- AVerMedia AVerTV DVB-T
Started adding some code ... the recording shcedule is stored in a binary file. Not too hard to work out enough. Basic version sent to tester. Cannot test that the scheduled events get picked up without having the hardware but it looks promising.
Their scheduler reads the data on startup - so will need a stop/start to pick it up. Have included the code for that but disabled by default for now.

-myHTPC
Added some details about DABDig into the plug-in section on myHTPC. I wasn't listed as an author previously so couldn't publish into that area. Now needs someone to add a link to it from the plug-in page.

- Matrox G450 eTV
Another tester feedback ... looks like his set-up is different or I missed something. The original problem with their scheduler crashing the machine persists on his system. Waiting for some registry dumps to check it.

- Matrox G450 eTV
Over the weekend, went to see someone with the Matrox card. Found couple of small changes to make concerning registry handing. Issue remains though with trying to determine how to make an active PC-VCR/PC-VCRScheduler recognise the updates. If you scheudle without them running then it works fine.
Made Beta 10 available and had feedback that it worked (apart from when the Matrox software is running - as expected).

- ATi MMC
Comment from DigiGuide forum that the file name is not being set correctly. Code looks right - but perhaps something has changed with more recent versions of ATi MMC. Will make a new configurable item to choose different formats for some of the fields and see if that helps or hinders and will adapt the code based on feedback.

- myHTPC
The instructions that I wrote in April have a typing error - a critical "." v "-" error.
Have correct in my copy of the readme - but need to upload to the myHTPC site and the old password that I had in APril doesn't work any more. Contacted Pablo to another one.

Saw a few comments asking about scheduling into Matrox G450 eTV. Volunteered to help and quickly had 4 people interested enough to help in the investigation and testing.
Cannot load the eTV software onto local PC - too many checks for hardware being present - so relying on others to collect data and then try things out.
Once the first registry dumps came through it took about 20 minutes to have the basics coded. Unfortunately it crashs the eTV software.
Might have to go to see someone that has one of these TV cards to get to the bottom of it.

Should add uninstall info to web page ... very easy ...
del dabdig*.* from DigiGuide directory
restart DigiGuide (to stop usage of the dabdig.dgmarker that has just been deleted)

Thinking again about making the source generally available. I still want to make updates as requirements pop-up - but maybe others would also like to do same. Question then would be ... what licence type (if any) to put on the code.

- Nebula
3.031 is out and they have added abilty to skip internet checks when run from timer ... transparent to me since it is DigiSvc that does the running.
Looks like they have also had a problem with choosing the right channel from their own Timer/EPG screen when user chooses to sort by Favorites. However, quick test suggest that they are still storing the request using the absolute channel number (which was new in recent versions) ... so no change for me.
Loks like they do have an issue with file naming when there are non-DOS-legal characters in title .. so change default setting to 2 (from 0) just to make it less likely that people experiment with setting it to 1.

Had report of an odd error - seemed to be crashing on calling DateDiff. Realised that the request came from Greece so guessed that must be problem with different locale settings ... there were 4 places where I had used "1-Jan-1970" so changed them all to DateSerial(1970,1,1) and showed that it still worked fine here.

Had request to add support for ProgDVB - added it last night and feedback saying it worked.
So - released 2.44b08 including bundle of other bits and pieces since May 2003.

Have added series/episode function and a basic post-process call.
Waiting for user feedback before release.

Request from a user:
- Support Series/Episode in file name
- Launch external programme/batch file on output file at end of programme
- Make the INI file more streamlined (show less stuff)

2.43 now out includes:
- log when no devices to action (i.e. close item below)
- simple check to make the file generated for TVPI/TVVI XML-legal. One user is writing some code to parse the TVPI files to keep a database of what has been recorded.

Need to make an update to report when called but didn't find anything to do.
Reason - if the defaultdevice does not match anything in the USE* section then all will be skipped. This can happen when someone hand-edits dabdig.ini after auto-detect doesn't find the all o fthe right devices.

Made a 2.41b03

- J. River Media Jukebox / Media Center
A multi-media front-end - a bit like myHTPC. Except this is a commercial product.
It can launch various back-end systems, including TV cards.
it also has a scheduler available (in the "Plus" version).
Someone asked if it could be scheduled into from DigiGuide. I had a look and it seemed possible so I did it.

- Nebula DigiTV
Back-to-back recording. Because of the way that DigiTV works - or more particularly, because of the way that I schedule into it when used in the typical way with DigiGuide - if you try to record 2 programmes back-to-back then the 2nd one might not get recorded or even worse it might abort DigiTV during its recording and mess up the 1st. This version has an initial work-around for this (set allowforceexit=3). I might be able to do something a bit better later, but it would be great if Nebula DigiTV read the registry a bit more frequently (like at the end of the currently recording programme). Anyway - first version is out and maybe more to come later.

- TVPI and HDTV
HDTV (High Definition TV) is USA Digital broadcasting. A "channel" is a combination of 2 things - PSIP-Major and PSIP-Minor - like a channel number and mux stream number.
So - I have extended the TVPI module to support this - since the only HDTV card that I could find included support for TitanTV (TVPI creators).

- ATi MMC
Now run with /TV+ to push it into Full-Screen if you choose PLAY/WATCH.

- Creative VideoBlaster Digital VCR
Spotted a mistake in timezone offset calculation

- General
Started to put a mechanism in place to have a long-term queue of pending transactions.
Not used it yet - but the reason behind it is that not everyone likes to have DigiGuide maintain the queue and send requests in just a few minutes before the programme starts.

- DigiGuide PVR
First visible signs of real code from DigiGuide. They have made a TV viewer available (stand-alone Beta code for now).
Here for details

- TVPI
Have now made 2.40b05 ... with support for HDTV channels (psip-major/psip-minor)
- Nebula DigiTV
Need to take Favourites into account when setting channel number

- myHTPC
I put the calling script onto the myHTPC FTP site last night. Essentially same sort of thing as a DigiGuide dgmarker.
- ATi MMC
Added /TV+ when PLAYing
- Nebula DigiTV
Changed default channel numbering, on the assumption that most people now using more recent DigiTV with LCN sorting available
- TVPI
Might need to include some extra elements for USA HD-TV (psip). Basically extra info to determine where the channel is in the mux
- XMLTV
I let some folks now about my XMLTV channels

- DigiGuide 6.x and 7.x
Russ finally posted a document with the current thoughts of the DigiGuide team. Looks very good. Turns the DigiGuide suite into a network-aware Digital VCR. Might mean that I can retire DABDig. In the meantime though there always seem to be a few extra bits and pieces that people want ...
- MyHTPC
Got some feedback saying that the MyHTTC plug-in basically worked - so should document it and put into the package.
- WinTVCap
Just come across this on SourceForge. Yet another way to capture TV from WinVT devices. Has command line options that I could drive. I see also that there is a 2.x coming that has extra command line parameters so that it can be driven directly from DigiGuide. So - driving it from DABDig not necessary, but might do it for completeness - especially for people with multiple devices.

- Device Steering
Had a response from the user I referred to on 7th April. He tried it out and it worked as designed.
- Leadtek
Andrew replied - things not quite right. Seems to be 1 hour out (USA did change to summertime last week-end). Gave some pointers yesterday and waiting to hear more.

- MyHTPC
I picked up on a thread on 3rd about using TVPI files - what was really being asked for was a plug-in to MyHTPC.
Spent some time tonight understanding a bit about how MyHTPC works ... and made a plug-in for it so that MyHTPC can drive DABDig which in turn drives the rest as usual. I don't know enough about MtHTPC to try it all out - so posted a note to their forum looking for someone to help finish it off.
- Device Steering
Had a note from someone who has been experimenting with more than one device - and naturally hit the issue that both devices would be scheduled to. His solution was to copy the vbe file and make a new dgmarker. That woudl sort of work (if they were in different directories ... because of dabdig.ini) but messy - especially as I have already put in a generalised method to handle that.
Dropped him a note to explain - awaiting feedback.

- Leadtek
Worked out the profile handling for the post-Jan 2003 drivers - they store both the name and number. Made a new beta (2.37b15) and sent over to Andrew to try out.

- Leadtek
The post-Jan 2003 registry format pretty well done now. Able to write most of it out to the registry. Someone else in Canada going down same route has been doing similar decoding. I explained how the Year is encoded. Might get some time tongith to do some more on this.
- DigiGuide
The folks at DigiGuide are well into deciding how to make their own PVR. Looking forward to see what it offers.
-Audiotron
Finally ordered one - should arrive next week. It does have a documented HTTP API ... so might do a few things with it just for the hell of it ... e.g. scheduling live streaming from DG.

- Leadtek
Worked out most of the registry settings in new format. Looks like they do not clear to 0 before starting, hence lots of junk after the 0-terminated strings.
For the old version - had another look for the "Silent Recording" mode - but nowhere on my GUI. Contacted user in USA ... and it is clearly in their GUI in version of software that claims to be the same! Anyway - he dug in registry area that I referred to and found that MTS_Mode setting of 131327 sets silent mode. DABDig already allows controlling of the field (LeadtekTVMTSMode) so looking promising.

- Nebula
User with the odd error message send over traces. I reckon that a previous For loop must have had a problem, but didn't show up because of "On Error". I still think that there might be an inconsistency between his set-up (with Beta DigiTV software) and my channel chooser. Anyway - I put some extra debug statements in and cleared the Err to see what effect it has. Waiting for feedback.

- ATi MMC
Sent test version out to a UK user who sent me a registry dump this morning.