nxtvepg
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Developers and alpha testers download page
This page lists the latest updates for the nxtvepg software package. The software which is available here is only intended for developers and alpha/beta testers. If you're searching for the regular release visit the download page.
The releases on this page include alot of internal consistany checks and produce plenty of debug output. Hence they should be used for evaluation only. Please do not redistribute.
On this page you find:
nxtvepg core package
The following packages contain a snapshot of the ongoing development on nxtvepg. Please refer to the changelog below or the discussion forum for background information.
2.8.1 development line
Note the acquisition daemon protocol has changed in 2.8.1 pre1 and pre2. Hence you cannot connect with an older client version to the current daemon version, or vice versa.
nxtvepg release 2.8.1pre2 (February 3rd 2008)
Details on changes in this and older releases is available in the 2.8.x pre-release changelog.
- Sources: nxtvepg-2.8.1pre2.tar.gz (apx 1.7 MB)
- Win32 executable:
nxtvepg-2.8.1pre2-win.zip (ca. 1.0 MB)
(Does not contain the Tcl/Tk libraries tcl85.dll and tk85.dll; please copy these from the last official release.) - To enable use of vendor supplied WDM drivers you need an additional DLL which was developed separately by Gérard Chevalier. Download from below.
- Win32 TV simulator:
nxtvepg-2.8.1pre2-tvsim.zip
Please try to reproduce any problems related to interaction with K!TV with tvsim.exe before you report them.
Older releases and associated files are still available in the pre-release data directory
WDM Support for nxtvepg
The WDM interface library was developed by Gerard Chevalier in 2004-2005. Gerard has stopped development on this project since then. The library is currently supported by Tom Zoerner (as far as possible)
The following package contains the last release of the WDM interface library for Windows. It allows Windows users to optionally use drivers supplied by their card's manufacturer instead of the one which comes with nxtvepg.
Main goal of development is to help Windows users who cannot use nxtvepg at all because their TV card is not supported by nxtvepg's driver. This is because currently VBI acquisition in the Windows port of nxtvepg is based exclusively on the DScaler "dsdrv4" driver, which supports only cards based on Conexant BT878, CX23881 or Philips SAA7134 (and even among these only the ones with supported tuners.) Cards with chip sets from vendors which do not disclose specifications to support open source driver implementations cannot be supported this way.
WDM support is useful for Windows users only. UNIX users need not look further.
Download latest release: July 23rd 2006
- Interface library: nxtvepg-wdm-dll-20060723.zip
- WDM Driver sources VBIAcqWDMDrvSrc081905.zip (Visual Studio 2002-V7)
Unpack the ZIP archive into the same directory as nxtvepg, i.e. the DLL should be in the same directory as nxtvepg.exe. Additional instructions see README-WDM.txt in the zip file.
Important note: To use the library you need version 70d of the Microsoft Visual C run-time library (i.e. msvcr70d.dll) For legal reasons it is not included here. There are however plenty of sources for it on the web, you can search for msvcr70d.dll with Google.
Known problems
The following bugs/open issues are already known:
- When initially selecting a WDM source in the TV card input configuration dialog, video source selection may not work (device is allegedly busy.) If that happens, just close the dialog with OK and open it again. After that the video input selection should work.
- TV channel/frequency conversion doesn't work for all channel tables yet.
If you live in Germany and have cable, you need to have a file named
VBIAcqWDMDrv.ini in the same directory as VBIAcqWDMDrv.dll with the
following two lines:
[Debug Behaviour] ForceRFInput=c
This file is already included in the package. - The EPG provider scan must be run in slow mode (you can enable this option at the bottom of the provider scan dialog window.) Even then some networks may appear duplicate in the scan. If your provider isn't found due to this, try running the scan again, or use a K!TV or DScaler channel table and move your provider's channel to the first position.
- Hauppauge PVR 250/350 cards are not supported yet.
Tests feedback
This section lists card and system combinations currently reported as "working".
- Leadtek WinFast TV2000XP Expert on Windows XP and Windows 2000
- Hauppauge WinTv PCI (Bt878 + Philips Tuner) on Windows XP
- Hauppauge WinTv Go on Windows XP
- Hauppauge WinTV PVR on Windows 2000
- Hauppauge WinTV PCI (new series with CX23881 chip) on W2K: works partly
Appearently due to a bug in the WDM driver apx. half of the teletext pages are lost; but if you're patient EPG reception is still possible. - Typhoon card "Art.No. 90031" with Philips capture chip (SAA7134) on W2K
- Almost any card with Brooktree Bt878 or Bt848 capture chip when using the free btwincap WDM driver.
If you have questions or want to provide feedback, please use the discussion forum.
Teletext EPG grabber
Currently a new grabber is under development which allows to extract programme listings from teletext pages. The intention is firstly to compensate for the loss of two German Nextview providers and secondly to add more and longer descriptions to the EPG. In teletext, many networks have good descriptions not only for movies, but esp. also for weekly magazines, daily soaps or current events. The output of the teletext grabber can be merged with Nextview EPG data with the help of XMLTV import.
Download latest release: November 13th 2006
- Teletext grabber: tv_grab_ttx-0.7.tar.gz (apx. 25 kB)
- Perl module Video::Capture::zvbi Video-Capture-zvbi-0.1.tar.gz (apx. 25 kB)
The following is a usage example: First the channel is switched to network ARD using xawtv's tool v4lctl. Then VBI data is captured for 1.5 minutes into a temporary file. After that EPG data is extracted from the captured teletext data into an XMLTV file. Steps 1-3 can be repeated for several networks. Finally the XMLTV files are merged into a single file, which can be imported into nxtvepg. See also capall.pl
v4lctl -c /dev/vbi0 setstation ARD perl cap.pl -dev /dev/vbi0 -duration 90 > ARD.ttx perl ttxacq.pl -page 301-309 ARD.ttx > ARD.xml perl merge.pl *.xml > ~/all.xml
For additional options see sub ParseArgv in either script. As you can see VBI capturing is currently done via libzvbi, so only Linux is supported. MS-Windows is only supported when using the grabber via nxtvepg (see configuration dialog "Teletext grabber")
Copyright & Disclaimer
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. 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.