[linux-dvb] Re: KaxTV : feedback needed

[Christophe <hftom@free.fr>]

Le Mardi 13 Avril 2004 17:18, Prakash K. Cheemplavam a écrit :

> So scanning works fine. (Do you also get only about 23% strength? At
> least I have about 70% snr). Though scaning is not slower than the
> stand-alone recevers I have it is rel slow compared to "MyTheatre",
> which is a windows app originally written for my dvb card. I dunno
> whether it is linux driver or kaxtv taking so long. I think time
> intensive task usually is "reading pmt".

Here, i get about 55-70 signal and 65-85 snr. Could you test with dvbstream ?
Well, i don't know what exactly you mean by slow. Here scanning hotbird takes 
about 3min20'' for 41 transponders (giving 470 tv and 260 ra).

> What sucks hard is the way of adding channels: I had to manually select
> a single channel every time and add it. Multiple selectioning wasn't
> possible.

Yes, I should definitely add multiselection :)

> Furtermore I probably was to dumb to use filters. Must they be
> ticked prior to scanning?

No

> After scanning it didn't seem to work.

Don't understand why :(
could you retry with different combinations ? ( you may want to backup your 
~/kaxtv/channels.kax first )

> One problem with channel names: Though in console they look ok, about
> the first two dozen names contain a lot of squares in the names. Like
> Premie_re_Start or alike (_ reprrsents a square) or _S_uper_ RTL_, etc.

will have a look...

> Channel switching is nice. First it was damn fast, then after a crash
> (see down) it was a bit slower, but still OK.

switching speed depends on tuning speed and xine prebuffering

> Timeshifting works nicely (in contrast to xine's one) except the loop
> problem you hinted at. BUT I tried to switch a channel while watching
> time shifted channel and then it hang. Without using timeshifting this
> didn't happen.

Does it happen every time ? it works here. What if you press the stop button 
before switching ?

> OSD works nicely. So it only crashes if xine dvb engine is started via
> kaffeine's menu entry.
>
> EPG works, as well. More EPG highly apreciated. :-)

right click on a row to get a popup :)
(be aware that, if you can add timers from this popup, they will just pop a 
dialog saying "want to start" :) , at that time recording is not yet 
implemented since i want first to concentrate on scan, live and timeshift)

> > kaxtv doesn't use the xine dvb plugin(i may disable it). you have first
> > to add channels (or better scan) by clicking on the "channels" button to
> > get your channels in the dvbpanel's listbox. (channels.kax will be stored
> > in ~/.kaxtv) then double click on one.
>
> Yes I found it out. As I stated above, in my first test I started xine's
> dvb engine by choosing the menu entry.
>
> > while the device is used by xine dvb plugin, kaxtv can't open it, so
> > can't get card info.
>
> Ok, a better error message would be nice. ;-)

surely :)

> So all in all, a very promising 0.1 release. I am looking forward to
> testing next release.
>
> If I may add some suggestions (for later versions):

always welcome

> - enable a permament customizable timeshift ram buffer, so you can go
> back a few minutes while live watching w/o having priorly pressed pause
> (todays machine have lots of RAM, so giving some 100MB for buffer will
> have a nice purpose then)

ouhhh, should not be easy .... will put on the bottom todo !!

> - different colouring/icons (probably I just haven't seen them because I
> didn't do make install, so my fault :-) for encrypted/fta channels,
> tv/radio services and method of adding channels as such.

You should really install ! :) or at list copy icons (found in 
kaxtv-0.1/kaxtv) manually to $(kde_icondir)/hicolor/16x16/apps/ (must be 
renamed to : kdvbtv.png, kdvbtvc.png, kdvbra.png and kdvbrac.png)
the logo.png goes to $(kde_datadir)/kaxtv/logo.png

> - make ac3 output available (playing and recording, I dunno how to
> record or even selct ac3 soundtrack in xine, at least never worked for me)

I have no ac3 channel, so can't test. xine does play ac3 (dvd), but i don't 
know from a pipe. If you have a channel with ac3, it should be detected by 
scanning and then you can try to switch audio by selecting it in the audio 
combobox.

> - perhaps make channel change possible with one click and keyboard (if
> not already there, at least I dunno which keys to press to switch channels)

well, i've not documented that cause it's no complete, but you can use keypap 
to switch. when you press a numkey, a little box appears on top-left video 
and you have 1s to enter another(if needed). kaxtv will then switch to "n'th" 
channel in the list. ( not really powerfull, but i'll later add channel 
numbering )

> I haven't tried the recording button, but I guess it works fine for
> m2v+mp2.

i've never tried :) That's not the way i intend to do recording. later, you 
will have some new buttons on the dvbpanel for instant recording in either 
ts, mpeg_pes or mpeg_ps. (the code is already there, taken from mpegtools and 
well tested in a little recording app i wrote, but i want first to ...see 
upper) I'm also trying to integrate metzlerbros->replex but seems to be a 
hard work ! (could be nice to record to vob, ready for dvdauthor !! :)

> Really nice work, so far! I can't wait to get e new version into my
> hands. So I gotta bug the kaffeine devs to debug the shut-down crash
> which happens in my case. :-) Maybe in the meantime I'll try to hack out
> an ebuild for my usage...

> Prakash

thanx a lot :)

-- 
Christophe


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