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[fabien44]

Hello,

i use DVB-T Tuners (Terratec USB) link to a dvblink server tv source. DVBLink maps the physical tuners to virtual tuners.
I can see them in the TV settings area but i am not able to scan channels? I set them as DVB-T Tuners.

Is it possible to make MC17 works with DVBLink tuners?

Thanks

[Sandy B Ridge]

I think someone posted before on this on both this forum and the DVBLink forum. I'm guessing that there is something weird in the way the virtual tuners provide the data that isn't quite standard.

I think it is theoretically possible since DVBLink works in other PVR software.

It may be a 'quick fix' for supporting DVB-S or DVB-T (possibly with CAM/Mdapi support) if native support isn't easily  codeable for JRiver in the near future.

I wonder if they have a free trial to download? I may investigate it soon.

SBR

[fabien44]

Yes there is a free trial for DVBLink TV Source: http://www.dvblogic.com/tvsource.php

It well works with MediaPortal and DVBViewer too:
http://www.dvblogic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=14586
http://www.dvblogic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=8985

It works also with WMC7: http://www.dvblogic.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_configure_DVBLink_tuners_in_Windows_MediaCenter

It would be very useful to make it work with MC.

Thanks for your investigation.

[Sandy B Ridge]

Hmmm, some of those forum posts look like quite complicated stuff. I think this is what put me off trying it before. Plus reports on here that it didn't work.

Anyway, let me just get this straight in my head, I couldn't find this easily on the dvblogic website....

This software uses your physical tuner cards and finds the channels, it then 'creates' a virtual set of tuners. Now it isn't clear to me how it translates the channel tuning data, for example are all the channels on the virtual tuners DVB-T type and conform to BDA spec? How does it translate DVB-S channels into DVB-T tuning space?

Can you get a list of the virtual tuners frequencies/audio and video PIDs? If you can then you may be able to add a manual channel in jriver to get it to work.

I may have some time this week to have a play with it, but I suspect (given previous reports) that I too will be unsuccessful!

SBR

[Sandy B Ridge]

Fabien

Just a quick thought. JRiver may not detect the 'virtual channels' from DVBLink because they are in non-standard frequencies. If you are using DVBViewer or Mediaportal currently successfully with it, can you check the tuning information in either of those programs for the 'virtual channels' and see if you can make a manual channel in jriver with the same information.....

SBR

[fabien44]

Hi,

Indeed DVBLink create new frequencies for channels (1 frequency by channel) which are saved in a XML file in TV Source folder.

Yesterday, i did this test:
- i modified the j river frequencies file for France entry -> Replaced all frequencies by the DVBLink frequency for channel ARTE
- Start the scan but nothing found ?

i will do a test this weekend and try to identify all mendatory data for channels (CAID, Pol, ...)

[JimH]

Indeed DVBLink create new frequencies for channels (1 frequency by channel) which are saved in a XML file in TV Source folder.

Yesterday, i did this test:
- i modified the j river frequencies file for France entry -> Replaced all frequencies by the DVBLink frequency for channel ARTE
- Start the scan but nothing found ?

Did you try playing them?

[fabien44]

What do you mean by playing them?

I was not able to add manually the channel because of lack of mandatory channel data.

ps: i post in DVBLink forum: http://dvblogic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=16184

[Yaobing]

Try creating one channel manually, if you can find all parameters, and then play it.

[Sandy B Ridge]

I had a quick go at installing, but I think its a bit more fiddly than I thought.

I managed to get DVBLink to see my sat card and tune some channels, and DVBViewer tunes into 60 DVB-T type pseudo-channels, but all they return is a server busy type video message.

The DVBViewer has most of the channel data needed eg.
Freq 546000
Stream ID 54
Service ID 54
Video PID 101
Audio PID 0
PMT PID 100
PCR PID 101

There's one missing which is the network ID IIRC. Adding a manual channel with this doesn't seem to work. I increased the priority of the DVBLink drivers above my DVB-T ones. The status page seems to show that the DVBLink drivers are skipped and tries to tune to the normal DVB-T card instead.

Doing a channel scan for the DVBLink virtual card doesn't show anything useful in the log so I assume the DVBLogic BDA (or pseudo BDA) is non standard and doesn't interact well with jRivers code.

Since I didn't get very far with either DVBViewer or JRiver with this I've given up and uninstalled! Just seems too messy!

I'll have to wait for native DVB-S support I guess, which hopefully will be a cleaner implementation.

SBR

[fabien44]

I have just discovered something interesting:

Now that DVBLogic have implemented a new client API based on XML that:

"DVBLink Remote API provides the following functionality:

TV channel list retrieval
EPG information retrieval
Recording timers management (scheduling, overview and deleting)
Live TV playback
DVBLink Server parental control access"

http://dvblogic.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_write_my_own_DVBLink_client

Maybe an interesting lead to interact with?

[fabien44]

Here the answer of DVBLogic support:

The best way to do it is to use our officially published API:
http://www.dvblogic.com/wiki/index.php?title=How_to_write_my_own_DVBLink_client

If you still would like to use the drivers, it is possible, but you would nee to parse dvblink_channel_storage.xml for channels and their parameters. Beware that this format is internal and may change in the future.
You need to walk through all <logical_channel> items and get their metadata - <name>, <number> and <subnumber> - and <frequency>. The latter is used for tuning using drivers. All other tuning parameters - bandwidth, modulation etc. - do not matter. In the resulting stream sid=tid=nid=frequency/10000.

Note that dvblink drivers are not installed on winxp and Vista - only Win7.

[Sandy B Ridge]

In the resulting stream sid=tid=nid=frequency/10000.

I tried that with manually creating a channel. I took a guess at the nid. Didn't work.

Is there something weird in the way it works? It sounds like the tuning request for a channel to the driver at a certain frequency results in a video stream at a different one. I don't get how it works. If it was a simple translation of one stream eg DVB-S  into a DVB-T stream then I would 'get it', but it doesn't seem as easy as that. Sounds like you need to make a tune request for a channel and dvblink then creates the pseudochannel.

If this is something that worked I would pay the €25 for it like a shot. Maybe Yaobing/Jim/Matt could approach DVBLink directly? Maybe produce a 'joint venture' and split the profits?!

SBR

[fabien44]

And what about coding from their API?

[Sandy B Ridge]

@Fabien

Saw your posting on the DVBLogic site - just to clear up, I'm not part of JRiver staff, just a keen user like you!

Agree with you that any solution would be a good one. Sounds like the API way would require a whole new set of code though - it seems to send an IPTV stream on request. The JRiver TV engine is more 'conventional' (if that is the right word) to interacting with a set of directshow filters designed to tune/timeshift etc. It may be that the existing TV code would be more easily tweakable to cope with the DVBLink way of doing things rather than writing a whole new bit of code. I don't know the answer to that one. Some direct contact between Oberon of DVBLink and Yaobing of JRiver may be the way forward, dependent on JRiver priorities of course.

SBR

[fabien44]

Sorry SBR, i have just modifed my post
I believed you was a team mate of JRiver.

I think like you that including DVBLink as middleware  in MC for all DVB streams playback would be great!

[fabien44]

News from DVBLogic forum:

"The trick may be in the fact that DVBLink virtual drivers are PBDA drivers (e.g. not regular BDA). I do not know how compatible they are with applications working with BDA drivers."

PBDA = Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463120

[Sandy B Ridge]

I guess that would explain it then!

Changing the code to support PBDA would mean that XP users would lose out. Having to maintain 2 sets of code to interact with both BDA and PBDA I suspect would be a right ball ache. I guess not a quick fix as originally thought!

An interesting dilemma though for the team (if Jims list of priority to expand TV Tuner support is true):
which is least effort? - writing native code for DVB-S/DVB-C/QAM etc or supporting 3rd party addins like DVBLink (over which they would have no control over development).

SBR