vdr/README.developer
Klaus Schmidinger 93a94b18b5 Version 1.3.0
- Changed thread handling to make it work with NPTL ("Native Posix Thread Library").
  Thanks to Jon Burgess, Andreas Schultz, Werner Fink and Stefan Huelswitt.
- The cThread class now accepts a 'Description' parameter, which is used to log
  the beginning and end of the thread, together with its process and thread id.
  For descriptions that need additional parameters you can use the function
  cThread::SetDescription(), which accepts 'printf()' like arguments.
  Existing plugins that use threads should be changed to use this functionality
  instead of explicit 'dsyslog()' calls inside their Action() function in order
  to support logging the thread ids.
- Added "Slovak Link" and "Czech Link" to 'ca.conf' (thanks to Emil Petersky).
  However, 'ca.conf' is now pretty much obsolete due to the automatic CA handling.
- Mutexes are now created with PTHREAD_MUTEX_ERRORCHECK_NP, which makes the
  'lockingTid' stuff obsolete (thanks to Stefan Huelswitt).
- Changed font handling to allow language specific character sets.
- Adopted the small font character set from the "Elchi" patch (originally
  provided by Alessio Sangalli).
- Greek language texts now use iso8859-7 character set (thanks to Dimitrios
  Dimitrakos).
- Rearranged section data handling, so that the actual data handling can be done
  separately, even from within plugins.
- The EPG data structures have been moved from eit.[hc] to epg.[hc] and have been
  adapted to the general VDR coding style. Plugins that use these data structures
  may need to change some function names (which should be obvious).
  The name 'subtitle' has been changed to 'shortText' to avoid clashes with actual
  subtitles that are part of a movie. The name 'extendedDescription' has been
  shortened to 'description'.
- Replaced 'libdtv' with 'libsi' (thanks to Marcel Wiesweg), which is thread
  safe and can be used by multiple section filters simultaneously.
- Added 'cRwLock' to 'thread.[hc]'. Note that all plugin Makefiles need to
  define _GNU_SOURCE for this to work (see the example plugin Makefiles and
  'newplugin').
- Fixed a problem with crc32 in SI handling on 64bit systems (thanks to Pedro
  Miguel Sequeira de Justo Teixeira for reporting this one).
- Fixed an alignment problem in CAM access on 64bit systems  (thanks to Pedro
  Miguel Sequeira de Justo Teixeira for reporting this one).
- Added 'StreamType' setting to CAM communication, which is important for
  Aston/SECA CAMs (thanks to Antonino Sergi).
- Now the CA descriptors are sent to the CAM in the 'program' or 'ES level'
  sections, depending on where they are found in the PMT (thanks to Hans-Peter
  Raschke for reporting this one). This should make SkyCrypt CAMs work.
- Now using the 'version number' of EPG events to avoid unnecessary work.
- Channel data is now automatically derived from the DVB data stream (inspired
  by the 'autopid' patch from Andreas Schultz).
- The current channel is now automatically re-tuned if the PIDs or other settings
  change. If a recording is going on on a channel that has a change in its
  settings, the recording will be stopped and immediately restarted to use the
  new channel settings.
- EPG events now use the complete channel ID with NID, TID and SID.
- Channel names in 'channels.conf' can now have a short form, as provided
  by some tv stations (see man vdr(5)). Currently channels that provide short
  names in addition to long ones are listed in the OSD as "short,long name",
  as in "RTL,RTL Television". The short names will be used explicitly later.
- The Ca parameter in 'channels.conf' has been extended and now contains all the
  CA system ids for the given channel. When switching to a channel VDR now tests
  for a device that provides one of these CA system ids. The devices automatically
  get their supported ids from the CI handler.
- The values in 'ca.conf' are currently without any real meaning. Whether or not
  a channel with conditional access can be received is now determined automatically
  by evaluating its CA descriptors and comparing them to the CA system ids
  provided by the installed CAM. Only the special values 1-16 are used to assign
  a channel to a particular device.
- Increased the maximum number of possible OSD colors to 256.
- Limited the line length in the EPG bugfix report, which appears to fix a buffer
  overflow that caused a crash when cleaning up the EPG data (at 05:00 in the
  morning).
2004-01-04 18:00:00 +01:00

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Version 1.3.0 marks the beginning of a new developer version
of VDR, in which I am going to integrate functionality from
patches that have been written by various people for previous
versions of VDR.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Beginning with version 1.3.0, VDR will automatically
=============== modify the 'channels.conf' file. Please run this version
of VDR in a controlled environment only, and work with
copies of all your config files!
This version of VDR focuses on some improvements regarding
CAM support and, most important, the first step towards automatic
PID handling. Some things are still in a raw state, but at least
the program should now dynamically react on any changes in the
channel settings.
Here's a list of the highlights - and what _not_ to expect yet
(but don't worry, these things will come soon ;-):
- Automatic switching when PIDs are changed (e.g. for regional
programmes).
- There is no explicit transponder list yet, so you just
have to define one channel for a new transponder and VDR
will automatically detect all other channels on that transponder.
- New channels are added to the end of the channel list, so
it might be a good idea to add a line like
:@1000 New channels
to have them start at some high number.
- Improved CAM support. Channels with conditional access now automatically
use the device that contains the proper CAM.
- No NVOD or "linked services" support yet.
- No radio support yet.
- No transponder scan yet.
Note that this is currently work in progress, so there may be some
areas that don't work as smooth as expected, yet.
Known issues:
=============
- The Setup/CICAM menu is currently without much meaning.
CA detection is done automatically.
- The channel "EURO1080" on Astra 19.2E currently broadcasts HDTV
test signals. Unfortunately, the full featured DVB cards crash
pretty ugly when tuned to that channel, so it might be a good idea
to have the channel definition
EURO1080:12168:v:S19.2E:27500:308:256:0:FF:21100:1:1088:0
in your 'channels.conf' file. Note the Ca parameter 'F' (255 in hex),
which gives this channel a non-existent Ca mode, so that it won't
be tuned to at all. If you really want to tune to this channel for
tests, do it on your own risk.
- The 'sky' plugin now temporarily uses Ca value 30 (this will be changed
later).
- Since the CA detection is now done automatically, a timer that starts
immediately after VDR has been launched and wants to record a CA channel
may not work. This will be changed later to make this work safely.
What to test:
=============
Apart from the usual general functionality, special attention should
be given to the following matters:
- Does the automatic PID switching really work in all cases, especially
in conjunction with conditional access channels?
- Does CAM support work for all kinds of CAMs?
Known bugs:
===========
- Sometimes a new channel is created with the wrong 'source'
parameter. This presumably happens when the transponder and source
are switched, and there is still an SDT data packet being processed.
The call to device->HasLock() in sections.c should fix this (and it
apparently does for most cases), but there must still be soemthing
wrong in that area.
- Sometimes the current channel gets re-tuned even though the channel
data of this channel didn't change (but that of an other channel did
change).