vdr/UPDATE-2.0.0

TODO: /// PRELIMINARY DRAFT ///

This is a summary of the changes in VDR 2.0.0 since the last stable
version 1.6.0. It only contains things that are of actual importance
to the user and doesn't mention the many fixes and improvements that
have been made "behind the scenes".

See the file HISTORY for a detailed list of all changes.

Satellite Channel Routing:

- VDR now supports "Satellite Channel Routing" (SCR) according to EN50494 (based on
  the "unicable" patch).
  Since "Unicable" is a registered trademark and stands for only one of many
  implementations of SCR, the following changes have been made compared to the patch,
  which need to be taken into account by people who have set up their system using
  the patch:
  - The 'U' parameter in the diseqc.conf file has been changed to 'S' ("Scr").
  - The configuration file name has been changed from "unicable.conf" to "scr.conf".

Device Bonding:

- The new setup options "LNB/Device n connected to sat cable" can be used to define
  which DVB-S devices are connected to the same sat cable and are therefore "bonded".
  This obsoletes the LNBSHARE patch. Users of the LNBSHARE patch will need to newly
  set up their sat devices with the above options.

Subtitles:

- Implemented handling of HD resolution subtitles according to v1.3.1 of
  ETSI EN 300 743, chapter 7.2.1.
- Fixed handling DVB subtitles and implemented decoding textual DVB subtitles.

Plugins:

- Added cDevice::NumProvidedSystems() to PLUGINS.html (was missing since it had
  been implemented).
- The 'sky' plugin is no longer part of the VDR source.
- IMPORTANT NOTE TO PLUGIN AUTHORS: a plugin that implements a derived cDevice
  class that can replay video must now call the MakePrimaryDevice() function of
  its base class.
- Implemented cDeviceHook to allow plugins more control over which device can
  provide which transponder.
- Plugins can now define new sources. In order to implement this, the following
  changes were made:
  + The transponder parameter string is no longer interpreted by cChannel, but rather
    stored as is and used only by the respective device. That way plugins can use a
    channel's parameter string to store arbitrary data (see vdr.5).
  + The new class cSourceParam can be used by plugins to define new sources, and to
    implement OSD items that will be used in the channel editor for editing the source
    specific parameters of a channel (see dvbdevice.c for an example of how this is
    done for the default DVB devices).
  + Purely numerical values are no longer accepted in the 'source' parameter of a
    channel.
  This obsoletes the PLUGINPARAM patch.
- The dvbhddevice plugin is now part of the VDR distribution archive.
- The pic2mpg script of the 'pictures' plugin now generates HD images.
  The old SD version is still available as pic2mpg-sd.
- The dvbsddevice plugin now supports the new option --outputonly, which disables
  receiving on SD FF devices and uses the device only for output.
- The code for the RCU remote control unit has been moved into a separate plugin
  named "rcu".
  The REMOTE=RCU option in the 'make' call for VDR is now obsolete.
  The command line option --rcu is now obsolete. Use -Prcu instead. If you have
  used --rcu with a device path, use -P"rcu -d<device>".
- Removed the obsolete function cEITScanner::UsesDevice(). If a plugin has used this
  function to find out whether a call to its cStatus::ChannelSwitch() function was
  due to a live channel switch, it can use that function's new parameter LiveView.
  Any plugins that implement cStatus::ChannelSwitch() need to add the parameter
  'bool LiveView' to that function.
- Added a new plugin interface for implementing EPG handlers.
  + A plugin can implement an EPG handler by creating an object derived from
    cEpgHandler and implementing the necessary member functions.
  + The special handling of events with table id 0x00 has been dropped.
    For backwards compatibility EPG events with table ids lower than 0x4E will
    be treated as if they had a table id of 0x4E, and the new plugin 'epgtableid0'
    can be used to have them handled like in previous versions.
  + The default table id for a newly created cEvent has been changed to 0xFF,
    which is higher than any normal table id that is broadcast in the EIT data.
  See PLUGINS.html, section "Electronic Program Guide" for more information.
- The cThread constructor now has an additional boolean parameter that can be set to
  true to have this thread run at a lower priority. Plugin authors that use low
  priority threads may want to use this instead of the calls to SetPriority(19) and
  SetIOPriority(7). The priority of a thread ("low" or "high") is now logged when the
  thread starts.
- The plugin Makefiles now have a separate 'install' target.
- Plugin Makefiles now use DESTDIR and the 'install' program.
- Plugin Makefiles can now include a configuration file for compile time parameters.
- Plugins that implement an interface to any kind of remote controls shall use the
  new parameters Setup.RcRepeatDelay and Setup.RcRepeatDelta to allow the user to
  adjust the behavior of the remote control's repeat function. They shall also
  remove any setup options they might have that serve the same purpose.

Skins:

- The 'sttng' skin now displays two colored bars at the bottom of the channel display,
  indicating the strength (upper bar) and quality (lower bar) of the received signal.
  The number to the left of these bars indicates the actual device the current
  channel is being received with.
- Skins can now inquire the menu category for which their cSkinDisplayMenu is currently
  being used. This can be done either through a call to cSkinDisplayMenu::MenuCategory()
  or by reimplementing cSkinDisplayMenu::SetMenuCategory(). This information allows a
  skin to use special icons or decorations for the various types of menus in VDR.
- The new member function cSkinDisplayReplay::SetRecording() allows a skin to display
  more information about the currently played recording.
- The new skin "LCARS" is an enhanced version of the "ST:TNG" skin (which is still
  there in its original layout, for those who don't like the LCARS skin, or can't use
  it due to OSD limitations). The LCARS skin utilizes the new "menu category" feature
  to display additional information on the main menu page. It shows upcoming timers
  and the system's devices, as well as which device is recording which timers. The
  upper pane of the main menu displays the programme data in live and replay mode,
  and a progress bar. An indicator on the right side of the device list shows which
  device is currently used for live viewing, and whether it is in transfer mode.
  The individual device displays show the device number, the device type, which CAM
  (if any ) is currently assigned to the device, and the signal strength and quality.
  On the left side of the OSD there is a permanent display of the current date and
  time, the disk usage and the system load.
  "LCARS" is the new default skin of VDR. It requires at least a 4bpp (16 color) full
  screen OSD, but you can still operate it if your OSD can handle only fewer colors
  (in which case you may want to switch to the "ST:TNG" or "Classic VDR" skin).
- The new functions SetItemEvent(), SetItemTimer(), SetItemChannel() and
  SetItemRecording() of the cSkinDisplayMenu class can be reimplemented by skin
  plugins to display these items in a more elaborate way than just a simple line of
  text.

Remote control:

- Changed the default location for the LIRC socket to /var/run/lirc/lircd.
- The new setup options "OSD/Color key [0123]" can be used to adjust the sequence
  of the color buttons displayed in the menus to that of the color keys on your
  remote control.
  Authors of plugins that implement skins may want to adapt their SetButtons()
  function in order to make use of this new feature. See, for instance, the function
  cSkinClassicDisplayMenu::SetButtons() in skinclassic.c for details.
- Added user defined key kUser0.
- The new remote control key "Play/Pause" can be used with remote controls that don't
  have separate keys for "Play" and "Pause", but rather have a single key for both
  functions.
- The new options "Setup/Miscellaneous/Remote control repeat delay" and
  "Setup/Miscellaneous/Remote control repeat delta" can be used to adjust the
  behavior of the remote control in case a key is held pressed down for a while, so
  that the repeat function kicks in.

Devices:

- Re-implemented handling of DVB-S2, which first appeared in version 1.5.14, but was
  revoked in version 1.5.15 in favor of making a stable version 1.6.0.
  Note that the channels.conf file now supports additional parameters, so you may
  want to make sure you have a backup of this file in case you need to go back to
  the previous version of VDR!
- cDvbDevice now uses the FE_CAN_2G_MODULATION flag to determine whether a device
  can handle DVB-S2.
- The support for full featured DVB cards of the TT/FuSi design has been moved
  into the new plugin 'dvbsddevice'. On systems that use such a card as their
  primary device, this plugin now needs to be loaded when running VDR in order
  to view live or recorded video. If the plugin is not loaded, the card will
  be treated like a budget DVB card, and there will be no OSD or viewing
  capability.
- Added support for DVB cards with multiple fontends. Note that this only
  works for DVB cards where each frontend can be used independently of all
  the others on the same adapter.
- Added support for ATSC devices. This obsoletes the ATSC patch.
- The new functions cDevice::SignalStrength() and cDevice::SignalQuality() can be
  used to determine the signal strength and quality of a given device.
- The new function cDevice::ProvidesEIT() is used to determine whether a device can
  provide EIT data and will thus be used in cEITScanner::Process() to receive EIT
  data from the channels it can receive. Note that by default it is assumed that
  a device can't provide EIT data, and only the builtin cDvbDevice returns true
  from this function.
- Added support for devices with more than one delivery system per frontend.
  This requires a DVB driver with version 5.5 or higher that can handle the
  DTV_ENUM_DELSYS call. With older drivers it will fall back to one delivery
  system per frontend.
- Added support for handling DVB-T2 transponders.  This requires a DVB driver
  with version 5.3 or higher that can handle the DTV_DVBT2_PLP_ID call (which has
  been renamed to DTV_STREAM_ID in DVB API 5.8).
- The DVB device adapters/frontends are now probed by scanning the /dev/dvb directory
  instead of looping through adapter/frontend numbers. This allows for "holes" in the
  device numbering.
- Removed the "PrimaryLimit". Old "full featured" DVB cards can be run with the
  --outputonly option to avoid problems with recording high bandwidth channels.
  Besides, with HDTV becoming ever more popular those cards are pretty much obsolete
  by now (the TT S2-6400 has no problems recording and replaying high bandwidth
  channels simultaneously). And, last but not least, people using software players
  won't notice this change, anyway.
- The new function cDevice::DeviceName() returns a string identifying the name of
  the given device.
- The new function cDevice::DeviceType() returns a string identifying the type of
  the given device.
- The new function cDevice::ReadFilter() can be used by devices to implement their
  own way of retrieving section filter data.
- The new function cDevice::HasInternalCam() can be implemented by devices that
  provide encrypted channels in an already decrypted form, without requiring explicit
  handling of a CAM.
- The new functions cDevice::CanScaleVideo() and cDevice::ScaleVideo() can be used by
  derived output devices to implement scaling the video to a given size and location.

DiSEqC:

- Added device definitions to the diseqc.conf file format, so that certain satellite
  positions can be limited to a given list of devices.
  This obsoletes the SOURCECAPS patch.
- Transponders that use "8psk turbo fec" (a non-standard mode used by North American
  providers) are now identified by assuming that all 8psk transponders on DVB-S use
  "turbo fec".

EPG:

- The epg.data file is now read in a separate thread to make the startup process
  faster in case the file is very large.
- Moved cleaning up the EPG data and writing the epg.data file into a separate
  thread to avoid sluggish response to user input on slow systems

OSD:

- The OSD and font sizes are now defined in percent of the actual video display
  size. The maximum OSD size has been raised to 1920x1080, to allow full
  screen OSD on HD systems.
- The OSD size is now automatically adjusted to the actual video display
  (provided the output device implements the GetOsdSize() function).
- The OSD now has full TrueColor support. There can be several "pixmaps" that can
  be overlayed with alpha blending. All existing skins should work out of the box
  with the TrueColor OSD - the only exception being cOsd::GetBitmap(). Since the
  TrueColor OSD doesn't use bitmaps, this function will return a dummy bitmap, which
  may not be what the plugin expects. As long as this bitmap is only used for setting
  the palette, there is no problem. However, any other operations on this bitmap will
  have no effect. See the description of the cPixmap functions in osd.h for details
  about the new functionalities.
  The "ST:TNG Panels" skin has been enhanced to automatically use the TrueColor OSD
  if available.
  The "osddemo" plugin has been extended to show some of the possibilities of the
  TrueColor OSD if it is run on a system that actually provides TrueColor support.
- The Audio and Subtitles options are now available through the Green and Yellow
  keys in the Setup/DVB menu. This is mainly for remote controls that don't have
  dedicated keys for these functions.
- The Recordings menu now displays the length (in hours:minutes) of each recording
  Note that the "new" indicator has been moved from the recording time to the length
  column. This new format is also used by the SVDRP command LSTR, so in case you have
  an application that parses the LSTR output, you will need to adjust it to the new
  format.
- The new setup option "Replay/Show remaining time" can be used to switch between
  showing the total length or the remaining time of the recording that is currently
  replayed.
- The replay progress display is now turned on whenever a mark is toggled (not
  only when one is set).
- The Green button in the "Edit timer" menu can now be used to toggle between single
  shot and repeating timers. This is the same as pressing '0' when the "Day" field
  is selected, but it works at any time (and is more obvious).
- When estimating the remaining disk space (in hours), the average data rate of all
  existing recordings is now taken into account. If this value can't be determined,
  the previous value of 25.75 MB/min is taken.
- The disk usage is no longer automatically added to the title of the main and
  "Recordings" menus. This has always been a mekeshift solution and it is now up
  to the individual skin if, where and how it wants to display this information.
  A skin can use the new cVideoDiskUsage class to implement such a display. For
  compatibility, the default skins "Classic VDR", "ST:TNG Panels" and "Text mode"
  (i.e. curses) have been changed to behave like before. Other skins may want to
  display the disk usage in totally different ways.
- A cOsdMenu can now handle skins that display different numbers of items in the
  various menu categories.
- OSD and skin are now reinitialized after a plugin setup page has been confirmed,
  to have them react immediately in case any change to a plugin's setup parameter
  has an effect on the OSD.
- Now making sure that the "small font" is never larger than the "osd font".
- Within the "Recordings" menu, pressing the '0' key now toggles sorting between
  "by time" and "by name". The selected sort mode is stored separately for each
  folder (provided you have write access to that folder).
  If a folder is newly created by a repeating timer, the sort mode for that
  folder is initially set to "by time".
- The new setup option "Miscellaneous/Show channel names with source" can be used to
  turn on adding the source character to channel names whenever they are displayed.
- Pressing the Play key during normal live viewing mode now opens the Recordings menu
  if there is no "last viewed" recording.
  The same behavior has been implemented for the Blue key in the main menu.
- The new option "Setup/Replay/Progress display time" can be used to activate
  automatically displaying the progress display whenever replay of a recording is
  started.

Time Shifting:

- The new setup option "Recording/Pause key handling" can be used to define
  what happens if the Pause key on the remote control is pressed during
  live tv.
- The new setup option "Recording/Delete timeshift recording" controls whether a timeshift
  recording is automatically deleted after viewing it.
  This obsoletes the DELTIMESHIFTREC patch.
  Note that the meaning of the values for this option is different from the DELTIMESHIFTREC
  patch: 0 means timeshift recordings are not automatically deleted (the default behavior
  as in previous versions), while 1 means to ask the user whether the recording shall be
  deleted.
- The setup parameter "Recording/Instant rec. time (min)" can now be set to '0',
  which means to record only the currently running event.
- When pausing live video, the current audio and subtitle tracks are now retained.

Timers:

- The "Edit timer" menu can now set the folder for the recording from a list of
  folders stored in "folders.conf".
- The file name in the "Timers" menu now shows only the base name of the recording
  without the folder path (if any). Otherwise with long folder paths the actual
  recording name was not visible at all.
- The new setup option "Folders in timer menu" controls whether the file names in
  the timer menu are shown with their full folder path.

Recordings:

- The recording format is now TS (Transport Stream).
  Existing recordings in PES format can still be replayed and edited, but new
  recordings are done in TS.
  All code for recording in PES has been removed.
  The following changes were made to switch to TS recording format:
  + Since a TS needs to have a PAT/PMT, which requires the video stream type to
    be explicitly given, the format of the VPID field in the channels.conf file
    and the SVDRP commands NEWC/MODC/LSTC has been extended. The video stream type
    now follows the VPID and optional PPID, separated by an '=' sign.
  + The index file format has been changed to support file sizes of up to 1TB
    (previously 2GB), and up to 65535 separate files per recording (previously
    255).
  + The recording file names are now of the form 00001.ts (previously 001.vdr).
  + The frame rate is now detected by looking at two subsequent PTS values.
    The "frames per second" is stored in the "info" file using the new tag F.
  + The directory name for a recording has been changed from
    YYYY-MM-DD-hh[.:]mm.pr.lt.rec (pr=priority, lt=lifetime) to
    YYYY-MM-DD-hh.mm.ch-ri.rec (ch=channel, ri=resumeId).
    Priority and Lifetime are now stored in the "info" file with the new
    tags P and L (if no such file exists, the maximum values are assumed by
    default, which avoids inadvertently deleting a recording if disk space
    is low). No longer storing Priority and Lifetime in the directory name
    avoids starting a new recording if one of these is changed in the timer
    and the recording is re-started for some reason.
    Instead of Priority and Lifetime, the directory name now contains the
    channel number from which the recording was made, and the "instance id"
    this instance of VDR. This avoids problems if several VDR instances record
    the same show on different channels, or even on the same channel.
    The '-' between channel number and resumeId prevents older versions of
    VDR from "seeing" these recordings, which makes sure they won't even try
    to replay them, or remove them in case the disk runs full.
  + The files "index", "info", "marks" and "resume" within a TS recording
    directory are now created without the ".vdr" extension.
  + The "resume" file is no longer a binary file, but contains tagged lines
    to be able to store additional information, like the selected audio or
    subtitle track.
  + cDvbPlayer::Goto() no longer appends a "sequence end code" to the data.
    If the output device needs this, it has to take care of it by itself.
- The index file for TS recordings is now regenerated on-the-fly if a
  recording is replayed that has no index. This can also be used to
  re-create a broken index file by manually deleting the index file and then
  replaying the recording (at least until the index file has been generated).
- The new command line options --edit and --genindex can be used to edit a
  recording or generate its index without actually starting the entire VDR.
- The new command line options --filesize and --split can be used together with --edit
  to set the maximum video file size and turn on splitting edited files at the editing
  marks. These options must be given before --edit to have an effect.
- The start time of an edited recording is now set to the time of the first
  editing mark.
  This obsoletes the CUTTIME patch.
- An ongoing editing process is now canceled if either the original or the edited
  version of the recording is deleted from the Recordings menu.
- If a frame position in the 'marks' file of a recording doesn't point to an I-frame,
  it will now be shifted towards the next I-frame (either up or down, whichever is
  closer).
- Editing marks can now be placed directly on top of each other, in which case they
  simply mark a position, but have no effect on the actual cutting process.
- When positioned at an offset where two (or more) editing marks are placed on top
  of each other, the '4' key moves the first one of them to the left, while the '6'
  key moves the last one of them to the right. The '7' and '9' key handle multiple
  marks at the same place as if it were one single mark.
- The '7' and '9' keys now jump to the very beginning or end, respectively, of the
  recording, even if there is no mark set at that point.
- The new option "Setup/Replay/Pause on mark set" can be used to activate automatically
  going into Pause mode if an editing mark is set during replay.
- Timers no longer do any special "VFAT" handling to shorten directory names to 40
  characters. When a string is used as a directory name for a recording, the maximum
  length of the directory path, as well as the individual directory names, is now
  limited to the values specified by the new command line option --dirnames (see
  man vdr(1) for details). For backwards compatibility the option --vfat is still
  available and has the same effect as --dirnames=250,40,1.

SVDRP:

- The SVDRP signon message now indicates the character encoding in use, as in
  "220 video SVDRP VideoDiskRecorder 1.7.1; Fri May  2 16:17:10 2008; ISO-8859-1".
  This may be useful for instance for external tools that provide EPG data, so that
  they can correctly encode the strings.
- The SVDRP command PUTE now supports reading the EPG data from a given file.
- After a CLRE command, no further EPG processing is now done for 10 seconds,
  so that data sent with subsequent PUTE commands doesn't interfere with data
  from the broadcasters.
- If svdrphosts.conf contains only the address of the local host, the SVDRP port
  is opened only for the local host.
- The default SVDRP port is now 6419 (registered with ICANN/IANA).
  Use '-p 2001' to switch back to the old port if necessary.
- The SVDRP command HITK now accepts multiple keys (up to 31).
- The SVDRP command LSTC now also accepts channel IDs.
- The new SVDRP command UPDR can be used to trigger an update of the list of
  recordings.
- The SVDRP command DELR now won't delete a recording that is currently being edited.
- The SVDRP command LSTR now knows the additional parameter "path", which can be
  given to get the actual file name of a recording's directory.
- The SVDRP command NEWT no longer checks whether a timer with the given data already
  exists.

Audio:

- Implemented handling the standard component descriptor for AC3 (stream=4).
  The previously used "Premiere pseudo standard" (stream=2, type=5) still works, but
  has apparently been wrongfully used by broadcasters from the beginning.
- Improved fast-forward/-rewind for audio recordings. The actual data is now sent
  to the output device, so that it can be replayed and thus cause the proper delay.
  For pure audio recordings the audio is no longer muted in fast-forward/-rewind
  mode, so that some orientation regarding the position within the recording is
  possible.
- The option "Setup/DVB/Use Dolby Digital" now only controls whether Dolby Digital
  tracks appear in the "Audio" menu. Dolby Digital is always recorded.
  This obsoletes the DOLBYINREC patch.

Internationalization:

- Added Lithuanian language texts.
- Added Slovakian language texts.
- Added Macedonian language texts.
- Added support for languages that are written right-to-left.
  See INSTALL for information on how to turn this on.
- Added Arabian language texts.
- Added Serbian language texts.

Misc:

- Errors in config files no longer keep VDR from starting.
- The new command line option -i can be used to set an "instance id", which will
  be used to distinguish recordings of the same broadcast made by different instances
  of VDR.
- Implemented handling the "Parental Rating Descriptor".
  The 'classic', 'sttng' and 'curses' skins display the parental
  rating (if given) in their event displays. The epg.data file stores
  the parental rating using the tag character 'R'.
  IMPORTANT NOTE: if VDR doesn't display a parental rating, this does not
  necessarily mean that the given programme is suitable for all audiences!
- Renamed 'runvdr' to 'runvdr.template' and no longer copying it to the BINDIR
  in 'make install'.
- The new setup option "Miscellaneous/Channels wrap" controls whether the current
  channel wraps around the beginning or end of the channel list when zapping.
- The files "commands.conf" and "reccmd.conf" can now contain nested lists of
  commands. See vdr.5 for information about the new file format.
  This obsoletes the CMDSUBMENU patch.
- The new setup option "OSD/Number keys for characters" can be used to control whether
  the number keys can be used to enter characters in a text input field.
- While replaying, the editing marks are now updated every 10 seconds.
- Added generating a pkg-config file to the Makefile.
- Removed the '.pl' suffix from all scripts.
- The new setup option "DVB/Standard compliance" can be used to switch between different
  variations of the DVB standard. Currently there is "DVB" (for the original DVB
  standard) and "ANSI/SCTE", which is used to properly handle certain private stream
  types.
- By default VDR is now built according to the FHS ("File system Hierarchy Standard"),
  and a plain "make" in the VDR source directory just builds everything, but doesn't
  copy it to ./PLUGINS/lib and ./locale any more. You can use a Make.config file
  (copied from Make.config.template) and set the parameter LCLBLD=1 to have everything
  built and installed under the VDR source tree (as was the default in previous
  versions). If you already have your own Make.config file, you may want to copy the
  new Make.config.template and adapt it to your needs. If you don't want VDR's data
  files to be spread around your system according to the FHS, you can set the
  parameter ONEDIR=1 (using Make.config) to have all files in one /video directory as
  before.
- VDR can now be built according to the FHS ("File system Hierarchy Standard") by
  activating the line
  #USEFHS = 1
  in a copy of the file Make.config.template.
- The script given to VDR with the '-r' option is now also called whenever a
  recording is deleted.
- Synchronizing system time to the transponder time is now done using adjtime() in order
  to avoid discontinuities. If the time difference is more than 10 seconds, stime() is
  still used to do the initial sync.