed in
the browser, it’s automatically removed. Note that a deletion cannot
be undone, i.e. the information is lost irrecoverably.
Select networks
Open the network selection dialog. It allows to permanently suppress TV
networks in a provider’s listing, e.g. if you can not receive the
channel. You can also change the order of the networks, e.g. to put
your favorite networks at the top of the filter menus.
This window has two lists: on the left you’ll find all networks that
are covered by the provider in their original order, on the right those
that are selected for the programme listing in your preferred order. By
default, both lists will have exactly the same content. If you want to
exclude networks, select them in the right list and press Delete. You
can always include them again by selecting them in the left list and
pressing Add. You can change the order in the right list by selecting
one or more networks and pressing the up or down arrows.
If you want the same selection and order for all providers, you can
simply copy your order and selection with the copy popup menu; this
menu contains a list of all known providers. Note that if you copy
from a provider with less (or different) networks, those networks that
are missing in the other provider’s database appear at the end of the
network selection in the right listbox.
At the bottom of the dialog window there’s an entry field named Air
times that allows to limit the program listing for a network to a given
time frame. For example if you receive Arte only from 19:00 until 07:00
o’clock, select "Arte" either in the left or right list, then enter
"19:00" and "07:00" in the fields (make sure to always use 4 digits and
the separating colon). Programmes that fall completely outside that
window will not appear in the browser window. If you want to undo the
limitation, enter 00:00 until 00:00 or any other equal time values.
Note: you can also operate this dialog (and all other dialogs with
similar listbox selections) with he keyboard: use the TAB key or the
mouse to move the keyboard input focus to the left or right listbox.
Use the cursor up/down keys to select an item; hold down SHIFT to
select multiple items. In the left list, press Return to add a network
to the right list. In the right list, press the Delete key to remove a
network, or press CONTROL and the up/down cursor keys to change the
selected items’ position in the list.
Network names
Open the network names configuration dialog. It’s main purpose is to
synchronize the network names between nxtvepg and your TV application.
This is required because the network name is used in communication when
you use the Tune TV remote controls, and as well for channel change
notifications by the TV applications. For many networks there will be
no need to change anything, but for some there exist different
variants, e.g. in Germany "Super RTL" vs. "S-RTL" or "MDR3" vs. "MDR".
If you’re not using UNIX, you first need to select which TV application
you want to synchronize with and where the configuration files are
located. This is done in the TV app. interaction dialog in the
Configure menu (see "CONFIGURATION: TV application interaction").
Another use of this dialog is to make network naming consistent across
all Nextview providers. The names you specify here will be used in the
programme listbox and all filter menus, independently of the provider.
On the left side of the dialog you find a list of all networks of all
known Nextview providers. The names used here are the ones you
configured before, or if you haven’t done so yet, the names that match
the station names of your TV application best. Unmatched names are
marked red. If no TV application is configured, each network’s name is
taken from the first Nextview database which covers this network, in
order of your provider selection history.
On the right side, you’re offered four ways to change the name: topmost
is a simple entry field where you can type in an arbitrary name. Below
is a popup menu which contains all network names defined in your TV
app.’s channel table. Below is a button which contains the one name in
your TV app.’s channel table which resembles the current string in the
entry field most, or none. It’s marked red until it’s identical to the
entry field. You can copy the name to the entry field by clicking the
button. Below is a listbox with the original names used in the various
provider databases. When you select a name from the menu or the
listbox, it will be copied into the entry field and the network name
list on the left. If you want to save the changed list, leave the
dialog with Save, else use Abort.
Note: if you receive channels that carry multiple networks, e.g. in
Germany "Arte / Kinderkanal", it’s recommended to include all networks’
names in the network name on side of the TV application, separated by a
slash. The slash is recognized as separator by nxtvepg and all
resulting segments can be used as network names.
Context menu configuration
Open the context menu configuration dialog which allows to change the
order of automatically generated menu entries or to extend the popup
menu with user-defined external commands (for a general description of
the context menu see "CONTEXT MENU").
At the top of the dialog window there’s a list of titles of all
currently defined menu items. When you open the dialog for the first
time, you’ll see only pre-defined "pseudo commands" (such as "Add
programme filters".) These don’t show up like that in the context
menu, they just represent menu commands which are automatically
inserted in their place at run-time, depending on the currently
selected programme entries and current filter settings (e.g. to add a
filter for the network of the curently selected programme.)
As usual, you can change the ordering of items in the list by selecting
an item and then clicking the buttons with up/down arrows. To remove
an entry, select it and press Delete. If you make an error you can
leave the dialog with Abort; changes aren’t applied and saved until you
leave the dialog with Ok.
The Add new menu button allows to insert a new menu item below the
currently selected one:
External command
Start an external application with the given command line
parameters. This is equivalent to typing a command into a UNIX
shell or using Run command in the Windows Start menu. Command line
parameters may use variable substitution as described below. To
allow sharing the same nxtvepg configuration file on UNIX and
Windows, there are different types, i.e. UNIX or Windows. Commands
are only included in the context menu if the platform matches the
command type.
The dialog’s entry field labeled Title defines the text which will
be included to the popup menu. The field labeled Command defines
the command line
TV application remote command
Send the given command line to an attached TV application, e.g. to
switch TV channels. Variable substitution can be used here, too.
How the command is sent depends on the TV application; when no TV
app. is connected, such entries are automatically disabled (see
also "CONFIGURATION: TV application interaction") For example
setstation ${network}
would create a command that switches the TV app’s channel to that
of the currently selected programme (i.e. the same what the Tune TV
button does). You should refer to the documentation of your TV app
to see which commands it supports. When no TV application is
connected, such entries are automatically disabled.
Menu title and Menu separator
These can be used to organize the menu contents into groups. In
case of menu titles, the dialog’s entry field labeled Title defines
the text which will be included to the popup menu.
Add/Undo programme filters
This menu entry will be replaced by automatically generated
commands to manipulate filter settings. See "CONTEXT MENU" for
details.
Add/remove reminder
This menu entry will be replaced by automatically generated
commands to manipulate the reminder list. There are two versions of
the entry: if you select the extended version, an additional entry
will be included which allows to select reminder groups (only
useful if you’re using multiple groups, see also "REMINDERS".)
When you press the menu button Add Example a list pops up which
contains a few example commands which can be copied into the title and
command entry fields.
As mentioned above, external commands and TV app. remote commands allow
to include placeholders enclosed in ${} which are replaced by
attributes of the programme selected in the browser listbox at the time
the context menu command is invoked. The following is a list of such
formal variables The meaning of the variables should be
self-explanatory, except possibly for CNI: this is a hexadecimal
network code, and e/p_rating: these are editorial and parental ratings
respectively.
${title}
${network}
${start}
${stop}
${relstart}
${duration}
${CNI}
${description}
${themes}
${VPS} or ${PDC}
${e_rating}
${p_rating}
${sound}
${format}
${digital}
${encrypted}
${live}
${repeat}
${subtitle}
Start and stop time related keywords can optionally be followed by
either a plus or minus sign and a time offset. The offset value is
assumed to be given as minutes. For relstart and duration the
precision can be changed by means of the format (see below.) Example:
to print the start time minus 5 minutes (e.g. to start a recording 5
minutes earlier) use "${start-5:%H:%M}"
The keywords can optionally be followed by a colon and an output format
specification. Options depend on the type of variable substitution:
Start, stop and VPS/PDC times
All options defined in the strftime(3) manpage are available;
default is %H:%M-%d.%m.%Y (hour, minute, day, month, year).
Relative start time and duration
You can choose between minutes (default) and seconds by appending
"m" or "s".
Themes
You can choose between numerical and textual output by appending
"n" or "t".
For all other variables modifiers are currently ignored.
On UNIX the resulting substrings which replace the formal variables are
always enclosed in single quotes, because the command line is passed to
a system shell for execution (/bin/sh, i.e. the Bourne Shell by means
of the system function; see also system man pages sh or bash) and there
are many characters with special meaning. Single quotes inside he
substituted string are correctly escaped.
Example: The command line
plan ${start:%d.%m.%Y %H:%M} ${title}
could for example on UNIX systems result in
plan ’22.08.2001 13:05’ ’Käpt’\’’n Blaubärs Seemannsgarn’
On Windows only single- and double quotes and spaces characters are
escaped with a backslash. Hence the above example would result in:
plan 22.08.2001\ 13:05 Käpt\’n\ Blaubärs\ Seemannsgarn
Note if you want to prevent the backslash inbetween date and time (if
the called program doesn’t understand it), you can simply use two
separate substitutions for date and time. Example:
plan ${start:%d.%m.%Y} ${start:%H:%M} ${title}
Themes language
Select the language for programme themes (i.e. content category, see
"FILTERING") in the main window and the filter menu. By default it’s
set to default, in which case the language is derived from the selected
provider’s database. Please note that the language of the menus, help
etc. currently can not be changed from English.
Show/Hide
Toggle visibility of various components in the main window:
Show shortcuts
Toggle visibility of the shortcut listbox at the left of the
programme list. When you unmap both the shortcuts list and the
network list below, the clock and reset buttons are also unmapped
so that you get only the programme list.
Show networks (left)
Maps or unmaps the network filter listbox below the shortcuts list,
or below the clock if you’ve unmapped the shortcuts list.
Show networks (middle)
Maps or unmaps the network filter listbox between shortcuts listbox
and programme list.
Show layout button
Maps or unmaps the Grid layout checkbutton below the shortcuts or
network list in the main window (see also "CONFIGURATION: List
layout"). If you’re permanently using one or the other layout, you
will probably want to unmap this button. (It’s mainly present to
make users who upgrade from older versions aware of this new
option.)
Show status line
Maps or unmaps the database and acquisition status line at the
bottom of the browser window.
Show column headers
Maps or unmaps the browser listbox column header menubar, i.e. the
row of menu buttons above the programme list in single list layout.
Show weekday scale
Maps or unmaps the weekday scale to the right of the programme
list. (Note you can configure the looks, i.e. font, colors, width
and date format via the resource file "nxtvepg.ad" or ".Xdefaults"
on UNIX, see "FILES")
Hide on minimize
Windows only: When this option is enabled, the main window’s entry
in the task bar is removed when it’s minimized or when the program
is started with the -iconic command line switch. Instead an icon
is added to the system tray in the task bar. A double-click on the
tray icon deiconifies the main window. A click with the right
mouse button opens a little popup menu. The entries in this menu
have the same meaning as the equally named ones in the control menu
(see "CONTROL").
List layout
Select layout of the programme list in the main window:
Single list for all networks
This is the original layout (the only layout until nxtvepg version
2.4) in which all programmes of all networks are presented in a
single list, sorted by start time.
Separate columns for each network
In this layout programmes are still sorted by start time, but
presented in separate columns for each network. Schedules of
different networks are aligned, so that programmes which run at the
same time are approximately at the same height.
You can join several columns in a single column via the Control
menu (meant for networks which share the same channel; use this in
conjunction with air times restriction as described in
"CONFIGURATION: Select networks".) The control menu is part of the
drop-down menu below the button at the top of the column. This
menu also holds commands to increase or decrease the number of
visible columns.
In both layouts you can select which types of attributes are printed
for each programme by clicking on the icon in the button row at the top
of the list (unless column header buttons are hidden.)
FILES
Files used on UNIX systems
$HOME/.nxtvepgrc
Configuration file where all personal settings are stored. Per
default this is created in your home directory, but a different
path and file name can be specified with the -rcfile option (see
"OPTIONS").
/usr/tmp/nxtvdb/nxtvdb-####
Directory containing one file for each provider’s database. The
path can be changed with the -dbdir command line option (see
"OPTIONS"). Note that the path can also be configured during
compilation of the software, so if you downloaded a binary version
of this package the path may be different. The current default
setting can be queried with the -help command line switch.
The last 4 digits of the file names are the hexadecimal CNI
(Country and Network Identifier) of the provider.
/dev/vbi0, /dev/vbi1, etc.
Device files from which Nextview data is being read during
acquisition. The index postfix can be specified with the -card
command line option (see "OPTIONS"). You must have read/write
access to these files; by default this is not the case for many
Linux distributions for security reasons (since you might have
connected a WebCam and mike and someone could spy on you from
remote). However on a single-user system it’s safe to make them
world-readable and writable, i.e. in a root shell enter:
chmod 666 /dev/vbi
Alternatively you can make yourself a member of a group in
/etc/groups which has access to the devices or create such a group.
/dev/video0, /dev/video1, etc.
On Linux kernel series 2.4 and earlier (i.e. before revision #2 of
the video4linux API) these device files are used to select the
input source (e.g. TV tuner or one of the composite or S-Video
sockets) and tuner frequency for VBI reception, unless you choose
the passive acquisition mode. The index postfix can be specified
with the -card command line option. This device must be readable
and writable.
The device is only kept open during a provider search (see
"CONFIGURATION: Provider scan"). Else, it’s just opened shortly to
set the input source and tuner frequency. If the device is busy
(e.g. while you watch TV), acquisition starts on the currently
selected channel and automatically follows any externally
controlled changes (this will be reported, e.g. in the status line
at the bottom of the browser window, as forced passive acquisition
mode, see "STATISTICS: Status line").
Note: it’s mandatory that the video device has the same index as
the VBI device. If you have a video device at index 0 which does
not support teletext (a webcam, for example) the VBI device
belonging to video device #1 may appear at index 0. You should
force the driver to assign device index #1 to the VBI index. On
Linux this is possible by using insmod parameters in
/etc/modules.conf, e.g. for bttv:
options bttv video_nr=1 vbi_nr=1
/dev/v4l/vbi0, /dev/v4l/video0
If you have enabled devfs in your Linux kernel, the VBI and video
devices will appear in a subdirectory. nxtvepg automatically
detects the existance of this directory and will search the devices
there instead of the regular paths.
/tmp/.vbi0.pid, /tmp/.vbi1.pid, etc.
This file contains the process id of the Nextview decoder (or the
acquisition slave process unless threading is used) whenever a vbi
device is kept open. The process can be forced to free the device
by sending it signal SIGHUP, e.g. from a wrapper script around a
teletext decoder. An example which works with sh, bash or tcsh:
kill -HUP ‘cat /tmp/.vbi0.pid‘
Note that the daemon is not kept alive when acquisition is
disabled, so that sending HUP equals sending TERM. You can restart
acquisition by starting a new daemon. The browser attempts to
reconnect every 10 seconds when the connection was broken, but you
can also trigger an immediate reconnect be signalling it a HUP.
To restart acquisition in non-daemon mode, signal again with HUP,
either to the acquisition slave process or the browser process.
/tmp/nxtvepg.0
This non-regular file (socket) is created by the daemon to allow
local client connections via UNIX domain sockets. The same socket
can be used for more than one client connection. It’s deleted when
the daemon terminates (unless the daemon crashes or receives an
uncatchable signal like the infamous signal 9 aka KILL). See also
"CONTROL: Connect to acq. daemon".
$HOME/.xawtv
This file belongs to the TV viewer xawtv. It’s not required or
created by nxtvepg. But if it exists, it will be used in the EPG
scan (for a fast scan mode where only the channels defined in this
file will be checked) and in the network name configuration dialog.
See also "CONFIGURATION: TV application interaction".
$HOME/.Xdefaults
This file is usually loaded into the X server at startup (or during
login) by use of the xrdb command. It contains a series of
parameter assignments called X resource definitions for any number
of applications. Note: depending on your X11 startup scripts this
file may have a different name, e.g. .Xresources. The file could
be used to change the "look" of almost every element in every
dialog window (within limits, because some options are hard-coded)
or the look of entire widget classes, like menus or buttons.
However that’s highly implementation dependent and generally not
very useful, hence depreciated.
Defaults for all officially supported options are listed in the so-
called "app-defaults" file Nxtvepg.ad which is usually installed in
/usr/X11/lib/X11/app-defaults (the .ad extension is omitted during
installation.) You should not change values there however, because
they would be overwritten when you install new versions. Instead
copy changed lines into your .Xdefaults file (without the leading
comment ! sign.) Note you have to restart nxtvepg for changes to
take effect. When X11 is already running you can override
individual settings with xrdb like this:
echo "nxtvepg*text_bg: #E9E9EC" │ xrdb -merge
Color values can specified either symbolically (e.g. "red") or as
hexadecimal RGB values in #RRGGBB format. A special case are the 7
colors for weekday background colors in the main window’s date
scale: it’s resource value consists of a comma separated list of 7
colors.
Fonts must be specified as triplets of family, size (use negative
values to specify the size in pixels and positive values for sizes
given in points) and appearance (only "normal" or "bold" are
recommended). Lines starting with a ! sign are treated as comment
and hence ignored. Entries that do not adhere to this syntax are
silently discarded.
Files used on Windows systems
nxtvepg.ini
Configuration file where all configuration and personal preference
settings are stored. By default this is created in the working
directory, but a different path and file name can be specified with
the -rcfile option (see "OPTIONS").
Nxtvepg.ad
Allows to change the application’s appearance, i.e. colors and text
fonts. The format and content of the file is identical to the
.Xdefaults file described in the UNIX section.
nxtv____.epg
One file for each provider’s database is created in the working
directory or the one given with the -dbdir command line option (see
"OPTIONS"). The last 4 digits of the file base names are the
hexadecimal CNI (Country and Network Identifier) of the provider.
You must not change the name of this file, or nxtvepg will refuse
to load the database.
vbi_map.dat
This hidden file is used to set up shared memory to allow
information exchange between nxtvepg and an attached TV
application. It’s automatically removed when nxtvepg terminates
and should never be accessed (i.e. being written to or removed) by
external applications. The file is not created when TV app.
interaction is disabled (see "CONFIGURATION: TV application
interaction").
SEE ALSO
For in-depth information about Nextview please refer to the
specifications ETS 300 707 (data structures and basic principles), ETS
300 708 (transmission protocol) and ETR 288 (code of practice). These
specs are available from http://www.etsi.org/
You can also have Nextview directly inside your television set - check
out the catalogues of Grundig, Loewe, Metz, Sony, Philips, Thompson,
Telefunken or Quelle Universum. However be aware that not all models do
support the same set of Nextview features.
KNOWN BUGS
Under Windows there’s a risk of system crash ("blue screen") when the
application is terminated by force, e.g. via the task manager. This is
unavoidable because in this case there’s no chance to stop the driver
and hence the TV card continues to capure data into RAM. In normal
operation this should be very unlikely because all software exceptions
(e.g. page faults) and shutdown messages are caught and the driver then
stopped before the exit.
REPORTING BUGS
Feel free to mail any bug reports to me, but please make sure that (a)
you have the latest version of this software, (b) it’s not already in
the TODO file and (c) it’s not just an error in your provider’s EPG
transmission. And note that I’ve got no telepathic capabilities, so
please be comprehensive in describing your problem. See the README file
for instructions on which information must be included in a bug report.
AUTHOR
Th. "Tom" Zoerner, Nuremberg, Germany.
Best way to provide feedback is via the discussion forum at the nxtvepg
homepage, but you can also contact me personally via email: "tomzo (at)
users (dot) sourceforge (dot) net"
Many thanks to Thierry Ménétrier and Peter Rolf for their valuable
feedback and suggestions; to Simon Barner for the FreeBSD port; to
Matthieu for the French translation of PDC theme descriptors; to E-nek
for the DScaler driver port and cooperation in develepment of the TV
application interaction; to John Adcock for the DScaler driver; to Jan
Schuster for beta testing nxtvepg 0.7.0; to Mario Kemper for the NetBSD
port and early beta testing; to "Mario’s brother" for beta testing the
first Windows port; to Gerd Knorr for xawtv and maintaining the Debian
and SuSE nxtvepg packages; to Ralph Metzler for his teletext decoder;
to Edgar Toernig for the Latin-1 conversion tables in alevt; and last
but not least to the authors of bttv and v4l for their excellent work,
and the authors of the Cygwin GNU and XFree86 port, without which
nxtvepg would never have been ported to M$ Windows.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1999 - 2004 by Th. Zoerner. All rights reserved.
Additional copyrights apply to portions of the code herein. Please see
file COPYRIGHT and source file headers for details.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2 as
published by the Free Software Foundation, e.g. at http://www.fsf.org/
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the file
COPYRIGHT for more details.