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This document explains how to populate the Windows Media Center guide with the channels from any DVBLink source.

Targeted products

This document is valid for the following products:

• DVBLing for Hauppage HDPVR 3.X and later
• DVBLink for DVBDream 2.X and later
• DVBLink for USB HDDVR 1.0B2 (to be confirmed) and later
• DVBLink for ATSC&QAM 1.X and later

Get ready

1. Open the DVBLink Configuration dialog.
2. Select the low tab Server Configuration

Select channels from your source

When a source expose a channel, you must manually select that channel to appear in the Media Center guide. The following instructions explains how to select which source’s channels will appear in the Media Center guide.

1. Select the Channel selection tab.
2. Expand the channels under your source name. In the following screen-shot, my source name is USB HDDVR.
3. Import channel(s)
   1. To import a single channel: Select the channel name from the expanded list and click on the green arrow.
   2. To import all channels: Select the channels’ parent node and click on the green arrow.

Selected EPG sources for the imported channels

For you channels to display the right guide show listing (aka Electronic Program Guide or EPG) you must configure each of them with the right Guide Service source. You can configure them in batch or individually.

1. Open the EPG sources tab.
2. On the right pane, select MC Guide Services as your EPG source.
3. Select your provider lineup name.
4. Set EPG source
   • Batch: If your imported channels names are identical to the names in the right list, click Set EPG source using channel name.
   • Individually: You can select specify a channel’s EPG source by selection the channel in the imported channel list and double-clicking on the EPG source.

Add your imported channels to the Media Center guide (synchronize)

Once you have selected the channels to appear in the Media Center guide, you must update (synchronize) the Media Center guide to get these channels.

1. Open Windows Media Center.
2. From the main screen, navigate to the Extras menu and open the extras library.
   
3. Open the DVBLink Channel Configuration program.
   
4. Select Synchronize Channels.
   Note: Older version of the DVBLink Server can popup a dialog showing additional task. If this is your case, you should just skip all this step and click Finish. Alternatively, you could update your DVBLink Server to the latest version.
   
5. A dialog should appear containing the operation result. This screen-shot shows that I had added 1 channel and deleted 1 channel.
   

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Here is a new version, 2.0 beta 1, that fixes problems with the multi-HD DVR. The version was promoted to “beta” because of its stability.

download: DVBLink for AVerMedia HD DVR 2.0 Beta 1 (1.87MB) added: 03/06/2010 description: 2.0 Beta 1

DVBLink for AVerMedia USB HD DVR is a spin-off the the popular “DVBLink for HDPVR“, that allows the integration of the AVerMedia AVerTV USB HD DVR device into Windows Media Center.

This is an alpha version, mainly because everything is not fully polished yet. Here are the things to know:

• Video Encoding is forced to CBR (Constant Bitrate)
• Video bitrate is forced to the maximum allowed, 20000 Kbps
• Audio bitrate is forced to the maximum allowed, 384 Kbps
• Integrated IR Blaster is not supported yet, though you can use a compatible MCE IR Blaster

Other than that, everything seems to work fine. I encourage any owners of HD DVRs to try this out and comment on the forum.

This is fully compatible with other “DVBLink for XXX” installed products. You can have an AVerMedia HD DVR and Hauppauge HD PVR working side by side on the same system.

For installation, follow the “DVBLink for HDPVR” steps.

download: DVBLink for AVerMedia HD DVR 2.0 Alpha 1 (1.87MB) added: 15/05/2010 description:

Hooks are ways to customize your installation. They are scripts that you have to write, which will be called automatically when certain events occur.

The entry-point script HAS to be a “Windows DOS” script. But, within this first script you can call any software you like, may it be other scripts (Perl, PowerShell, etc.) or 3rd party software).

Notes:

• Sample hooks are supplied with the software. You can start from them to build your own customizations.
• Your customized hook files HAVE to be located in your \Data\<yoursource>\hooks\ folder to be found and lunched by the software.
• If the software finds a hook with the right name at the right location, it launches it automatically. No need to enable anything special (except for the change-channel.cmd hook).
• You can enable verbose logging of DVBLink for HDPVR to get additional hook debugging information in your output.log file.

Development Notes:

• It is highly recommended to test/dry-run and debug your customized hooks manually. Just open a Command window and change the directory to your hooks location and call them from the Command Prompt.
• To have a re-producible environment, your hooks should always start by changing the Current Directory to a known location. For instance, the supplied sample hooks set the Current Directory to the folder where the hook file is located (pushd %~dp0)
• It is important not to stall the DVBLink thread that calls the hook for too long. The software implements an internal timer and will kill your script if it stalls for too long. Your software and or script may then be left in an undetermined state.

The hooks:

• change-channel.cmd
  • This hook is used to customize your channel changing technique at your will.
  • The hook has to be enabled in the Source Properties, in the Blaster Configuration tab. If enable but not found, an error will be logged. If not enable, it will not be called.
  • The hook has 5 seconds to complete, after which it will be terminated.
  • The hook is called with the first parameter being the channel to switch to. The channel has no leading zeros, no enter key, no prefix key. The sub-channel separator digit is a dot (.). Examples:
    • change-channel 55.1
    • change-channel 700
    • change-channel 2
    • change-channel 1802
• on-idle.cmd
  • This hook is called before entering idle mode and when exiting it.
  • The hook is called automatically if found.
  • The hook has 5 seconds to complete, after which it will be terminated.
  • The hook is called with the first parameter being either 0 or 1. 1 when entering idle mode. 0 when exiting idle mode. Examples:
    • on-idle 1
    • on-idle 0
• on-standby.cmd
  • This hook is called before the computer is put in standby/sleep and when the computer resumes from standby/sleep.
  • The hook is called automatically if found.
  • The hook has 5 seconds to complete, after which it will be terminated.
  • The hook is called with the first parameter being either 0 or 1. 1 when entering standby. 0 when resuming. Examples:
    • on-standby 1
    • on-standby 0
• on-device-error-power-cycle.cmd
  • This hook is called when the devices has crashed beyond recovery and needs to be power cycled. The hook triggering condition is VERY SPECIFIC; only a specific crash will fire this hook. You will not be able to reproduce the conditions manually to have it triggered, other than having the specific crash (issued ERRORABORT error messages in output.log)
  • The hook is called automatically if found.
  • The hook has 30 seconds to complete, after which it will be terminated.
  • No parameters are passed-on to this hook.

Here is the summary of the various location used and where you can find your files

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Data\<yoursource>\Config.xml contains your configuration settings for the DVBLink source, and also for the MceIR blasting parameters.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Data\<yoursource>\output.log contains the error and warning log messages.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Data\<yoursource>\IR\*.IR is where are stored the learned IR code files. Your Config.xml file should point to these files.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Data\<yoursource>\hooks\*.cmd is where are fetched the hook files.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Sources\<yoursource>\ is where DVBLink runs the software for your specific source. This is where you would need to manually replace executable files when doing various testings with files downloaded from the forum.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Templates\HDPVR\ is the installation folder of DVBLink for Hauppauge HDPVR software. When a source is created this folder is integrally copied into the \Sources\<yoursource> folder.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Templates\HDDVR\ is the installation folder of DVBLink for AVerMedia USB HD DVR software. When a source is created this folder is integrally copied into the \Sources\<yoursource> folder.

• %ProgramFiles%\DVBLogic\DVBLink\Templates\<product>\hooks\*.cmd is where templates and examples for the hooks are located.

When trying to learn a remote’s key, MceIr.exe (or MceIrLearner.exe) can sometime crash the PC (BSOD) or just causes strange error behavior.

The workaround: instead of pressing and holding the key to learn, press and release the key rapidly and repeat the operation slowly (once a second or two).

Most Set-Top-boxes (STB) includes an option to up-convert any content to 1080i or 720p over component cables. Enabling this feature will make the STB always send HD content to the acquisition device, even for SD channels.

To change this behavior, verify your STB configuration using your STB user manual.

DVBLink for Hauppauge HD PVR

It’s possible to verify the output format of your STB using the HDPVR by following these steps:

1. Open the Source Configuration dialog, but do not stop the server when asked
2. Select your HDPVR source from the tree and click Properties to open the HDPVR Source properties dialog
3. From the HDPVR Setup tab, click Device Properties

The Source Resolution field should display the resolution as received from the STB.

DVBLink for AVerMedia USB HD DVR

It’s possible to verify the output format of your STB by following these steps:

1. Open the output.log of your source
2. Look for a message “Detected Input Format”

Unfortunately, all discontinued linksys extenders (DMA2100 and DMA2200) are lacking h.264 video support.

Because the Hauppauge HDPVR and AVerMedia USB HD DVR can only outputs h.264 video content, the linksys are unable render any video received from HDPVRs.

Unless linksys decides to release a firmware update, these devices owners should avoid buying linksys extenders.

The software ships with a loose set of channel changing timing parameters that suits best for a wide range of setups out there. The reasons for these default values are that:

• Many set-top-box exists, some slower than others
• Many channel changing methods are available, some slower that others

The good news is that you can optimize these settings for your own setup. You can experiment and tune the parameters listed under Advanced Settings in Source Properties window. The default values are tuned for the use of the device nternal IR Blaster and a more or less slow set-top-box:

• Channel Change Stream Discard Duration set to 2000 by default
• Channel Change Stream Stable Duration set to 3000 by default

A first start is trying to cut these values half way:

• Channel Change Stream Discard Duration to 1 second (1000).
• Channel Change Stream Stable Duration to 1.5 seconds (1500).

Then see how your channel changing behaves over many channel changes and over time. Wrongly tune values would cause the following behaviors:

• video/audio glitching during channel change
• lost of “TV signal” during channel change
• failure to change channel

Note that you cannot diminish Channel Change Stream Discard Duration too much, since we have to discard all the packets from the channel we are changing from until we start receiving packets on the channel we are changing to.

For more advanced details about the impacts of those timing parameters, please refer to the documentation included in Config.xml.

Note: The DVBLink server must be restarted for these parameters to take effect.

EPG background scanning in DVBLink is a mechanism through which EPG data (guide information) can be retrieved from a source (read HDPVR, HDDVR, DVBDream, etc.) and sent over to Windows Media Center for addition into its Guide.

Windows Media Center still fetches its own Guide data through its regular provider. The EPG data received from DVBLink tuners only complements Windows Media Center existing Guide data.

A DVBLink source typically has two ways of producing EPG data:

• First is from an XMLTV file, which the source reads and feeds.
• Second is directly from the HD feed. For instance, satellite signals do broadcasts some EPG data.

The “background scanning” term comes from the fact that DVBLink does tunes/scans the channels one by one to retrieve the relevant Guide data for each channel. It does that in the background, obviously while you are not using the DVBLink tuners.

For DVBLink for Hauppauge HDPVR and DVBLink for AVerMedia USB HD DVRusers, there is no additional EPG data received from the device since the HD feed comes from the Analog Hole.

For DVBLink for DVBDream users, the satellite EPG data gets through DVB Dream down do DVBLink. This is typically a “short term” guide data that lists a few days of data and also that lists the Pay per view listings. It may be usefull for some users.

However, some channels distributed by TV Companies may not have guide data available in Windows Media Center. To get the guide data for these channels, you need to find an XMLTV data supplier and properly configure the EPG scanning and XMLTV and voilà, you will have the Guide data in Media Center for those channels.

The vast majority of users won’t need to go through this. In fact, if you find that all your channels in Media Center have  Guide data you won’t/don’t need this “EPG Background Scanning”.

We recommend to disable “EPG Background Scanning” for DVBLink for Hauppauge HDPVR users.