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Server plugin: 0.5.1
MVP dongle: 0.5.2
Raspberry Pi client: 0.5.2
Windows client: 0.5.2-1

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Topics - Chris

#41
Announcements / Version 0.2.0 released
February 26, 2006, 21:10:35
VOMP has now hit version 0.2. This comes mostly because of the addition of the Bootp and TFTP servers which will hopefully reduce dependency on other systems to get vomp running and make it easier to setup a vomp installation. So, here goes with the list of changes:

New features:
Bootp server built in (for telling the MVP where its boot file is - and soon it will be able to allocate an IP from scratch)
Tftpd server built in (for transferring the dongle to the MVP)
Server names in discovery broadcasts - Servers now return their names to the MVP for the "Choose a VDR server" dialog
Timers list - you can now view the list of programme timers in VDR
View timer - this isn't really finished yet, but you can view more details about a specific timer
Set timer from EPG - you can insert a timer to VDR directly from the vomp EPG
New option in the client for different packet sizes on the network. This will hopefully make operation smoother on different network types

Bug fixes:
Font accent display problem fixed
>| goes to bottom of non-page-full list (rather than doing what it did before)
Zero length timers list bug fix (only noticable if you have been using CVS versions)
Zero length recording playback segfault fixed
Failure of UDP replier to start in plugin no longer causes 100% cpu usage and VDR crash
Hungarian language fixes

Thanks to all contributors, here's hoping this is a better and more bug free version than the last.
#42
VOMP General / MVP / Issues for next release
February 21, 2006, 22:51:59
It's been a while since the last release, it's been a while since I could remember what I am supposed to be doing / would like to do for the next one. If you have posted here or emailed me about something you want doing to VOMP could you please make sure it is in the SourceForge bugs / request for features system - I try to use that as my definitive list of stuff-to-do. Thanks!

And to keep you updated, stuff that is already done for the next release:
BOOTP/TFTP support built in
Server names rather than IPs in "choose a VDR server" if you have multiple
A font problem with displaying accents is fixed
Timers list and view timer

Stuff I want to include:
Set timer from EPG
A choice of large or small network packets (make it work on lans and wlans ?)
Some other things I have forgotten (see above!)

Then for the release after that:
OSDs on recordings thanks to recent works with MPEG timecodes
Maybe include a TS demuxer in the client to speed up live tv and simplify the vdr plugin
#43
VOMP General / MVP / Dongle creation guide
January 24, 2006, 00:38:51
I have added a guide to the web site about how to make dongles (finally). It is totally untested at the moment, would somebody volunteer to test it? I will fix whatever I can and add bits to it until the guide works.

You can find it under the link to make a normal development environment on the vomp page.
#44
VOMP General / MVP / Ok, I give up
January 20, 2006, 17:36:27
Ok, I give up. I now use VDR 1.3 :) VDR 1.3.39, vdradmin 0.97-am3.4.2 + patch for VDR 1.3.38+ to be exact. I had to change it since I got another tuner card and 1.2 crashed all the time. (Anyone seen a reason for this in the vdr history file?)

So unless VDR 1.3 crashes on me, 1.2 is no more. (I'll still support it in vomp for now).
#45
VOMP General / MVP / Drop support for VDR 1.2 ??
January 05, 2006, 19:43:38
Does anyone other than me still use VDR 1.2 and if so, why?

My reason is that I tried VDR 1.3 a couple of times and it wasn't too successful and I haven't done anything about it since. I don't use the VDR frontend so there is no impetus to change.

Ayes and nays for dropping support for VDR 1.2 ?
#46
Announcements / Dongle 0.1.1 posted
December 21, 2005, 15:40:18
New feature: Press the TV button on new remotes, full button on old remotes to switch between 4:3 chop sides and 4:3 letterbox modes
New feature: The last viewed channel is highlighted when returning to the channels list

Bug fix: If volume is at 100% but muted, pressing volume up now correctly unmutes
Bug fix: Pausing a recording then pressing a number confused the software. Fixed now

No server plugin update required over 0.1.

Merry Christmas!
#47
Announcements / Version 0.1.0 released
December 17, 2005, 19:04:59
I cleaned up a few bugs with 0.0.17 and I have finally made a 0.1 release. There are now files on the SourceForge project site to show for all this work!

So, changes between 0.0.17 and 0.1.0:

German translation fixes
Fixed standby from main menu
Fixed a problem where the SCART active signal was not released on standby
If muted and volume controls are used, it unmutes
The highlight bar stays where it should when navigating the recordings lists now
Fixed a problem where the numbers in a recording list didn't update after deleting a recording
More code cleanup to do with messages being passed around the program

The server plugin has not changed.
#48
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.17 posted
December 13, 2005, 22:04:11
Ok, there are quite a few changes in this release, as I am swiftly heading towards 0.1 :)

Here goes, in no particular order:

Full screen EPG for live TV (by Brian Walton, thanks!)
Play button in recording list now does resume not play
Channel hopping with the banner displayed now works as expected
Fixed a crash when changing channel with new remote and live banner displayed
Channel numbers and clock displayed on live banner
New remote previous channel button implemented
Typing in a channel number to change channel does as expected now: It has a timer and you don't have to type leading zeros or all three digits
The play button already resyncs live TV one way, now the pause button attempts to resync live TV the other way. (Just try them if it's out of sync!)
Config files are now saved under the name of the MAC address of the MVP. If you don't manually rename your config file, you will lose your settings...
Read volume data from chip on startup - for developers really, the vompclient software will be in sync with the audio level of the last program run
Can override video format mode NTSC or PAL in config file. To do this you must manually add "Override Video Format" under the section "General". The value can be either "NTSC" or "PAL". Use with caution!! I believe most PAL equipment can handle NTSC signals but the other way around I am not so sure.

Plus many code changes under the surface. Timed events has allowed the channel selector to work properly and the two clocks to move, and should allow things like animations in future. All the GUI backend code rewrites over the last few versions are still rippling through the rest of the code making it faster/better/more sane.

This should be the last version before 0.1, I suppose you could call it a release candidate for 0.1.

Have fun!

P.S. I forgot to mention that you do need to update your server plugin for this release.
#49
VOMP General / MVP / Sample NTSC .vdr file please?
December 12, 2005, 18:27:47
Could someone in NTSC-land please record about a minute of NTSC video and send it to me please? I need some video so I can re-size the new EPG for NTSC. I need the .vdr file of it so that I can play it as normal using VOMP. Anyone willing please reply and I will send you a FTP username and password to send it to. Thanks very much!
#50
VOMP General / MVP / Translation Efforts
November 12, 2005, 17:35:40
I am creating this thread to keep all discussions on translation efforts in. Also, since SourceForge anonymous CVS updates are slow, I am posting the current language-data.h file here too. When a new language is added I will post the file here and when I need more translations of individual terms that can go in this thread too. If you add a translation to the file you can post it here (tested or not, but say which so someone can test it before someone else adds more to it.)

So attached is the current language-data.h file, it has English, German and Swedish so far.

Edit: Please always see the end of this thread for the latest language-data.h file. Don't download the early ones any more!
#51
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.16 posted
November 10, 2005, 22:36:08
Ok, so I havn't done as much to this as I wanted, but I have to go away for work again, so here is it so far.

Changes...

1. TCP receive buffer now hard coded to 2KB in the client. Hopefully this will fix streaming problems for 10Mb networks and it does smooth over things on 100Mb too.
2. Internationalisation support by Dave Pickles added.
3. Already (before I even told anyone I had included internationalisation support) I have had a German translation sent to me by André Jagusch. Thanks! And my apologies to all others who have been waiting to provide German translations. You have been pipped to the post, as they say! :)
4. The options screen now only applies changes if there have been any. This makes it faster and smoother.
5. Major under-the-bonnet GUI rewrite almost finished, the current GUI is even faster than before and now has the potential for much greater things. This is where I wanted to do more work, but time denies. (Self updating clocks are on the way, for instance! Woo!)

So, a note about languages. If you want to add your language to VOMP then download the client from CVS in the same way that you get the server plugin. Look for a file called language-data.h, follow the instructions in there.  It would be best if you could compile it and test it yourself, but I realise that very few people will have all the cross compiler environment set up. It would also be best if only one person edited the language-data.h file at a time, and then I don't end up with 3 different language-data.h files to merge, but I have no idea how we can coordinate that. Post to the forums if you want to add a language?

I have left version 15 on the web site just in case this one is not stable, though it seems to be ok in my testing.
#52
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.15 posted
October 29, 2005, 22:49:23
After a bit of a break in development due to a works trip, dongle 0.0.15 is now available.

You will need to update your vompserver plugin for this dongle.

Radio stations should now work.
Code cleanup work from Dave for the options screen has been applied, thanks Dave!

And...

Important!!

I have added a testing option to the options screen. You can set the priority value used in the plugin for live TV. I don't know exactly how this will interact with fully featured cards, if you don't have a problem with not being able to watch live TV on the mvp then leave this at 0 and it is safe.

If you do get channel unavailable on all channels with vomp (and this is nothing to do with the 10Mb issue!) then you can try setting this to a higher priority. I have tried this myself by successfully interrupting recordings with a lower priority. Now here's the very important bit... Interrupting a recording currently causes VDR to shut down because the recorder object in VDR gets no data, assumes everything is broken and shuts the whole thing down. If you set the priority value in vomp to higher than a recording and then change channel such that there could be no DVB card supplying signal to the recording, it will interrupt that recording and crash VDR. So be very careful when testing this option. What I need to know is what happens when there are no recordings going on and you successfully steal the DVB card from whatever VDR is doing. Does that crash vdr? Does it work for 30 seconds? Does it work at all? What priority value works?

I think I know how to fix the crash when interrupting a recording, it is just necessary to go through all the current recorder objects and stop the ones that will have no signal anymore. But I have left it as it is now because I get the feeling that fixing the vomp problem won't actually need any tinkering with stopping other recording objects. Doing that is probably not what is wanted. So, reports on how well it works, and what you want to happen to your recordings if you select live TV in vomp please!
#53
VOMP General / MVP / German
October 26, 2005, 23:31:13
There is another topic in here that switched into German by the second post. I think I should just say that I don't mind this, but just don't expect me to monitor threads that  go into German, as I can't read it. :)
#54
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.14 posted
October 02, 2005, 15:48:43
This version is only worth downloading over 0.0.13 if you have multiple VDR servers.

A segfault is fixed if the program tries to display the "select a server" box.

A segfault is fixed if you press ctrl-c on a console when running vompclient -d when the "select a server" box is displayed.

Also, experimentally for this version the program will now daemonize if not running with -d. This allows the init scripts to complete which gets rid of a task or two. I don't think this should make any difference to the operation of the client though.
#55
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.13 posted
October 01, 2005, 15:50:43
Slow in the making, but hopefully good quality :)

Dongle 13 is now available. The automatic RGB / composite scart switching that I broke in dongle 12 is fixed.
A segfault when going to standby if no server was found is fixed.
A segfault when deleting the last recording in a directory is fixed.
#56
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.12 posted
September 18, 2005, 23:58:01
The software will no longer switch the aspect line if the TV is a 4:3.
16:9 on 4:3 letterbox done

And many many internal changes. If you see any weird happenings with the menus or any on screen display stuff, please let me know how you did it.
#57
VOMP General / MVP / VDR memory usage
September 16, 2005, 21:19:57
I appreciate a VDR board might be a better place for this, but I'm a bit stuck for time so I'll just pick your brains instead!

My VDR has been running for a couple of weeks now, and the top command reports that the VIRT memory size is about 2GB. On switching a few more fields on in top, it seems this is coming from swap space. Now I don't have 2GB of memory in any form, I have 512MB real memory and 512MB swap. According to the free command, I am using 109MB for programs for the whole box, and only 84k swap space is in use.

So, obviously something is messing with the memory reporting. I just wondered if anyone else has seen this problem, and/or seen any solutions on any other boards about it.

Oh, this is VDR 1.2.6 by the way. And I only spotted this problem because I have been writing a C++ w/STL program for work which is doing the same thing. Both VDR and this program are written in C++ using STL. Hmmmm, a clue?!
#58
VOMP General / MVP / Widescreen v2, does it work now?
September 10, 2005, 20:21:12
Dongle 0.0.11 is my second attempt at widescreen support. (Not having a widescreen TV myself makes the process slightly more tricky.) Please refer to the other poll post to see what should work and what shouldn't. So, is it better now?
#59
Announcements / Dongle 0.0.11 posted
September 10, 2005, 17:45:01
Another go at widescreen. I think it should work this time, and should also always fill the screen with the menus too.
#60
VOMP General / MVP / Widescreen
September 07, 2005, 21:55:01
Normal is 4:3
Widescreen is 16:9

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

The new widescreen support is supposed to enable:

Viewing a 16:9 programme on a 16:9 TV
Viewing a 4:3 programme on a 16:9 TV

An extra complication when the TV is 16:9 format is that the TV needs to know the aspect ratio of the incoming picture in order to stretch / squash / display it properly. For correctness, the TV should be informed the aspect ratio and do the following: When the picture is in 16:9 format the TV correctly displays all the picture over all the screen. When the picture is in 4:3 mode the TV should display black bars at left and right of the picture, the 4:3 picture will be in its correct aspect ratio in the middle of the screen. (I realise most people will then get their TV to strech/zoom a 4:3 picture to fit, but that is not relevant here. The aspect ratio information still has to be present even for that to work properly). On SCART TVs a SCART control line can be used to tell the TV the incoming aspect ratio. This poll is basically, does this work?

Also, to any American users (Hoochster!).. How is this widescreen switching done for you? As far as I know there is no system of sending control signals through composite signals, S-Video signals, or seperate RGB cable signals.

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

The new widescreen support has nothing to do with:

Viewing a 16:9 programme on a 4:3 TV

Viewing a 4:3 programme on a 4:3 TV has always worked. Viewing a 16:9 programme on a 4:3 TV -- currently the sides are chopped off and the middle of the picture is drawn on all of the TV screen. The other way to do this is to letterbox the picture with black bars at top and bottom. Unfortunately, while the MVP will letterbox a picture, it then draws the picture at the top of the screen with all the black bars at the bottom. If anyone fancies playing with ioctls etc to try to guess-fix this, be my guest.