Smart Home Blog

CaptiveWorks launched High Definition Linux Media Center CW-4000HD. It based on AMD 5000+ X2 Processor and includes 512 MB DDRII RAM (can be expandable to 8GB), 1GB Fast System Flash, Nvidia GeForce 7050, Satellite Tuner Genpix Skywalker-CW3K, DVDRW. Optionally HDD and ATSC Tuner can be added. The CW-4000HD provides HDMI/SVGA/Component/S-Video video and Analog/SPDIF Dolby Digital audio outputs as well as gigabit Ethernet and six USB ports.

The CW-4000HD can really replace satellite receiver, DVD and network players. It provides PVR functionality – pause, record, schedule etc, for Satellite/Digital TV, supports IPTV, P2P TV and web video services, allows to playback video and music from the HDD, network shares and USB storage and shows pictures. Additionally it gives possibility to listen Internet radio, read RSS, browse web sites, play arcade games (MAME emulator), convert recorded TV shows in the desire format and burn them to CDs or DVDs.

Most of features listed above are implemented using amazing open source software Video Disk Recorder (VDR) and its plug-ins. However the version of VDR included into the CW-4000HD is too old to support DVB-S2 (it’s just 1.5.8). So, you won’t watch the real HD channels on that box. But except that the CW-4000HD looks very attractive in my mind. I like the idea to use open source software in the commercial systems. It definitely should give a renewed impetus to the progress and popularity of VDR.

The CaptiveWorks CW-4000HD is available on the GOsatellite.com at the price $449.99.

iVDR turns your iPhone or iPod Touch into stylish remote control for your Video Disk Recorder (VDR). It allows to see EPG, set timers and manage records. Additionally you can watch stream from VDR directly on your Apple smartphone. It might be useful if you away from home but would like to see the game of your favourite football team, for example. Sure to do that you should be connected to the Internet via WiFi and your VDR box should be accessible outside.

The iVDR is written on Perl and provides web interface to VDR adopted to iPhone and iPod Touch. It has a simple config file where you can specify VDR connection parameters and setup permissions for the iVDR access. Currently iVDR is available on English and German. But it’s very easy to translate its interface to your language. If you have ability to do that just send translated lang.pack file to the iVDR author to include it in the next release.

To run your Linux-based PVR according to defined timer an utility nvram-wakeup is used usually. If it supports your motherboard the config file can be generated easily by the utility. But if not you should experiment or use shared results. I didn’t find my Asus M3N78-EM in the nvram-wakeup MD list. So, after a short googling I found the config:
################################################
## Mainboard autodetection information:
##
## - Mainboard vendor: "ASUSTeK Computer INC."
## - Mainboard type: "M3N78-EM"
## - Mainboard revision: "Rev X.0x"
## - BIOS vendor: "American Megatrends Inc."
## - BIOS version: "0511"
## - BIOS release: "01/13/2009"
need_reboot = ON_ANY_CHANGE
addr_stat = 0xDD # Status byte
shift_stat = 3 # The position of the status bit in the byte
addr_day = 0x8C # Day
addr_hour = 0x8D # Hour
addr_min = 0x62 # Minute
addr_sec = 0x63 # Second
addr_chk_h = 0x30 # High checksum bit
addr_chk_l = 0x31 # Low checksum bit
upper_method = VT82Cxxx

Klaus Schmidinger released today next developer version of VDR 1.7.7. There are following changes since 1.7.6:

* a new function GetVideoSize() was added to get the size and aspect ratio of the video material currently displayed. That function should be used to determine the proper size of the OSD.
* the OSD and font sizes now are defined in percent of the actual video display size. Maximum size of OSD can be set to 1920×1080.
* OSD size is adjusted automatically according to information returned by GetVideoSize().

VDR 1.7.7 can be found here and diff between 1.7.6 and 1.7.7 here.

Last weekend was rich on releases of open source products. After new versions of Boxee and LinuxMCE 0810 Klaus Schmidinger announced VDR developer version 1.7.6. The changes since 1.7.5 are following:

* cDevice::PlayTs() now syncs on the TS packet sync bytes.
* Made MAXFRAMESIZE a multiple of TS_SIZE to avoid breaking up TS packets.
* No longer resetting the patPmtParser in cDevice::PlayTs(), because this caused the selected audio and subtitle tracks to fall back to the default.
* The SVDRP command PUTE now supports reading the EPG data from a given file (thanks to Helmut Auer).
* Added cThread::SetIOPriority() and using it in cRemoveDeletedRecordingsThread (thanks to Rolf Ahrenberg).
* Fixed the MEGABYTE() macro to make it correctly handle parameters resulting in values larger than 2GB.
* Added cDevice::NumProvidedSystems() to PLUGINS.html (was missing since it had been implemented).
* Fixed distortions when switching to the next file during replay.
* Fixed detecting the frame rate for streams with PTS distances of 1800, which apparently split one frame over two payload units.
* Added missing ‘const’ to cRecording::FramesPerSecond() (thanks to Joachim Wilke).
* Any TS packets in the first “frame” after a cut in an edited recording that don’t belong to a payload unit that started in that frame now get their TEI flag set, so that a decoder will ignore them together with any PES data collected for that PID so far (thanks to Oliver Endriss for reporting chirping sound disturbances at editing points in TS recordings).
* cDvbPlayer::Empty() subtracts 1 from readIndex, because Action() will first increment it.
* Only storing non-zero Pts values in ptsIndex.
* Added a note to the INSTALL file about using subdirectories to split a large disk into separate areas for VDR’s video data and other stuff (suggested by Udo Richter).

I’d like remind you that the main target of VDR 1.7.X is support of HDTV.