Announcing version 1.00beta of TunerPlay - plugin which enables controlling & playing an FM radio from a analog TV/FM tuner card in a Windows PC.
This is a beta version of the plugin in that it has only been tested on two types of Tuner cards on Windows XP and Vista. The plugin will probably be able to play FM radio using most cards but it is likely Tunerplay will make a mistake configuring automatically with some cards - this will require some manually settings some TunerPlay settings. Also not sure about Win2K as DirectShow is not included/supported in all versions of Windows. This plugin is for Windows based PC - there are other plugins/solutions for using Tuner cards on Linux PCs. The plugin uses the VLC application ( http://www.videolan.org ) to control and get an audio stream from the tuner card. The VLC application supports the Microsoft DirectShow interface and so this plugin will only work with Tuner cards that have a DirectSHow support (i.e. works with Microsoft applications) The plugin also has two small utilities to help configure the Plugin and control audio. *Basic Operation*. Once installed - there is a TunerPlay menu in Extras on WebUI, SB and SBC. Click on TunerPlay menu and you will a TunerPlay favorites list and a "manual tuning" entry where users can enter a frequency from webUI, SB remote or SBC controller. The TunerPlay favorites list is just like favorites. It seems to be useful to have the possibility to keep the FM presets separate from Internet radio. The TunerPlay presets list can be populated by stations which have a signal by choosing "AutoTune" in the Settings menu, waiting until scanfm process has finished (typically 3 minutes) and the clicking Reset Menu in setting.. A user can also make entries in the standard top-level Favorites with the URL prefix "tuner://" so that the Favorite with URL "tuner://104.0" will tune to FM 104.0 MHz. The user can add Title and Subtitle parameters to the URL to get extra text or override the Favorites name. for example tuner://98.1?Title=Rock FM&Subtitle=live radio *Installation* 1. Download and install VLC in the standard location. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html 2. Install the plugin using the Extension Downloader plugin (you will need to add my repository URL http://bpaplugins.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/repo.xml ) 3. Restart SC 4. Check TunerPlay settings that the vlc.exe path has been found and there are entry for the capture device and the Tuner card "pins". 5. To try the Autotune feature - click on the button, wait for about 2-4 mins (until scanfm.exe process has stopped) ands then click "reset menu". At the main web UI from Home go into TunerPlay and the presets list should be populated with stations whose name has the frequency and an indication of signal strength. *Troubleshooting*. * VLC cannot be run from a location on Windows path or from a SC Bin directory so TunerPlay has to know the path to the vlc.exe program. If vlc.exe has been installed in the standard directory, TunerPlay will probably find it. If it is installed in a non-standard directory then the path has to be entered in the TunerPlay Settings. * If you get a vlc has crashed dialog box - check that there is no other app using the Tuner card. For example, ff you have a Window Vista Ultimate MCE make sure the "Windows Media Center Receiver" service is stopped & probably disabled. A test would to be to try the vendor supplied TV tuning app (e.g. Hauppauge winTV2000) - if the app works then the Tuner card should be available to VLC. * When you try to play a station - buffering is very very slow and nothing happens at 100%. This usually means the TunerPlay has incorrectly guessed the configuration of the Tuner card. This is a beta version so some settings probably need to be changed. To get help run the batch file dshowdump.bat that is in the directory InstalledPlugins/Plugins/TunerPlay/Bin in SC cache directory (see Settings/Information on the location of the cache directory). The batch file generate a file called dshow.txt - attach the file to a post so Tuner board configuration can be examined. *Notes* Since this Plugin uses VLC and DirectShow - it can probably be modified to play stations from DVB cards or other sources supported by VLC.exe -- bpa ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bpa's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1806 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57692 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list plugins@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/plugins
