vdr/MANUAL

Video Disk Recorder User's Manual
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* Remote Control Keys

  The following remote control keys are used to control the VDR
  operation. To keep the number of different keys as small as
  possible, several keys have different meanings in the various
  modes:

  Key     Normal      Main       Channels   Timer      Edit/New      Recordings  Replay

  Up      Ch up       Crsr up    Crsr up    Crsr up    Crsr up       Crsr up     Play
  Down    Ch down     Crsr down  Crsr down  Crsr down  Crsr down     Crsr down   Pause
  Left    Prev group  -          -          Disable    Decrement     -           Search back
  Right   Next group  -          -          Enable     Increment     -           Search forward
  Ok      Ch display  Select     Switch     Edit       Accept        Play        Progress disp.
  Menu    Menu on     Menu off   Menu off   Menu off   Menu off      Menu off    Menu on
  Back    -           Menu off   Main menu  Main menu  Discard       Main menu   -
  Red     -           Record     Edit       Edit       -             Play        -
  Green   -           -          New        New        -             -           Skip -60s
  Yellow  -           -          Delete     Delete     -             Delete      Skip +60s
  Blue    -           -          Mark       Mark       -             -           Stop
  0..9    Ch select   -          -          -          Numeric inp.  -           -

* Navigating through the On Screen Menus

  The "Main" menu can be called up with the "Menu" key of your remote
  control unit. The "Up" and "Down" keys are used to select a specific
  item. The "Left" and "Right" keys can be used to change options, and
  the numeric keys allow direct input of numeric data. The "Ok" key
  confirms any changes (or switches to a channel in the "Channels" menu).
  The "Back" key goes back one level in the menu structure, discarding
  any changes that might have been made in the current menu.
  
  In the "Timers" menu, the current timer can be enabled or disabled with
  the "Right" or "Left" key, respectively (enabled timers are marked with ">").
  "Ok" here opens the "Edit timer" menu.
  
  Textual options, like channel names or recording file names, can be edited
  by pressing the "Right" button (which puts brackets around the current
  character as in "[R]TL"), selecting the desired character position with
  "Left" and "Right", and changing the character with the "Up" and "Down"
  keys. "Ok" then confirms the changes. The special character '^' can be used
  to "cut off" a string at this position. When this character is visible in the
  brackets (as in abc[^]), the next press to the "Left" or "Ok" button will
  actually cut off the string. Using "Up" and/or "Down" brings back the
  original rest of the string (unless you have pressed "Left" or "Ok").
  
  The "Red", "Green", "Yellow" and "Blue" buttons have special meanings
  in various menus and are listed at the bottom of the on-screen-display.
  
  At any point in the menu system, pressing the "Menu" key again will
  immediately leave the menu system (discarding any pending changes).

* Selecting a Channel

  There are three ways to select a channel:

  1. With no On Screen Menu displayed press the "Up" or "Down" key to switch
     to the next higher or lower channel.
  2. Press the "Menu" button to bring up the On Screen Menu, select "Channels"
     and browse through the list with the "Up" and "Down" key; to switch to the
     selected channel press "Ok".
  2. Directly type in the channel number with the numeric keys ('0'..'9');
     if no key is pressed for about half a second, the digits collected so
     far will define the channel number.

  After switching to a different channel the channel number and name, as well
  as the current time are displayed at the top of the screen. This line
  automatically goes away after about two seconds, or if any key is pressed.
  To bring up the channel display without switching channels you can press
  the "Ok" button.

* Switching through channel groups

  If the 'channels.conf' file contains "group separators" you can switch
  through these groups by pressing the "Left" and "Right" key while no
  menu is being displayed. The channel display will show the name of the
  group, and if you press the "Ok" button while the group name is being
  displayed, you will switch to the first channel of that group.

  Channel groups can be whatever you decide them to be. You can either
  group your channels by "Bouquet", by language, genre or whatever your
  preferences may be.

* Instant Recording

  You can start recording the current channel by pressing the "Red" button
  in the Main menu. This will create a timer event named "@channelname" that
  starts at the current time and records for two hours.
  If you want to modify the recording time you need to edit the timer.
  Stop instant recording by pressing the "Menu" button and selecting
  "Stop Recording", or by disabling the timer.

* Replaying a Recording

  All recordings are listed in the "Recordings" menu. Browse through the
  list with the "Up" and "Down" button and press "Ok" (or the "Red" button)
  to start playback.
  Playback can be stopped via the Main menu by selecting "Stop replaying",
  or by pressing the "Blue" button outside the menu.

* Replay Control

  The following keys have the listed meaning in Replay mode:

  - Up      Resumes normal replay from any "pause", "forward" or "backward"
            mode.
  - Down    Halts playback at the current position. Press again to continue
            playback.
  - Blue    Stops playback and stores the current position, so that
            playback can be resumed later at that point.
  - Left
    Right   Runs playback forward or backward at a higher speed; press
            again to resume normal speed. If in Pause mode, runs forward or
            backward at a slower speed; press again to return to pause mode.
  - Green
    Yellow  Skips about 60 seconds back or forward.
  - Ok      Brings up the replay progress display, which shows the date,
            time and title of the recording, a progress bar and the
            current and total time of the recording.
            Press "Ok" again to turn off the progress display.

* Programming the Timer

  Use the "Timer" menu to maintain your list of timer controlled recordings.
  The parameters in the "Edit Timer" menu have the following meanings:

  Active:    Defines whether the timer will be processed (set it to 'no' to
             temporarily desable a timer).
  Channel:   The channel to be recorded (as defined in the "Channels" list).
             Any changes made in the "Channels" list (like renaming or
             reordering channels) will be automatically reflected in the
             timers settings.
  Day:       The day on which this timer shall start. This can be either a
             "day of month" (1..31), which allows programming a "single shot"
             timer that hits once and is deleted after it ends. Single shot
             timers can be programmed up to one month into the future.
             Another option here are "repeating timers" which are defined
             by listing the days of the week on which they shall record.
             For example, a timer that shall record every monday and wednesday
             would have a Day setting of "M-W----".
  Start:     The start time of the timer in hh:mm as 24 hour ("military") time.
  Stop:      The stop time of the timer.
  Priority:  The Priority (0..99) is used to decide which timer shall be
             started in case there are two or more timers with the exact same
             start time. The first timer in the list with the highest Priority
             will be used. This value is also stored with the recording and is
             later used to decide which recording to remove from disk in order
             to free space for a new recording. If the disk is full and a new
             recording needs more space, an existing recording with the lowest
             Priority (and which has exceeded its guaranteed Lifetime) will be
             removed.
  Lifetime:  The number of days (0..99) a recording made through this timer is
             guaranteed to remain on disk before it is automatically removed
             to free up space for a new recording. Note that setting this
             parameter to very high values for all recordings may soon fill up
             the entire disk and cause new recordings to fail due to low disk
             space.
  File:      The name under which a recording created through this timer will
             be stored on disk (the actual name will also contain the date and
             time, so it is possible to have a "repeating timer" store all its
             recordings under the same name; they will be distinguishable by
             their date and time).
             If this field is left blank, the channel name will be used to form
             the name of the recording.

* Parameters in the "Setup" menu

  Select "Setup" from the main menu to enter the setup menu. From there you can
  modify the following system parameters (note that "boolean" values will be
  displayed as "no" and "yes" in the "Setup" menu, while in the setup file they
  are stored as '0' and '1', respectively):

  PrimaryDVB = 1         Defines the primary DVB interface (i.e. the one that
                         will display the menus and will react on input through
                         the remote control). Valid values range from '1' to the
                         number of installed DVB cards. If more than one DVB card
                         is installed and a recording is to be started, the
                         program will try to use a free DVB card that is different
                         from the primary DVB interface, so that the viewer will
                         be disturbed as little as possible.

  ShowInfoOnChSwitch = 1 Turns the display of the current/next information on
                         or off when switching the channel. The information is
                         always displayed when pressing the "Ok" button in
                         normal viewing mode.

  MenuScrollPage = 1     0 = when pressing the "Down" ("Up") key while the cursor
                             is on the last (first) line of a list page, the
                             list is advanced by a full page and the cursor will
                             be at the top (bottom) of that page
                         1 = dto., but the cursor remains at the bottom (top) of
                             the page (this mode allows for faster scrolling
                             through long lists)