viewing.md

neumoDVB

Viewing and recording TV

To actually view channels, you need to switch to the live mode screen (which is distinguished by a dark background) To do so, press Ctrl-L if needed. In the live mode screen several displays can be activated

• Channel Grid mode. View - Channels or pressing C shows a channel/service list, along with live TV preview window

• Grid EPG mode. View - Grid EPG or pressing E shows the grid EPG screen, which may initially be empty until some EPG scanning has been performed. Also, the preview window is shown

• Channel EPG mode. View - Channel EPG or pressing Shift-E shows the channel EPG screen, which shows all the programs for the currently selected channel. (This screen still needs to be converted to dark mode.) performed.

• Recordings. View - Recordings or pressing R shows the list of earlier recorded programs, along with the preview window performed.

• View mode. View Show/Hide GUI pr pressing L toggles between video only display and the last selectd live mode screen (channels, grid EPG...)

• Channel Screenshot. Control Channel Screenshot pr pressing Ctrl-J screenshots the currently playing service -- without any overlays -- and saves it to /tmp/screenshots. If you don't like the location, change it to something different in the mpv.conf configuration file.

Usually all of these screens are shown in a window, but for real TV viewing, it is better to enter full screen mode by pressing Ctrl-F.

The following commands are available on these screens:

• Control - Full Scfeen (Ctrl-F). This will toggle between full-screen and windowed mode.

• Control - Volume Up (=). This will increase the audio volume for the currently selected live channel.

• Control - Volume Down (-). This will decrease the audio volume for the currently selected live channel.

• number For quick zapping during live mode, type a number. This will move the cursor to the matching channel.

Channel screen

This screen can actually display services or channels and allows easy switching between channels and services, restricting these to specific satellites, bouquets or favorite lists and ordering them alphabetically or numerically.

The example below shows a screenshot. This screen actually contains five or more distinct regions, which can be navigated between:

• top left (white text in the screenshot): currently selected favorite list; only channels from this list will be shown in the channel list

• top middle (yellow text): the current sort order

• left: the channel or service list, selected and ordered according to the top line

• right: the currently playing service(s), also called "live" services. There can be multiple live services. In that case, one of the live services will be considered the active one, which means that it is the one that can be re-tuned, paused ... The current one will be will be highlighted in yellow.

• bottom right: information on the currently selected service. Note that the selected service is not necessarily the playing one.

To navigate the channel list, use the up and down arrow keys, or page-up and page down. To move from one screen region to another press Ctrl-Left, Ctrl-Right, Ctrl-Up or Ctrl-Down. This will move the keyboard focus to one of the other regions.

For example, while in the channel list region, the up and down arrow keys will move up and down in the list, but pressing Ctrl-Up will move the cursor to the top line. At this point You can use the left and right arrow keys (without Ctrl!) to switch between three types of channel/service lists

• All services

• Services on a specific satellite

• Channels in a specific bouquet or favorite list

In all cases, pressing Return will "activate" this choice. In the case you selected "Select Satellite" or "Select Bouquet", the channel/service list will be replaced temporarily by a list of satellites or bouquets. Navigate this list using the arrow keys and then press Return to confirm your selection.

If you wish to change the sort order, use the arrow keys while holding down the control key to navigate to the top middle line. The use the left/right arrow keys (without control) to select between sort orders. Finally, confirm by pressing Return.

In the channel list screen region,

• Press Ctrl-Return to start viewing the selected channel. If one is already playing, the new channel will replace the old one.

• Press Ctrl-X to stop playing the channel playing now.

• Press Ctrl-Shit-Return to start viewing the selected channel as a second live channel. This requires multiple frontends are available, or services are on the same mux. The active service (by which some keys will be interpreted) is shown with a yellow border. If one is already playing, the new channel will replace the old one.

Remember that other keys are also available to switch between views

• Press L to show only video

• Press E to show the grid EPG

• Press Ctrl-F to enter full screen

• Several commands from View mode are also available. E.g., Press Ctrl-O for onscreen display

Grid EPG screen

neumoDVB performs EPG scanning only when tuned to a service or when tuned to a mux. Services can be tuned via the dark-mode screens or via the service list. Muxes can be tuned via the DVB-S muxes list. Currently neumoDVB supports:

• standard DVB EPG

• SkyUK (7 day) and SkyItalia OpenTV EPG

• FreeSat (7 day) and SkyItalia OpenTV EPG

• Movistar+ 7 day EPG

• Viasat Nordic 7 day EPG

• SkyUK and SkyItalia OpenTV EPG

Compared to TVHeadend, several features are not supported:

• No XMLTV EPG, but this would be easy to add

• No scheduled EPG scanning

• No series recording, or recording by matching title.

Some of these features may be added later.

In a future version, an EPG an auto-scan feature will be added, which will gather EPG in the background and can run unattended at night. However, you will find that you don't really need auto-scan in most cases:

• Some providers (FreeSat, SkyUk, Movistar+) provide 7 or even 14-day EPG. If you view some of those channels regularly, chances are that your EPG will be up to date just through this viewing

• For "FreeSat" the fastest EPG is on the FreeSat home mux, which has no viewable programs. Still after scanning this mux, you can tune to the service called "FreeSat Home" for a 5 to 10 minutes to replenish EPG

• Other providers provide only a few hours worth of EPG or - even worse - only now/next records. In this case auto-scan will not help.

So, for now, it is up to the user to tune EPG services from time to time.

The grid EPG screen is shown below. You can navigate between programs using the arrow keys. When the channel list is sorted numerically, you can also enter numeric keys to bring relevant channels on screen. Other channel lists or sort orders can be selected by navigating to the corresponding screen area using Ctrl-arrow key combinations.

Many of the commands available in live mode or on the channel screen are also available on the Grid EPG screen:

• Ctrl-Return will tune the active live channel to a new service.

• Shift-Ctrl-Return will start a new live service

• Ctrl-X will stop the active live service

View Mode

As it's name suggests this mode is for watching TV. The most useful commands are

• L To show the service list or the grid EPG (which ever was used last)

• E To show the Grid EPG

• C To show the service/channel grid.

• Toggle Overlay (Ctrl-O). This activates the on-screen display, which displays signal levels, and some program information, but also - at the bottom - some information about the current playback position when in time shift mode.

The screenshot below shows the on-screen display. It displays information about the live channel. In the example, playback has been paused and therefore the live channel is in "TIME SHIFT" mode. The navigation bar at the bottom shows the duration of the current program: it runs from 01:00 to 03:00. It also shows that the program has started only a few minutes ago: the orange region indicates the available time shift data. This area will grow over time.

When one of the playing services is focused (as indicated by a yellow border), also some keys for "trick" play will be enabled:

• Press the left arrow (without control) to jump back one minute in time.

• Press the right arrow (without control) to jump forward one minute in time.

• In a future some more keys will be added which will allow jumping by larger time steps

• Press Ctrl-Space to pause/resume the current service

• Some more commands will be added later, e.g, to make it easier to jump over larger time intervals, to facilitate channel changing. Probably some options will be added to temporarily display the

When you start a recording on a channel which has an active time shift buffer, this data will be included in the recording. Time Shift buffers are discarded when you end playback of a channel. This is also the case when you accidentally switch channels. In this case, if the program is important, you have a few minutes before the disk files of the live buffers are actually discarded. These files can be converted into a recording relatively easily, but you have to copy them immediately to preserve them.

Recording programs

Recordings of specific programs can be scheduled or unscheduled on the grid EPG screen. First navigate to the desired program. Then press, Ctrl-R. A dialog box will appear to confirm the recording. In some cases, some programs may not have an EPG record. In this case, select one of the grey areas for a specific channel and press Ctrl-R. Last but not least, when a channel is focused (on the left) instead of an EPG record, Ctrl-R will propose to record the currently running program if an EPG record for it is available, or otherwise a two hour time period, starting from now.

In all cases, a popup window will appear to allow you to specify the start time and duration of the recording. Note that NeumoDVB offers only limited options to alter parameters of the recording.

Recordings can also be started from the services screen. In this case, the recording will be proposed for the currently running program.

Anonymous recordings

'anonymous recordings are recordings created without an EPG record. Simply select an empty area in the grid EPG and press record, or press record on the services screen when no EPG is present. Then enter start and end time and a title. Should EPG records overlapping with the recording appear later, then secondary recordings will be created automatically for each overlapping EPG record. This is convenient for services with only now/next EPG, which may arrive after scheduling the anonymous recording. Anonymous recordings will be shown on the EPG screen, but will be overlayed with epg records, should these exist. Canceling a secondary epg recording also cancels the anonymous recording.

Playing recordings

To playback recordings, press R to activate the recordings screen. An example is shown below. Press Ctrl-Return on any of the recordings to start playback. Press Ctrl-X to stop it. The trick play commands are available as well.