DVBViewer 7.0.0

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.0.0

Overview

Please note: DVBViewer Pro 7.x contains major changes. If DVBViewer is associated with a DVBViewer Media Server (full or basic version), it should be updated to version 3.x, because there may be compatibility issues with older Media Server 2.x versions. “Associated” means in this context, that Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Enable support for the DVBViewer Media Server is switched on and the Media Server in question is selected on this page.

A brief overview of the main changes:

• Streaming: MPEG Dash is supported as new streaming format. The support for HLS has been enhanced, particularly the playback of files that are provided as HLS stream.

• Channel List: All kinds of media streams and files can now be included in the channel and favorites list, thus giving it playlist functionality.

• Recording has generally been reworked and harmonized with the DVBViewer Media Server, plus several functional and UI enhancements. More settings can now be set up individually per timer in the Timer Recordings window. The recorder engine enables the download of files from streaming sources (e.g. HbbTV) and storing them as recording, by just clicking the Record button.

• Timeshift has been redesigned completely. Timeshift recordings are now performed by the recorder engine, not by the playback engine anymore, which involves several enhancements. If you decide to keep a timeshift file, it gets fully integrated as recording. Ongoing recordings are automatically used for timeshift. Multi-timeshift enables switching between two or more channels with timeshifted playback.

• Media Server Support: Particularly the cooperation with a DVBViewer Media Server as background recording engine has been elaborated further and harmonized in several respects.

• Keyboard / Remote Control: The Options → Input page has been reworked, particularly for making it more convenient and self-explanatory. It provides extended facilities for organizing the assignment of keys to DVBViewer functions.

• Option pages have partly been moved to another tree view position, renamed, redesigned or merged, in order to achieve a more reasonable and understandable structure.

Please click the links above for more details!

Streaming

• Added: TS Stream: Support for the streaming format MPEG Dash. Usually the URLs have the filename extension .mpd and refer to an XML manifest. The general handling is similar to HLS. MPD URLs for Dash streams can be used in Playback → Open URL, in the playlist and channel list. Additionally they may be selectable on HbbTV pages (requires HbbTV add-on). Please note the following limitations:

  • Supported codecs are H.264 and HEVC video and AAC, AC3 and EAC3 audio.

  • The only supported container format is the mostly used segmented MP4 base media format (which is internally transcoded to TS). Some rarely used MPEG Dash options are not supported.

  • The current implementation does not support playing encrypted / DRM-protected streams.

• Added: TS Stream: Support for HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) with

  • AC3 and EAC3 audio (previously only MP3 and AAC).

  • segments in MP4 base media format (previously only segmented transport and audio elementary streams). DVBViewer internally converts it to a transport stream.

  • master playlists that offer streams with different video/audio formats (e.g. H.264 and HEVC). The desired format can be selected by appending ?codec=… to the URL (or &codec=… if there is already a query part). The codec selection is not sent to the server, but processed and removed by DVBViewer. The specified codec must be a sub-string of (or equal) the CODECS attribute in the master playlist, e.g. codec=avc1

• Added: File Playback: Files provided by the server as HLS or MPEG Dash stream can now be played as files by using the DVBViewer Filter, including support for jumping to another position. All HLS/Dash URLs originating from Playback → Open URL or the Playlist are handled in this way. If they are actually live streams, jumping is disabled. HLS/Dash URLs from the channel list are only played as file, if “Play as file” is checked in the Channel Editor.

• Added: Playback Components Options (former DirectX options): Two additional checkboxes on the DVBViewer Filter tab: Use DVBViewer Filter for *.m3u8 (HLS) and *.mpd (MPEG Dash). They specify whether the DVBViewer Filter shall be used for HLS / MPEG Dash file playback or a third party source filter, provided a suitable component is registered in the system. HLS can also be played with the LAV source filter, if installed. However, no alternative is currently known for MPEG Dash.

• Change: File Playback: DVBViewer can now play files with HTTPS URLs by using the DVBViewer Filter, even if the server uses a self-signed certificate or a certificate with unknown issuer. Previously playback failed in this case due to the underlying WinInet API, so that the LAV Source Filter had to be used as fallback.

Channel List

• Added: Channel Editor: Possibility to include all kinds of media streams and files in the channel list and start playback from there (previously only live streams belonging to the TS Stream type). The Channel Editor enables it in the following ways:

  • Drag and drop media files and folders from the explorer into the Channel Editor. Multi-selection is supported. Only media files are added (see Options → Movies/Music/Images for media file extensions). The drive letter is used as root folder name and the directory name as category.

  • Select media files in the Import Dialog (after switching to the “All Files” type).

  • Add a single item by clicking New → Stream. Enter the URL or file path in the Address input line and the stream name in the Name input line. Finally click the Add button. You can preselect the position where the new item shall be inserted by first selecting an existing category folder or channel list item.

Such items can also be included in the favorites. Channel +/- or Favorite +/- can be used to switch between them, and DVBViewer stores them as “Last Channel”. However, using the number or up/down keys for switching is not possible, because they have another function for file playback. Please note that there are drawbacks due to the channel list file format. Names may get shortened after restarting DVBViewer. Furthermore items with Unicode characters that are missing in the local character set are not handled correctly.

• Added: Channel Editor: Checkbox “Play as file” on the Channel/Stream Data page for (TS) Stream items. It decides which internal DVBViewer branch takes over playback:

  • If “Play as file” is unchecked, the TS Stream branch intended for live streams is used. It only covers transport streams (TS) and streams that DVBViewer can convert to a transport stream (like MP3/AAC audio or MPEG Dash). Seeking/jumping is disabled.

  • If “Play as file” is checked, the file playback engine is used. However, it can also handle some live stream formats, that are not covered by the TS Stream branch, particularly if the LAV Filters are installed. If the source has a finite length, seeking/jumping is enabled, otherwise disabled.

In many cases DVBViewer recognizes the type automatically and sets/resets the “Play as file” checkmark accordingly. If an item is clearly not playable with the TS Stream branch, the checkbox is checked and disabled. However, in some cases DVBViewer cannot distinguish “live” and “file” by examining the URL (without asking the server), so a manual adjustment may be necessary. This particularly applies to URLs for MP3, AAC, TS, HLS or MPEG Dash Streams.

• Added: Channel List: New “Playlist Settings” sub-menu in the context menu of all channel list representations (except OSD and Channel Editor), including the Popup Channel List and the Channel Lists in the EPG and Timer Recordings window. The sub-menu contains the following items:

  • Playlist Mode: Switches the mode on/off. In playlist mode file entries in the channel list are played consecutively. When playback of a file is finished, DVBViewer automatically switches to the next one. It skips all channels and streams that are not recognized as file or not marked with “play as file” in the Channel Editor (see above).

  • Endless Playback: Switches endless mode on/off. In endless mode DVBViewer continues with the first file entry after the last has been played.

  • Across Categories: If switched off, DVBViewer regards each category as a separate playlist. It stops playback if the last file entry in the current category has been played, or continues with the first entry within the category in endless mode. If “Across Categories” is switched on, DVBViewer regards all file entries in the channel list as a single playlist.

• Added: Channel List: “Only File Entries” item in the Filter sub-menu of the context menu. It activates/deactivates a filter for only showing file entries in the channel list. Since file entries don't contain video/audio format information, the H.264/HEVC and AC3 filter options are ignored in this case.

Recording

• Change: Main Window: The red record button now also signals an ongoing timer recording of the currently played channel by changing its color to blue-gray (previously only in case of manual instant recordings). By this the record menu, that appears after clicking the blue-gray button, is also applicable to timer recordings. If there are two or more ongoing recordings of the channel, an additional submenu level allows to select the recording that shall be targeted by commands like “Stop” or “Delete”. Please note that in two cases the end time of ongoing recordings cannot be changed via the record menu (e.g. by “Stop in 30 Minutes”):

  • Timer recording with weekly repetition on certain days, because it would affect all future recordings triggered by this timer.

  • Timer recordings that are stopped in the Media Server by the EPG status.

• Added: Main Window: Tweak “Record button only for instant recordings” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). Switching it on lets the record button behave like in previous DVBViewer versions, so that the button and associated menus in the main window only respond to ongoing (manual) instant recordings, not to timer recordings. The default is off. Please note that the action “Record” (by default assigned to the R key) always refers to instant recordings, independently from the tweak. This enables to start instant recordings, even if a timer recording of the currently played channel is already going on. If an instant recording is going on, the action opens the OSD record menu.

• Change: Recording Options: The elements on the “Recordings” and “Recording Timers” pages (former “Recorder” and “Recordings”) have been re-sorted:

  • The Recordings page contains settings that are applied to recordings when they are started by DVBViewer (not by the Media Server, that uses its own set of corresponding settings).

  • The Recording Timers page contains settings that serve as default for recordings that are executed by DVBViewer or delegated to the Media Server. The settings can be changed individually per timer in the Timer Recordings window (see below).

• Added: Recording Timers Options: New Placeholders button. It opens a tool window that enumerates all placeholders that can be used in the File Naming Scheme. Double-clicking a placeholder or selecting it and pressing the Return key inserts it at the current position in the input line.

• Added: Timer Recordings Window: Possibility to adjust the recording format, the included streams and the file naming scheme individually per timer. This entails several internal adjustments. The file timers.xml has a new forwards and backwards compatible hybrid format. Besides timer data in the previous format the same data plus additional fields is written in a more flexible format close to the one used by the DVBViewer Media Server in its svctimers.xml. This avoids weak points of the old format. Now semicolons can be used in the timer name/description, semicolons in channel names do not corrupt timer data anymore.

• Change: Timer Recordings Window: Deactivated timers (without checkmark) are now displayed grayed (previously in italics). If “Send timers to the server” is configured, remaining DVBViewer timers are displayed in italics. Additionally the hint for such timer list entries contains “DVBViewer Recording!” (previously no indication).

• Change: Timer Recording Window: The tuner type icons in the timer list now also indicate with a small yellow key if the to be recorded channel is encrypted. If no channel can be assigned to the timer, so that DVBViewer cannot execute the recording, the icon is replaced by a red cross. However, this does not apply to timers that are delegated to the Media Server, because DVBViewer does not know whether the server can assign a channel (its channel list may be different).

• Fix: Timer Recording Window: The timer list now displays a channel name, even if no channel can be assigned to a timer, since the name can also be taken from the timer's channel ID. Additionally the timer can now be edited in case of a missing channel assignment (previously the Apply button was disabled).This particularly applies to Media Server timers for which no matching channel is present in the DVBViewer channel list.

• Added: Recording Statistics Window: Bottom panel buttons for stopping, deleting and playing recordings. Previously the commands were only available in the context menu. The Title column of the Recordings tab shows the EPG title plus the EPG subheading (if present) separated by a hyphen (previously only the title). The list views on the Recording Status and Recordings tab now show entries as hints on mouse over if they exceed the column width.

• Added: Recorder: If the currently played file is referenced by an URL and not located on the local hard disk, it can be downloaded by clicking the red record button. This particularly applies to HbbTV videos from media libraries (HbbTV add-on required). Basically DVBViewer handles the download like a normal recording:

  • The progress can be viewed in the Recording Statistics Window.

  • The file is named according to the user defined scheme (as far as possible without EPG) and stored in a recording directory

  • The download is included in the recording database and listed as recording.

Since the download is performed independently from playback, it will usually be finished before playback is completed. The feature also applies to files that have been added as channel list entries (see “Channel List” section). This allows to schedule the download by creating a timer recording. It stops when the download is finished, or at the latest when the end time is reached.

• Fix/Change: Recorder: Henceforth DVBViewer will log recordings in the file rec.log (no more in svcrec.log), in order to avoid access clashes with the Media Server.

• Change: Recorder: The “Delete and Restart” command, available in the he context menu on the Recording Status tab of the Recording Statistics windows and in the Record Menu of the Main Window, now shifts the start time of the restarted recording to “Now” (except in case of timers with weekly repetition), but keeps the duration. Previously the end time was not shifted accordingly, thus shortening the restarted recording.

• Change: Recorder: Enhanced synchronization between the channel and timer list. Every relevant change in the channel list (e.g. renaming of a channel) immediately updates the assignment of channels to timers. Deleting channels from the channel list lets the timer list create a temporary copy of the channel data, so that the timers can still be executed until DVBViewer is closed. Adding channels lets the timer list check if lost links can be restored. This avoids wrong channel assignments and drifting apart of timers and corresponding channel list entries.

• Change: Recorder: If Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Send timers to the server is switched on, as well as Options → Recorder → Use Windows Task Scheduler, DVBViewer timers, that are executed by DVBViewer, are still synchronized with the Windows Task Scheduler. Previously any synchronization was prevented by the “Send timers to the server” option.

Timeshift

• Change: Timeshift: The handling of timeshift recordings has been reworked and changed completely:

  • Timeshift recordings are now performed by the recorder engine, not by the playback unit anymore. The settings on Options → Recordings / Recording Timers apply to it, except the recording format, that is always TS, because it is required for the “recording from timeshift buffer” feature.

  • “Rebuild Playback” does not cancel timeshift recording and playback anymore. The same applies to switching to another audio track, if Options → Recording Timers → Include All Audio Tracks is ticked. After the action playback is continued at the position where it has been stopped.

  • After changing to a currently recorded channel or when a recording of this channel starts, DVBViewer automatically uses the file for timeshift, allowing to jump back in time. This also applies to recordings with MPG or MP2, AC3 etc. as format. Using recordings for timeshift can be limited or switched off by the tweak “Use ongoing recordings for timeshift” (→ launch Tweaker.exe): 0 = don't use recordings, 1 = only timer recordings, 2 = only manual (instant) recordings, 3 = all recordings.

  • When switching away from such a persistently recorded channel, DVBViewer saves the current (timeshift) playback position and restores it when returning to this channel. This enables switching between two or more channels with time-shifted playback (multi-timeshift), provided enough tuners are available for receiving the channels simultaneously.

  • TV/Radio → Keep Timeshift File is no general permanent setting anymore, but specifies the recording status of the currently played channel. The menu item is disabled if no recording of the channel is going on. It is checked in case of a normal (persistent) recording and unchecked in case of a volatile timeshift recording, that is deleted automatically when not needed anymore. Clicking “Keep Timeshift File” changes the recording status from volatile to persistent and vice versa. DVBViewer prompts for confirmation when “Keep Timeshift File” is switched off.

  • Volatile timeshift recordings are not signaled as recordings. REC indicators are not visible and the record button remains red, so that recordings from the timeshift buffer can be started. Furthermore volatile timeshift recordings are not included in the recording database, so they don't appear in the list of recordings, unless “Keep Timeshift File” is switched on before they are deleted. However, timeshift recordings are listed in the Timer Recordings window and on the Recording Status tab of the Recording Statistics window (similar to manually started instant recordings), where they can be controlled by using context menu commands. In contrast to persistent recordings they are displayed in blue, not in black.

  • The Options → Timeshift page has been removed. Two settings have been moved to the TV/Radio page (start timeshift automatically, warning on timeshift termination), other settings are now covered by the Recordings and Recording Timers page. The Directories section provides a new checkbox “Use for timeshift”, allowing to direct timeshift recordings to the selected recording directory. If no directory is assigned to timeshift, DVBViewer takes the first usable directory from the top for it.

  • If DVBViewer is configured as client of a DVBViewer Media Server on the same PC and Options → DVBViewer Media Server → “Send timers to the server” is switched on, it is possible to activate the tweak “Delegate timeshift recordings to the Media Server” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). It lets the Media Server execute timeshift recordings and include them in its recording database, if “Keep Timeshift File” is switched on in DVBViewer (see above). Please note that in this case the Media Server settings apply to timeshift recordings, not the ones in DVBViewer.

Media Server Support

• Change: Media Server Client: When DVBViewer sends timers to the Media Server, it now includes all settings that are visible on the Options → Recording Timers page and in the Timer Recordings Window, thus allowing DVBViewer clients to specify timers more individually than before. However, some of the Media Server’s per-timer properties (EPG Monitoring, Task after Recording, Series, Priority) cannot be controlled in DVBViewer. The Media Server uses default values for them, that are specified in its options.

• Added: Media Server Client: If “Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Send timers to the server” changes from off to on, DVBViewer timers (supposed to be executed by DVBViewer) are moved to the Media Server. If “Send timers to the server” is already active on program start, but there are DVBViewer timers that previously could not be sent to the server, DVBViewer tries to send them again after loading its timer list (timers.xml).

• Change: Media Server Options/Wizard: If “Connect to the server's timer list” gets switched off, DVBViewer also switches “Send timers to the server” off, in order to prevent adding of timers without any feedback and control in DVBViewer.

• Change: Recorder: DVBViewer is now able to delegates timer recordings to the Media Server, even if the channel belongs to the TS Stream reception type and has an URL that refers to the Media Server itself (HTTP transcoded/non-transcoded or RTSP). Previous DVBViewer versions executed such timers themselves, because the server cannot work as its own client. For circumventing this problem, DVBViewer now changes the Channel ID of the timer to the one of the original Media Server channel (retrieved from the URL) when sending the timer and changes it back to the TS Stream Channel ID after having received the timer list from the Media Server.

• Change/Added: Media Server Client: More consistent and extended error handling when using the Media Server API. If the server is unreachable or responds with a HTTP error code, DVBViewer displays an error message (OSD or message box), particularly “Cannot reach the Media Server”, “Function unavailable” (404 Not Found), “Missing or wrong user name and password” (401 Unauthorized), or the error code in other cases.

• Change: Recorder: If Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Send timers to the server is switched on, but the server is not reachable or responds with an error code to adding a new timer, a DVBViewer timer (executed by DVBViewer) is created as substitute, if possible.

• Change: Media Server Client: If DVBViewer is configured as client of a Media Server on the same PC, reception of all TS Stream channels (except those with localhost as source) is delegated by default to the Media Server's web server, that passes the stream on to the DVBViewer client, in order to avoid double bandwidth occupancy, e.g. if the same Internet TV/Radio channel is played in DVBViewer and simultaneously recorded in the Media Server. Please note: This feature requires DVBViewer Media Server 3.0.0 or later.

• Added: Media Server Client: The tweak “Receive TS Stream via the local Media Server” (→ launch Tweaker.exe) allows to switch reception of TS Stream channels via the Media Server off, if unwanted.

• Added: Media Server Client: DVBViewer is now able to establish HTTPS connections to the Media Server 3.0 or later, if it is configured accordingly. For this purpose https:// must be prefixed to the content of Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Address and port. Please note that messages from the Media Server to DVBViewer clients, e.g. for letting them update the timer list, use another protocol (UDP Multicast) which can not be changed to HTTPS. The same applies to RTSP/Sat>IP. Auto-detection of Media Servers in the network always assumes HTTP due to the underlying UPnP protocol.

• Change: Timer Recording Window: Selecting a Media Server timer with EPG monitoring disables the input fields for date, start and end time, because the times are determined by the EPG.

• Added: Recording Statistics Window: The Recording Status tab now provides full information about recordings executed by the Media Server by means of a new Media Server API (version 3.0.0 or later required). Previously most of the information was empty.

• Change: Media Server Options / Wizard: The “Ignore local recordings” setting has been reversed and renamed to “Also show DVBViewer recordings” to make it more comprehensible. Additionally DVBViewer prevents the options “Connect to the server's recording list” and “Also show DVBViewer recordings” to be both switched off, because this combination would yield an empty recording list.

• Change: Recording Statistics Window: If “Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Connect to the server’s recording list” and “Also show DVBViewer recordings” are both switched on, duplicate entries in the recording list are filtered out. Entries originating from the Media Server recording database are preferred over entries originating from the DVBViewer database. Additionally they are displayed in different colors (black = Media Server, blue = DVBViewer), so they can be distinguished.

• Fix: Media Server Options: If the associated Media Server is currently executing instant or timeshift recordings, and sending timers to the server gets canceled by changed settings, the recordings are stopped after prompting for confirmation.

Keyboard / Remote Control

• Change/Fix: Input Options: The input options have been reworked completely. Several issues have been fixed. Adding/Editing user defined commands is more convenient and comprehensible now. In detail:

  • Change: The default command list has been restructured. Some groups have been renamed (in the English and German language files), some commands have been moved to a more suitable group so they can be found easier. However, after updating an existing DVBViewer installation to 7.0.0, Options → Input will still show the previous structure, that is loaded from the file default.remote in the Remotes subdirectory of the configuration folder. For adopting the new structure, first rename this file while DVBViewer is closed, e.g. to old.remote. After starting DVBViewer, Options → Input will show the new default list. For restoring user defined commands and key assignments, click Import and select the previous (renamed) default.remote file.

  • Change: The “Learn On / Off” button has been replaced by a checkbox, that indicates the current state more clearly.

  • Fix: Added key assignments are now automatically scrolled into view.

  • Fix: Clicking Apply in learning mode prevented further assignment of remote control keys, though the "Learn Off" button still signaled an active learning mode. It was necessary to switch the learning mode off and on again in order to assign more remote control keys. The keyboard was not affected.

  • Change: “Add Group” does not open an input box prompting for the group name anymore, but adds a new group with the default name “New” and activates an in-place input line in the command list.

  • Change: “Add Command” does not open an input box prompting for the command name anymore. The input line is now integrated in the Command Editor, with “New” as default name.

  • Change: The useless “action name” input line has been removed from the Command Editor. DVBViewer did not use the name. Actions defined in the command.vbs script file (with action numbers starting from 20480) always got and still get the name “User Defined”.

  • Added: Changing the Action ID in the Number input line of the Command Editor or selecting an action in the “Action sequence assigned to the command” list now automatically displays the corresponding item in the “Select an action” drop-down list.

  • Fix: Wrong insert position when re-sorting the action sequence in the Command Editor by drag & drop.

  • Added: All groups can now be deleted (previously only user defined groups). Additionally they can be renamed by slowly double-clicking the name in the command list. It lets an in-place input line appear. Previously renaming was only possible for user-defined groups by deleting and recreating the item.

  • Added: All commands can now be deleted, renamed (by slowly double-clicking them) or edited. Previously only user defined commands could be changed, not the predefined ones that initially populate the command list. Please note: After changing the name of a predefined item it is internally regarded as user-defined. It is not translated by language files anymore.

  • Added: The new button “Import Default” adds missing default commands, that have been deleted or changed before, to the command list again.

  • Change: The previous “Default” button has been renamed to “Load Default”, making more clear what it does. Generally “Import” buttons add something to the list, whereas “Load” buttons replace the whole list.

• Change: Winlirc: For being launched automatically on DVBViewer start, Winlirc.exe can now also be stored in a Winlirc sub-folder of the DVBViewer program directory (instead of the DVBViewer program directory itself). This avoids a conflict between the Winlirc Plugins sub-folder and the DVBViewer Plugins sub-folder.

Options

• Change: Options: The Options tree view has been restructured:

  • The Timeshift page has been removed. Two settings have been moved to the TV/Radio page (start timeshift automatically, warning on timeshift termination), other settings are now covered by the Recordings and Recording Timers page (see Timeshift section above).

  • The Shutdown page has been merged with the Extended page.

  • The EPG, Teletext, Subtitles and Channel Logos pages are now subitems of the TV/Radio page. The Teletext page has been renamed to Teletext/HbbTV (see below).

  • The Weather page is now a subitem of the News page.

  • The Images page including its subitem has been moved down below the Movies and Music pages.

  • The DirectX page has been renamed to Playback Components (for making more clear what it is about).

  • The DVBViewer Media Server page has been moved up below the Recording pages, so it is visible without scrolling.

• Change: Hardware Options: The tuner type of BDA devices cannot be changed anymore in the options, in order to prevent misconfiguration (see here). If really necessary, the type must be tweaked by editing the TunerType entry in the file hardware.xml while DVBViewer is closed (0 = Cable, 1 = Satellite, 2 = Terrestrial, 3 = ATSC).

• Fix: OSD Menu Options: Missing translation of parent menu names in the list of OSD pages, missing update of the whole list after a language change and other issues.

• Added: Teletext/HbbTV Options: The new HbbTV section contains HbbTV auto-start options. They are only available if the HbbTV add-on is installed (see DVBViewer help menu → Order/Unlock Add-Ons). The options specify for which channels DVBViewer shall start HbbTV automatically after channel selection. Without auto-start HbbTV has to be activated by pressing OSD Red (F5). The “Passive HbbTV mode” tweak is superseded by the new options and has been removed.

Auto-start can be activated for all channels, only radio channels, no channel or for channels whose name contains a certain character string like “(internet)” or “(connect)”. The last option particularly targets channels that use HbbTV for automatically starting an internet stream after they have been selected, like the German public internet TV channels on the DVB-T2 ARD frequency and the commercial Freenet Connect internet TV channels in substream #1 of the DVB-T2 ZDF frequency.

Please note that HbbTV auto-start may cause a temporary insert in the TV picture after channel selection, depending on the broadcaster. Activated HbbTV (even if not visible) captures some keyboard / remote keys, so that they don’t have their normal OSD function anymore. Pressing OSD Menu or Esc switches HbbTV off and lets DVBViewer return to the normal key assignment.

Miscellaneous

• Fix: Recording and Device Statistics: Wrong color for unavailable tuners on the Device Status tab (gray instead of red).

• Fix: Playlist: If the DVBViewer Filter handled live streams originating from a playlist, the playlist was reset to the “not playing” state, causing no item to be selected and the Previous/Next actions to be disabled (see here).

• Change: TV Playback: Better handling of streams using the H.264 baseline profile, which caused problems with the LAV Video Decoder if configured for DXVA2 native. This also includes measures in the DVBViewer Filter.

• Fix: Playback: Video format detection failed in case of HEVC Range Extension and High Throughput profiles (also concerns the DVBViewer Filter, see here).

• Added: EPG Window: Tuner type icons on the “EPG at...” tab.

• Fix: Screenshots: If Options → General → Use EPG for screenshot filename was switched off, the channel name was not included in the filename in case of TV playback, yielding a filename that only consisted of date/time.

• Change: Main Window: The “Change Log” item in the Help menu has been renamed to “Release Notes”.

• Added: Zoom Presets: Tweak “Number of zoom presets” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). It can be used to change the number of zoom presets. Four presets are set up by default. The Preset #x button in the Settings -> Zoom window or the "Zoom Next Preset" action switch over to the next set of zoom settings.

• Change: Network Libraries / OpenSSL: Network libraries have been updated for OpenSSL 1.1.x support. OpenSSL is required for encrypted connections via HTTPS. The new OpenSSL DLLs (libssl-1_1.dll and libcrypto-1_1.dll) have been added to the setup. They carry different names than the previously used OpenSSL 1.0.2 DLLs (ssleay32.dll and libeay32.dll). DVBViewer preferably uses the new DLLs, if available, but is also able to work with the old ones.

• Added: Hardware: Plugin interface that allows to support new hardware (e.g. ATSC 3.0 devices) by adding a DLL (by Christian).

• Removed: Hardware: Support for Freenet DVB-T2 USB devices. If still needed the support will be added again as plugin (see above).

 

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.0.1 (Bugfix Release)

• Change: General: HTTP Wiki URLs in DVBViewer and the German and English language files have been changed to HTTPS.
• Fix: Recording Timers Options: DVBViewer did not keep the “Include Teletext, DVB Subtitles…” etc. settings after a restart.
• Fix: COM Interface: The interface for adding timers was not compatible with old add-ons (particularly Zappi).

• Fix: Channel List: DVBViewer did not not show EPG hints on mouse over, though "Show EPG Hints" in the context menu was switched on (applies to the Popup channel list and the Channel List, EPG and Timer Recordings window).
• Fix: Favorites Menu: The items did not show EPG hints on mouse over anymore, after a hint appeared in a tree view or list view.

• Fix: TS Stream: DVBViewer displayed no EPG for TS Stream channels delivered via HTTP by receivers/servers like Dreambox or VU+.
• Fix: EPG Window: Wrong channel assignment on the “EPG per Channel” tab after changes in the Channel Editor. The wrong channel was displayed in the details after selecting an EPG item and also assigned to scheduled recordings that were created from this tab (see here).
• Fix: Timeshift: Stuttering timeshift playback if the timeshift recording was located on a (remote) network share, due to an insufficient read buffer size.
• Added: Media Server Client: Tweak “Allow timeshift delegation to a remote Media Server” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). Enables DVBViewer to delegate timeshift recordings to a Media Server on another PC. EXPERIMENTAL! The "Delegate timeshift recordings" tweak must also be switched on. Additionally the Media Server MUST be configured to write timeshift recordings to a shared directory with a network (UNC) path (see Media Server Options -> Recordings). Please note: There is no protection against incorrect usage!

• Fix: Media Server Client: DVBViewer could not connect to a Media Server that is protected by username and password (see here). If a username and password for the Media Server was set up on Options -> DVBViewer Media Server, DVBViewer did not respond anymore to user actions for some seconds after receiving a message from the Media Server (see here).
• Fix: OSD: The OSD record indicator was not updated on recording start/stop if the main window toolbar was hidden (particularly in full screen mode).
• Fix: MHEG-5: MHEG-5 did not work with the HbbTV/MHEG-5 add-on, though the HbbTV/MHEG-5 add-on was installed.
• Fix: Hardware Options: The tuner type selection has been re-enabled for HDHomeRun devices. It is required because the tuner type information exposed by the driver is ambiguous (see here).

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.0.2 (Bugfix Release)

• Fix: OSD: The OSD record indicator was not updated on a channel change if the toolbar was hidden in the main window (particularly in full screen mode).
• Fix: Music Options: FreeDB Audio CD lookup did not work anymore, because the service was closed. It has been replaced by GnuDB.
• Fix: Timer Recordings Window: Changing the TV or Radio Format for a scheduled recording in the Timer Recordings window did not work. After Apply the format was reset to the standard format specified on Options -> Recording Timers.
• Fix: TS Stream: A wrong calculation of time stamps for MP3 streams (particularly internet radio) with 44.1 kHz sample rate could cause periodically interrupted playback after 20 to 30 minutes.
• Fix: Recorder: Audio frames (particularly AAC frames) that were not aligned with the data packets, misled the audio format detection of the recorder repeatedly and yielded wrong entries in the recording log  (see here).
• Added: Timer Recordings Window: “New Timer” item in the context menu of the timer list (shortcut Ctrl + N). It deselects the current timer item, resets the timer input area to default values (as specified on Options → Recording Timers), sets the start time to now and the end time to now plus one hour. Previously an empty line in the timer list had to be clicked for it.
• Added: EPG Window: Picture in Picture menu item in the context menu. It makes Picture in Picture available on the “EPG at…” and “Timeline” tab.
• Added: Hardware: Possibility to flag devices in the hardware database with “needs tuner type selection”, so that tuner type selection is enabled for them on Options → Hardware, thus avoiding the necessity to change it in the file hardware.xml. Up to now this applies to HDHomeRun devices and the Hauppauge WinTV-dualHD ATSC Tuner (see here).
• Fix: Timeshift: The DVB hardware used for timeshift recording was not released correctly after a “Keep Timeshift File” on/off change. Besides that issues after using TV/Radio → Stop Timeshift Recording were fixed.
• Added: Timeshift: Tweak “Delete timeshift files automatically” (→ launch Tweaker.exe).  By default it is switched on, so that DVBViewer deletes timeshift files automatically (e.g. on a channel change). Please note that timeshift files must be deleted outside DVBViewer if this option is switched off, so that they do not fill up the whole hard disk over time. It is recommendable to configure a separate timeshift recording folder for facilitating it (see Options → Recordings).
• Added: EPG: Experimental possibility to supply IPTV channels with an EPG if the same channel is received via DVB-S/T/C. The mechanism is based on a user-created text file EPGPairingList.txt in the configuration folder that specifies source and target EPG-Channel-ID pairs. DVBViewer and also the Media Server check if the ID of received EPG entries matches one of the source IDs in the list. If yes, a copy of the EPG entry is stored with the target ID. Please note the following:
  • EPGPairingList.txt must contain a pair of EPG-Channel-IDs per line, first the source, then the target ID separated by a comma. Everything preceded by double slashes (//) is regarded as comment and ignored, as well as lines that can’t be read as a sequence of IDs. Example:

562954315180093,1995469939489785 //Das Erste HD (DVB-S) -> Das Erste (Internet)

• •  IDs must only appear once in the file, no matter if as source or target. Otherwise unpredictable behavior or even a crash may occur. If two or more channels shall receive the same copied EPG, additional comma-separated IDs can be appended to the line, e.g.

562954315180093,1995469939489785,2223050546878918 //Das Erste HD → two targets

• •  EPG-Channel-IDs are copied to the Windows clipboard by selecting the channel in the DVBViewer Channel Editor and pressing Ctrl+G.
  •  The source channel frequency must be tuned for supplying the target channel(s) with EPG data. Tuning the target channel won’t do it.
  •  If the URL of an IPTV channel changes, the EPG-Channel-ID also changes, so that the corresponding entry in EPGPairingList.txt must be updated.
  •  For technical reasons the copied EPG data is internally flagged as “External” (as if imported from somewhere). Therefore displaying external EPG must be allowed for the target channel in the Channel Editor (it is by default).
  • Since loading EPG data from the Media Server removes all external EPG data in DVBViewer (thus also copied EPG data), the Media Server should do the EPG copying in this case.

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.1.0.0

• Added/Change/Fix: EPG Window: Various enhancements on the Timeline tab, particularly for people who like to use it for channel selection:
  • Change: Playing a channel by clicking the channel button now only requires a single left click (previously a double click, which is still required for channel switching via the EPG item buttons). A right-click on a channel button allows to select the channel for Picture in Picture via the context menu.
  • Added: Possibility to select a channel and scroll it into view by typing the first letters of the channel name. If the interval between two subsequent keypresses is more than half a second, the key buffer is cleared and a new search started with the next input.
  • Added: The Timeline now marks the currently selected channel (not necessarily played channel) with a yellow frame around the channel button, so the selection remains visible even if the channel has no EPG or the selected EPG item has been scrolled out of view.
  • Added: Two new items in the Timeline context menu:
    • Simple Timeline View (previously only available as tweak) switches to the timeline style of version 6.1.2 and earlier. It lists more channels in a given area, because the lines contain no EPG sub-heading, thus requiring less space. Additionally the simple view doesn’t use different colors for indicating the genre of programs.
    • Show Channel Logos: Displays channel logos in the timeline instead of channel names (provided logos are installed and available for the channels). Please note that logos can’t be displayed in the simple timeline view because there is not enough space for them. As substitute DVBViewer adds tuner type icons to the channel names.
  • Fix/Change: The width of the channel name column and the height of the header row (containing the time) on the Timeline tab were not scaled according to the Windows text size. In “simple timeline view off” and “show channel logos off” mode channel names are now displayed with word wrap in up to three lines, thus showing long channel names completely.
  • Change/Added: The filter dropdown list on the “EPG at…” and “Timeline” tab has been replaced by a button. It opens a popup menu containing the filter options “Only TV Channels”, “Only Radio Channels”, “Only Favorites” and on the Timeline tab additionally “Only Channels With EPG”, allowing to also include channels without EPG. The options can be combined arbitrarily, except “Only TV Channels” and “Only Radio Channels”, which are mutually exclusive.
• Added: EPG/Teletext: Tweak “Remove (German) gender-neutral language” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). If activated, it replaces German forms of gender-neutral language in the EPG and teletext by generic forms, either masculine or feminine: 0 = unchanged (default), 1 = masculine (Musiker*innen → Musiker), 2 = feminine (Musiker*innen → Musikerinnen). Please note that the setting is applied to EPG data when it is received, not to data already stored in the file epg.dat. Thus it may take time until a change fully takes effect, unless the file is deleted.
• Added: Channel List: Tweak “Use tuner type icons in channel lists” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). It replaces the media type icons (video/audio) in channel lists by tuner type icons indicating the reception type (DVB-S/T/C or Internet TV/radio. This is useful if the channel list contains a mix of channels from different sources.
• Change: Channel List: The root folder and Video/Audio sub-folder icons in the channel list have been replaced by other icons.
• Fix: Channel List: The Picture-in-Picture button in channel list toolbars was always disabled and wrongly showed “Back” as hint on mouse over.
• Added: Channel Editor: If a (TS) stream channel list entry is selected or New → Stream has been performed and the Address input line is the active element, Ctrl + U copies the URL of the currently played stream / the file path of the currently played file to this input line. This allows to copy the URL of a HbbTV video to the channel list, for example. Previously HbbTV URLs could only be retrieved from the DVBViewer.log after playing the video in debug mode.
• Fix: TV/Radio Playback: Playback → Rebuild Playback did not work if a live stream was played that was not present in the channel list, particularly internet TV/radio channels that were automatically started from German DVB-T2 HbbTV. Additionally,  after switching playback off, these channels could not be played again without tuning another channel first.
• Removed: TV/Radio Options: Needless “Channel plus/minus switching delay” checkbox. The delay can as well be switched off by setting it to zero.

• Fix: TS Stream: Channels using the HLS format were played and recorded without audio if the broadcaster used MP4 segments that contained both video and audio, not separate segments.

• Fix: Recorder: Options →  Recordings → Auto split on channel data change was not handled correctly, particularly in case of dynamic program switching by the broadcaster, as performed by the German ARD when switching to regional editions of a program and back to the main program.
• Fix: Recorder: Memory leak on each recording start.
• Fix: Timeshift: Timeshift was stopped unnecessarily on video/audio A/B switching.
• Fix: Timeshift: Unnecessary warnings when using Stop in timeshift mode (supposed to stop timeshift when it is active).

• Change: Main Window: The main window now automatically becomes the foreground window (by temporarily switching to “always on top”), if an urgent message appears in the OSD, e.g. announcing a shutdown after a timer recording.
• Added: Main Window: If the support for visual impaired users is active, the text panel with EPG information that covers the TV picture can now be hidden / shown by pressing Ctrl + Enter, without affecting other features for the visual impaired. Previously it was not possible to switch the text panel off except by deactivating the support for the visual impaired completely.
• Fix: OSD: If DVBViewer was started with activated support for visual impaired users (implicating a deactivated OSD), switching the support off did not reactivate the OSD. It required a DVBViewer restart.
• Change: OSD: The Recordings page now also displays the year of the recording date (previously only day and month).
• • Fix: UPnP Selection Window: Toggling the “Show Thumbnails” option in the context menu let DVBViewer freeze, if the item list on the right was empty.
• • Fix: Picture in Picture: Timing issue if Picture in Picture was started on a second monitor with the EVR as video renderer, causing playback to remain in stopped state.
• • Added: Remote Control: A simulated keyboard keypress on each remote control keypress signals user presence to Windows, thus letting it return from “Away Mode”.
• • Change: HbbTV: Some optimizations.
• • Change: Plugins: Measures against “evil “plugins stealing the DVBViewer input focus when they get initialized, particularly on recording/timeshift and picture-in-picture start (see here).
• • Change: Hardware: DVBViewer now avoids unnecessary automatic TS Stream device creation on internal device availability checks.

[hackbart]

Changes in Version 7.1.1.0

• Added/Fix/Change: Support for visually impaired users: Corrections and additions in the text panel for the visually impaired, that appears in the Main Window if Options → Extended → Support for visually impaired users (JAWS) is switched on (see here).
  • Radio text is displayed in the second line below the channel name, if available.
  • The recording status that was previously displayed in the second line has been removed (there was a bug anyway). The status of timers (deactivated, waiting, timeshift, recording).is now displayed at the beginning of each entry in the timer list that appears at the end of the text panel.
  • The text panel is now displayed with black text on white background, not white on black anymore, in order to avoid screen reader errors.
• Added/Change: Support for visually impaired users: If Options → Extended → Support for visually impaired users (JAWS) is switched on, main window audio is now muted if another DVBViewer window gets activated (gets the input focus), but is switched on again as soon as the main window gets the input focus back, without having to close the other window first. Additionally the muting can be switched off completely in Options -> Extended with a new checkbox "Mute main window while another DVBViewer window is active".
• Fix: Support for visually impaired users: If the support for visually impaired users was switched on, DVBViewer still used different background colors and icons in list views at various locations, instead of displaying them in a simple black on white style for facilitating screen reader usage.
• Change: Recordings: If a recording is deleted by or in DVBViewer, directories that were automatically created for this recording due to path elements in the file naming scheme (e.g. %year\%m\%event\…) are now deleted too if they are empty after deletion of the recording. This also applies to timeshift recordings. Please note that Windows may prevent the deletion of empty directories in case of access conflicts e.g. with the Explorer.
• Added: Recordings: Under the following conditions DVBViewer informs the Media Server about a recording executed by itself (not by the Media Server), so that it also appears in the Media Server recording list:
  • DVBViewer is associated with a Media Server (see Options → DVBViewer Media Server), that it located on the same PC.
  • Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Connect to the server’s recording list is switched on.
  • The recording directory used by DVBViewer is also a Media Server recording directory.

Even if DVBViewer is associated with a Media Server, it may execute recordings itself, either because Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Send Timers to the Server is switched off, or because DVBViewer has to do the job for technical reasons, e.g. if the recording is actually a file download or a recording from the timeshift buffer. When the Media Server gets informed about such a recording, it copies the corresponding DVBViewer recording database entry to its own database. This saves performing a recording database update in the Media Server for including such recordings.

• Fix/Change: Recordings: Several adjustments and corrections concerning the handling of recordings, particularly for implementing the feature above.
• Added: Recording: Tweak “Convert LOAS/LATM to ADTS for AAC recordings” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). For recordings with the file extension .aac it may be useful to let DVBViewer convert a broadcasted LOAS/LATM container to the older ADTS container for compatibility with certain software/devices, particularly editing software like mp3DirectCut.
• Fix: Recording Statistics Window: Opening an Explorer window with the content of the current recording folder by clicking the path displayed on the Recording Status tab did not work if the path contained Unicode characters that are not available in the local character set..
• Change: Databases: Optimized handling of the recording, media and music database.
• Fix/Change: Audio Playback/Recording: Some fixes and enhancements concerning the processing of AAC audio.
• Added: Radio Text (RDS): Detection of RDS data that is not contained in the audio data, but in a separate stream, as used by German ARD radio channels after changing the audio format from MP2 to AAC. DVBViewer automatically sets the RDS flag and adds the PID of the RDS stream as teletext PID. It can be inspected in the Channel Editor. Additionally DVBViewer is now able to include such RDS streams in recordings and display the radio text on playback, provided the radio recording format is TS and Options → Recording Timers → Include Teletext is switched on.
• Fix: Radio Text (RDS): Radio text contained in a recorded MP2 or TS file was not displayed in the OSD (only in the control bar).
• Fix: Radio Text (RDS): Wrong conversion to Unicode if the local (language-specific) Windows character set is not Windows Western European.
• Change: Audio Playback: On playback of radio recordings in MP2, MP3, AC3 or AAC format DVBViewer now retrieves displayed metadata (like title and description) from the recording database or the EPG Info File. Previously DVBViewer only looked for tags in the file, which are usually not present in recordings.
• Added: File Playback: EPG data contained in a recording in TS format is now displayed in the OSD Media Window (after pressing OSD OK or the Return key) and additionally in case of radio recordings as radio text at the top of the video window, provided the DVBViewer Filter is used for TS playback (see Options → Playback Components → DVBViewer Filter).

DVBViewer and the Media Server include Now/Next EPG data in TS recordings if Options → Recording Timers →  Include EPG Data is switched on. Please note that recorded EPG data may change during playback, in contrast to the static EPG data stored in the recording database and the EPG Info files. This particularly applies to internet radio, for which DVBViewer transforms the broadcasted metadata (like artist and title) to EPG data.

• Added: Video Playback: If no metadata (like title, description etc.) can be found for a played video in the recording and media database, DVBViewer now uses data provided by the LAV source filter (splitter), if available. This particular applies to MP4 and MKV videos. The data appears in the OSD Media Window after pressing OSD OK or the Return key.
• Added: Channel Logos: Support for a new logo administration that spares providing the same logo several times with different filenames for different channel names (e.g. BBC One Scot, BBC One Lon...). In future only one logo file will be needed in this case, plus a file LogoNames.ini that assigns channel names to logo files.
• Change: Channel Logos: Enhanced assignment of logos to channel names. It may find more or better matches by unifying the strings before comparison, particularly by replacing “+” by “plus” and removing all characters that are no letters or digits.
• Fix: OSD: Vertical text misalignment in the Movies, Music, Playlist, Images and UPnP list views.
• Change: EPG: Up to now DVBViewer appended extensive technical information originating from EPG data to the long EPG description (e.g. aspect ratio, video format, available audio tracks, subtitles etc.), often occupying several text lines. It has now been reduced to the most important facts that may change per program. They only occupy a single line and use the following symbols/abbreviations for what is signaled in the EPG:
  • [4:3] [16:9] Program aspect ratio
  • [3D] 3D transmission
  • [HDR] High Dynamic Range video
  • [OA] Original audio provided
  • [5.1] Multi-channel (surround) audio provided
  • [SUB] Subtitles provided
  • [AD] Audio description for the visually impaired provided
  • [age+] Recommended minimum age, e.g. [16+]
  • [PDC day.month hour:minute] Originally intended program start time. The Program Delivery Control is used by the Media Server for program recognition and EPG monitoring.

Please note that this information is not always reliable. Unfortunately some broadcasters handle this EPG based information quite carelessly, e.g. signal a wrong aspect ratio or indicate subtitles for all programs if they are only available for some programs. The new format is applied to newly received EPG entries, not to already stored entries.

• Change: EPG/Teletext: Further enhancements for the “Remove (German) gender-neutral language” function (see 7.1.0 changes).
• Fix: TS Stream: Erroneous confusion of the HTTP Location header (used for redirections to another URL) with other headers that also contain the sub-string “location:”.
• Added: Hardware: Support for assigning up to 4 CI modules in the settings dialog of RTSP network devices for Digital Devices Sat>IP servers (previously only 2).
• Added: Hardware: On hardware detection DVBViewer creates an additional DVB-C tuner entry for the TBS 5881 hybrid USB Box. This measure saves tweaking the tuner type for DVB-C reception.
• Fix: Hardware: If the DVB-T2 substream (PLP) ID is undefined, DVBViewer does not set it to 0 anymore as default for TBS devices, which prevented auto-detection in the driver and DVB-T2 reception in Austria, where the substream ID is 1 throughout. Now the TBS API call is omitted in this case (see here).

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.1.2 (Bugfix Release)

 

• Fix: TS Stream: Work-around for erroneous time stamp headers in HLS segments of additional audio tracks provided by German ARD channels, that caused audio drop-outs.
• Fix: TS Stream: Teletext data in HLS segments of AAC audio tracks provided as separate stream was mistaken for audio.
• Fix: Recorder: Under certain timing conditions the recorder detected the wrong AAC type when a channel with LOAS/LATM AAC audio was recorded. It caused permanently changing wrong format information in the recording log, but without disturbing TS recordings.
• Added: Recording Statistics Window: Display of the recording log (if available) in the Details panel of the Recordings tab. The “Show Recording Log” item in the context menu of the Details view or Ctrl+L allow to toggle between EPG details and recording log display for the selected recording. The font for the log display can be selected with the Fonts → Recording Log item of the context menu.
• Fix: Recording: Missing path and filename of the recording in the recording log.
• Fix: File Playback: Media files on mapped network and local drives drives could not be played if DVBViewer was configured as client of a Media Server on another PC and Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Connect to the server’s recording list was switched on (since version 7.1.1).
• Fix: Recording Playback: Recordings of a remote Media Server that were made available on the DVBViewer PC by means of a mapped network drive with the same drive letter as the original (physical) disk were not accessed directly (as intended), but via Media Server streaming.

[Griga]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.1.2.1 (Hotfix Release)

• Fix: Recording Playback: Recordings of a local Media Server on the same PC were not accessed directly (as intended), but via Media Server streaming (since version 7.2.0).

• Fix: EPG: The import of external EPG data via Xepg did not work anymore (since 7.1.2.0).

• Added: OSD: “Only With EPG / Also Without EPG” option in the OSD timeline context menu, that appears after pressing OSD Blue / F8. It specifies if only channels with EPG or also channels without EPG are displayed in the timeline (see here).

 

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.2.0.0

• Added: TV/Radio Options: Checkbox “Use custom channel numbers”. It allows to configure a custom channel numbering that is independent from the sequence of channels in the channel and favorites list and not necessarily contiguous (which means, there may be gaps between numbers). The channel numbers can be imported from TransEdit, originating from a scan for Logical Channel Numbers (LCN), or manually entered in the DVBViewer Channel Editor (see here). Please note that without these measures there are no channel numbers at all in “custom channels numbers” mode: Channel selection by entering numbers is disabled, and DVBViewer displays “---” where a number is supposed to appear.

• Added: Channel Editor: “Channel No.” input line on the Channel Data page, allowing to input and edit channel numbers, that take effect in “custom channels numbers” mode (see above). The custom channel numbers are also contained in .ini and .csv channel list exports. Please note that DVBViewer does not check for duplicate numbers (yet). It is up to the user to avoid them. On channel selection by number input DVBViewer switches to the topmost channel from the list with a matching custom channel number (see here). However, the channel number search function of the Channel Editor (after entering a channel number in the right input line of the search panel and pressing Return) always starts from the currently selected channel, so that it finds the next channel with a matching custom number and can be used for duplicate detection.

• Added: Channel Editor: “Clear Custom Channel Numbers” item in the context menu. It removes all numbers in the selected tree view nodes.

• Fix: Channel/Favorites Editor: The selection bar was not adjusted correctly to a changed channel/category name width (see here).

• Fix: Channel Editor: After New → Satellite for entering the data of a new satellite channel it was not possible to specify DiSEqC, 22 kHz signal and LOF because the corresponding controls were disabled.

• Fix: Channel Search: A satellite channel search with certain DVB hardware (e.g. DVBSky) wrongly reset the DVB-S2 flag of channels on DVB-S2 transponders.

• Added: Channel List: Command line parameters for importing a M3U or INI channel list, optionally to a specified root folder (see here):

-l (with l being a lowercase letter L) must be followed by a blank and a URL, that specifies the to be imported file. URL can be a network (web) address or a local file path, that must be enclosed in double quotes if it contains blanks. Examples:

-l http://example.com/iptv.m3u

-l "D:\Channel Lists\Terrestrial.ini"

-r must be followed by a blank and a root folder name, that specifies the root folder to which the preceding list shall be imported. It must be enclosed in double quotes if it contains blanks. If this folder already exists, its previous content is deleted. Example:

-r http://example.com/iptv.m3u -r "HLS IPTV"

This parameter can be used to update a root folder content. If no root folder is specified for an import, the list is added to the channel list as if imported by drag & drop into the DVBViewer Channel Editor.

• Added: Channel List: Tweak “Recognize TS Stream channels by name, if necessary” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). Deleting a TS Stream (IPTV) channel and then restoring it with a different URL usually disables favorites and timers that are associated with this channel. This option allows DVBViewer to re-establish the connection as soon as possible by searching the channel list for TS Stream channels with the same name and type (TV/Radio). Please note that this function may cause unwanted wrong assignments if there are two or more TS Stream channels with the same name and type (see here)!

• Added: Channel List: Tweak “Load/save channel names as Unicode” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). It lets DVBViewer convert all channel name input to Unicode (UTF-8), if switched on, and subsequently store the names with this character coding. Please note that this may cause compatibility issues with add-ons, plugins and previous DVBViewer versions. They may display characters wrongly. The conversion is applied to channel, category and root names originating from a channel search, the DVBViewer channel list (channels.dat) and channel list imports in INI, CSV etc format. It enables DVBViewer to display different character sets simultaneously in the channel list (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Chinese...).

If the tweak is switched off, all channel name input is as far as possible converted to the local (ANSI) character set and stored with this coding. Only characters that are included in this set and ASCII characters are processed correctly. This is the default setting. It conforms to the behavior of previous DVBViewer versions.

• Added: General: Tweak “Broadcast standard” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). This setting helps DVBViewer to apply suitable methods for the received broadcast standard, if it can't be detected automatically (e.g. when reading Japanese ISDB channel names, see here, or when receiving Japanese EPG with start times that are not UTC, see here). Possible values are 0 = DVB (default), 1 = ATSC, 2 = ISDB (Japan), 3 = ISDB (Latin America).

• Fix. Timer Recordings & EPG Window: Wrong channel list response on double clicks. Expanding / collapsing elements did not work as intended.

• Added: EPG Window: Like other EPG views, the Timeline view now responds to Shift + mouse wheel rotation by scrolling horizontally (also applies to the OSD Timeline, see here). Additionally the Timeline view and the list views on other EPG Window tabs now respond by horizontal scrolling, when the mouse wheel is tilted or the horizontal scroll wheel is rotated (see here).

• Fix: EPG Window: The wrong horizontal scroll direction in the Timeline view after a (mouse wheel) middle-click for switching between vertical/horizontal scrolling has been corrected. The Timeline now scrolls to the left on mouse wheel upward rotation and to the right on downward rotation.

• Added: File/Timeshift Playback: Continuous display of the picture at the current position with the VMR 7/9 and EVR Enhanced Video Renderer while dragging the position slider with the mouse or using the fast forward / rewind function. Previously this was only possible with the Overlay Renderer, Custom EVR or MadVR.

• Added: OSD: New method for displaying the OSD with the EVR Enhanced Video Renderer (not custom) as replacement for the previously used OSD Source DirectShow Filter. Compared to the old method the new one provides a better OSD quality with various graphics cards, resembling the quality achieved with the EVR Custom Video Renderer (that is optimized for OSD output) and the MadVR Renderer, except one drawback: If video playback stops for reasons outside DVBViewer (e.g. due to signal loss), the OSD is not updated anymore, unless the user pauses, stops or restarts playback. If the new method does not yield satisfying results, a checkbox “Use OSD Source Filter” on Options → Playback Components enables to return to the previous OSD output method for the EVR Enhanced Video Renderer.

• Added: OSD: If the OSD Media Window is shown in timeshift playback mode (see tweak “Show Mini EPG in Timeshift mode”), it now displays the filename of the timeshift file, the channel name and logo (if available) and “Timeshift” for indicating timeshift mode.

• Fix: OSD: Text containing full height Unicode characters (particularly Japanese) was not displayed with certain combinations of font height (defined by the OSD skin) and Windows text size (see here).

• Fix: OSD: The OSD subtitle menu could not be opened directly by a (keyboard or remote control) keypress assigned to this action, if only external SRT subtitles were available.

• Added: TS Stream (HLS and MPEG Dash) Display and recording of TTML and WebVTT subtitles, that are used by some providers for HLS and MPEG Dash TV streams and videos. The subtitles can be selected as usual in the Settings → Subtitles menu. They are included in TS recordings, if the corresponding checkbox in the timer settings is ticked. Other players than DVBViewer may not be able to (dis)play these subtitles, particularly since (in contrast to TTML) there are no official specifications for embedding WebVTT in a transport stream (TS). Please note that the DVBViewer subtitle renderer does not implement the full set of TTML and WebVTT features (see here and here), but only parts that are currently needed for broadcasted subtitles (particularly color and position). Additions may be necessary in future.

• Fix: Recorder: The download of files (by clicking the red record button during playback) that are available as HLS or MPEG Dash streams and storing them as TS files did not include audio and subtitle tracks that were provided as separate streams.

• Change: Recorder: Sharper check for encrypted data. It prevents writing of encrypted data to disk (see here).

• Fix: Recorder: DVBViewer could not perform a system shutdown as final action of a timer recording, if a lock screen was active (e.g. after the PC woke up for an unattended timer recording in a password protected user account).

• Fix: File Playback/Subtitles: Color and other tags in external subrip (.srt) subtitle files were displayed as part of the subtitles instead of being processed and removed. Over-length lines were not wrapped to the next line.

• Added: File Playback/Subtitles: Processing of external WebVTT subtitle files. The beginning of the filename must conform with the corresponding video file; the filename extension must be .vtt. Additional characters in the filename of the subtitle file following after a separator character are displayed in the DVBViewer subtitle menu, e.g. as WebVTT (eng), if the filenames are myvideo.mp4 and myvideo-eng.vtt.

• Added: Subtitles: Optionally removing (German) gender-neutral language (see 7.1.0 changes) is now also applied to text-based subtitles (Teletext, WebVTT, TTML, SRT).

• Fix: Subtitles: Teletext subtitles contained in a TS file could not be displayed (since version 7.1.1).

• Removed: Subtitle Options: Shadow, shadow color, background color, outline color settings, that were only applied to external subrip (.srt) subtitles in a special OSD branch. It has now been substituted by the general subtitle handling, which does not support shadow effects. The background color is black if not specified differently within the subtitles. The outline thickness and background transparency can still be adjusted. It applies to teletext, SRT, WebVTT and TTML subtitles.

• Fix: Playlist: After starting playback of a video that was no recording (particularly MKV/MP4 files) the playlist displayed the duration of this item and additionally its title (if it could be retrieved as metadata) for all other video items.

• Fix: Playlist: The width of the playlist columns was not adjusted to the Windows text size, thus causing cut-off duration values in case of more than 100% size.

• Fix: Equalizer Settings: After a DVBViewer restart the Presets drop-down list did not indicate the last selected equalizer preset, but always “None”. The preset was applied correctly to the audio output, though (see here). The same applies to the Equalizer OSD page.

• Change: Hardware: Newly created virtual RTSP (Sat>IP) Network Devices now use a client UDP port range from 47700 to 47800 as default (previously 52000 to 52100), particularly for avoiding collisions with port ranges excluded by Windows due to the usage of Hyper-V.

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.2.1.0 (Bugfix Release)

 

• Added: Mouse Options: Possibility to configure an action for rotating or tilting the horizontal mouse wheel (if present). Furthermore “Jump” has been added as action, enabling to (incrementally) jump forward and backward in files with the mouse wheel.
• Change: OSD: DVBViewer does not respond to fast mouse clicks (double clicks) with a window ↔ full screen change anymore if the clicks are consumed by the OSD.
• Fix: OSD: The Updown buttons for browsing the lists on the Channels and Recordings OSD page with the mouse did not work.
• Fix: News Feeds: Processing news feed URLs without a filename like https://www.tagesschau.de/xml/rss2/ failed, so that no news were displayed in the OSD.
• Added: News Options: Edit button allowing to change an already present news feed entry.
• Fix: Zoom Presets: The tweak “Number of zoom presets” did not work anymore (since version 7.2.0.0).
• Fix: General: Any system shutdown triggered by DVBViewer resulted in a reboot (since version 7.2.0.0).

[hackbart]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.2.2.0

• Fix: Recorder: Certain dynamic channel data (PMT) changes were not handled correctly, particularly audio track changes in connection with the “auto-split on channel data change” option, when German ARD TV channels switched over from common to regional programs.
• Fix: Recorder: Some issues concerning manual (instant) recordings from the DVBViewer timeshift buffer (starting during timeshifted playback): The recording actually started at a position several seconds later, it could fail if the tweak “Automatically create TS Stream devices on demand” was switched off, the tool bar / TV/Radio menu did not respond by turning the record button gray / checking the “Record Current Channel” item, potential data loss when writing to disk due to a buffer overflow etc.
• Change: Recorder: If no EPG data can be assigned to a recording, DVBViewer now stores the actual recording duration as duration value in its database and EPG Info file, not the timer duration anymore. This particularly applies to manual (instant) recordings with a default timer duration of 23:59 hours. If EPG data can be assigned, the stored duration value is the program duration.
• Fix: Timer Recordings Window: Individual per-timer settings in the Include section, that deviated from the corresponding standard settings in the Include section on Options → Recording Timers, got lost on a DVBViewer restart, because they were not read correctly from the file timers.xml.
• Fix: Media Server Client: If DVBViewer delegated timers to an associated Media Server (see Options → DVBViewer Media Server → Send timers to the server), changing the file naming scheme in the Timer Recordings Window did not work, because the scheme was not sent correctly to the server (see here).
• Fix/Change: File/Timeshift Playback: Some fixes and enhancements concerning the display of the picture at the current position while seeking/jumping, when the EVR Enhanced Video Renderer (not Custom) is used.
• Fix: File/Timeshift Playback: Seeking in pause mode with the Custom EVR or MadVR Video Renderer disabled returning to play mode by pressing / clicking Pause again, thus making it necessary to use the Play function (since 7.2.0.0, see here).
• Added: TS Stream (HLS/MPEG Dash Live Streams): Jumping in internet live streams with the usual means (control bar, forward/back functions), if the broadcaster provides a timeshift buffer (e.g. German public broadcasters). The control bar shows the total duration of the buffer and the current position in this buffer. The previous setting for a fixed (static) time offset in the Channel Editor has been removed. Please note that jumping in the broadcaster’s timeshift buffer is not available
  •  if its duration is less than 3 minutes.
  • if DVBViewer is associated with a Media Server on the same PC, from which it obtains internet streams in order to avoid double bandwidth occupancy. This is the default setting. For using the broadcaster’s timeshift buffer the tweak “Receive TS Stream via the local Media Server” has to be switched off (→ launch Tweaker.exe, see 7.0.0 changes → Media Server Support).
  • if the internet connection of the virtual TS Stream Device additionally supplies other “consumers” like Picture in Picture or a recording besides main window playback. Only the latter is able to handle on-the-fly position changes in the broadcaster’s timeshift buffer. A recording would be spoiled by it.
  • if the built-in DVBViewer timeshift is active, e.g. after Pause or the start of a manual (instant) recording.

Manual (instant) recordings start at the current position in the broadcaster’s timeshift buffer. If it is timeshifted, DVBViewer performs the recording itself, independently from the “Send timers to the server” setting. However, timer recordings always start at the live position of the channel (with a small default offset, see below). Simultaneous timeshifted playback of the channel causes double bandwidth occupation. Just as for different channels, reading from different positions in the broadcaster’s buffer requires a separate internet connection for each.

• Added: TS Stream (HLS/MPEG Dash): Tweak “Default delay for HLS/MPEG Dash playback” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). The settings specifies the default position in the broadcaster’s timeshift buffer, or with other words, how many seconds playback lags behind the "live edge" of HLS and MPEG Dash live streams. This allows DVBViewer to fetch data ahead and to buffer it, in order to avoid stuttering playback. It can be regarded as a "minimum timeshift" that DVBViewer tries to establish. The default is 30, the minimum 10 and the maximum 60 seconds. The default in previous DVBViewer versions were hard-coded 30 seconds.
• Change: Timeshift / Control Bar: While the Control bar slider is dragged in timeshift mode, the time display now changes from timeshift buffer position / timeshift buffer length to time at the current position / time now. This enables seeking for a certain time in the past at which a program shall be watched. The change applies to seeking in a DVBViewer timeshift file, as well as in a timeshift buffer provided by the broadcaster in case of HLS / MPEG Dash streams (see above). Please note that for DVBViewer timeshift a precise time measurement cannot be expected, because the timeshift file position is calculated by assuming a constant average data rate, which may be actually variable. So the time display should only be regarded as a rough guide.
• Change: Timeshift / Main Window: EPG information appearing in the DVBViewer Main Window during timeshifted playback (e.g. in the Control Bar and the OSD Mini EPG) now indicates the program at the played point of time, not the currently broadcasted program anymore. The change applies to DVBViewer timeshift, as well as timeshift provided by the broadcaster in case of HLS / MPEG Dash streams. Concerning the precision of time calculation, the same restrictions have to be considered as for the time display in the Control Bar (see above).

• Added: Configuration Wizard: Possibility to select the broadcast standard (DVB, ATSC, ISDB Japan, ISDB South America) on the EPG Settings page. It helps DVBViewer to decode EPG data correctly  (see below and here).
• Change/Added: EPG: EPG start times from ISDB EPG data are now converted to DVB compliant times (UTC, GMT) on arrival, so that afterwards they can be handled like DVB EPG data throughout and the “Automatic Time Zone” setting in the EPG Options is applicable. In detail:
  • Japan: The broadcasted EPG start times are UTC+09:00 (JST, Japan Standard Time), so 9 hours are subtracted. On a Japanese PC, the EPG Options in Automatic Time Zone mode will usually show a GMT offset of +09:00 (see here), which is added to the UTC EPG times, yielding the original JST value.
  • Latin America: The broadcasted EPG start times are UTC-03:00 (Brasilia time zone, see here), so 3 hours are added. The GMT offset displayed by the EPG Options in Automatic Time Zone mode will depend on the actual time zone for which the PC is configured and whether daylight saving time is in effect.

Please note that DVBViewer does not detect the ISDB broadcast standard automatically. If not already set up in the Configuration Wizard (see above), it has to be configured by launching Tweaker.exe, searching for the “Broadcast Standard” setting and entering 2 for ISDB Japan or 3 for ISDB Latin America.

• Change: EPG: Smarter algorithm for rounding EPG times to minutes, if they are broadcasted to the second. It avoids 1 minute gaps or overlaps between adjacent programs due to double rounding errors.
• Fix: EPG Options: The times in already received EPG data were not adjusted to a changed GMT offset after switching from Manual to Automatic Time Zone mode.
• Added: Channel Editor: On the Reception Settings page there is a new checkbox “Check for updates”. If it is ticked (default), DVBViewer checks if its program directory contains a newer version of the transponder list file that shall be used for a channel search. If yes, the user is prompted to decide whether the old file in the Transponders subdirectory of the Configuration folder shall be renamed to .bak and replaced by the new one. Please note: Only users who maintain their transponder list themselves, e.g. by using TransEdit, should untick this checkbox.
• Added: Channel Search: Additional transponder lists installed with a new DVBViewer version are now copied automatically from the program directory to the Transponders subdirectory of the Configuration Folder, where the transponder lists that are used for a channel search are stored. Previously this had to be done by the user.
• Change: Channel List: When using the channel list with media file entries as playlist (see 7.0.0 changes → Channel List) the Previous/Next actions (|< and >| buttons in the Control Bar) now switch back/forward to the previous/next file(previously one minute back/forward). This switching and also the automatic switching at the file end plays the previous/next file from the beginning, without considering the setting Options → Movies → On resume ask. Any other kind of switching to a file entry in the channel list (including channel/favorite plus/minus) obeys the setting (see here).

• Added: Channel List: The “Show EPG Hints” option in the channel list context menu lets DVBViewer additionally show the EPG for recordings that have been added in the Channel Editor as file entries (see 7.0.0.0 changes), provided EPG data is available in the recording database or an EPG info file. Music file metadata is also shown (artist, title, duration, album e.g. originating from MP3 tags), if available, and for other files at least the complete filename without path.
• Fix: Channel List: If the channel list contained entries with the TS Stream reception type and the Tweak “Automatically create TS Stream devices on demand” was switched on (default), selecting the Filter → Only Available Channels option in the context menu of the channel list let DVBViewer freeze due to an infinite loop.
• Added: Channel List: New menu item “Sort by Channel Number” in the context menu of channel list representations (except OSD and Channel Editor). This item is only visible if Options → TV/Radio → Use custom channel numbers is switched on (see here). Channels without custom channel number (LCN) are put to the end of the list.
• Fix: Favorites Editor: A changed category name was updated in the favorites menu, but not in other channel / favorite list representations unless DVBViewer was restarted.
• Fix: Channel Editor: Media files with network paths (UNC) in M3U playlists were not imported into the channel list, but skipped,
• Fix: Channel Editor: Incomplete ID values were assigned to media files imported into the channel list. They were corrected automatically on next DVBViewer start. However, favorite list entries for these media files that were created before the restart did not work anymore because they still referred to the incomplete ID.
• Removed: OSD: Selection dialog for German Sky option channels. It could be opened in certain situations with OSD Green (F6). Sky only provides this mechanism for some SD channels. Moreover it didn’t work correctly anymore since DVBViewer 5.6.
• Fix: OSD: Misalignment between the mouse position and the internally stored coordinates of OSD elements after starting video file playback using the VMR7/9 or standard (non-custom) EVR Enhanced Video Renderer. It caused mouse operation in the OSD to work imprecisely or not at all (see here).
• Fix: Subtitles: Blu-ray subtitles (presentation graphics) did not work anymore (since 7.2.0, see here).
• Fix: HbbTV: Measures against the unnecessary additional download of media files and streams by the HbbTV browser besides the download performed by the DVBViewer playback engine.
• Change: HbbTV: Measures enabling the HbbTV OSD window to process playback state changes even if it is not active, in order to prevent a premature stop of HbbTV videos.
• Fix: Teletext/HbbTV Options: A change of the “HbbTV auto start for all channels / only radio channels / no channel” settings required a DVBViewer restart to take effect.
• Fix: Hardware Options: The Default Button in the RTSP Network Device settings dialog reset the UDP port range to the old values 52000...52100, not to the new values 47700...47800 (see 7.2.0 changes).
• Change: General: A PC shutdown performed by DVBViewer now considers whether the Windows fast startup feature is enabled (also called hybrid shutdown, available since Windows 8). If yes, shutdown is performed with a flag that lets Windows boot faster on next startup, due to the usage of “suspend to disk” (hibernation). Otherwise a shutdown performed by DVBViewer causes a “traditional” power off and subsequent slow startup (see here).

• Fix: General: Measures against potential access violations when DVBViewer gets closed.

• Updated: OpenSSL Libraries to version 1.1.1n with an important security fix.

[Griga]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.2.3.0

• Added: Key Tool: Possibility to create an encrypted license data backup file containing the key file content, DVBViewer password and add-on passwords. Please note that the Key Tool stores already installed license data as backup, not possibly differing data entered or edited in the Key Tool user interface. So it is necessary to install licenses before creating the backup. The Backup should be saved on an external medium like a USB drive, where it survives a PC crash, so that you don’t have to purchase the license(s) again in this case!

Loading a license data backup with the key tool requires first entering the user name (the mail address used for ordering DVBViewer) with which the backup was created. After loading the file the Key Tool immediately re-installs the back-upped data without requiring further action.

• Change/Fix: Key Tool: Several fixes and adjustments in the Key Tool user interface, among them:

  • For writing license data to your hard drive the Key Tool user interface now uses the term “Install”, not “Save” anymore, in order to avoid confusion with “Save License Backup”.

  • For letting the browser show the add-on “Order” pages the Key Tool now uses HTTPS URLS, not out-dated HTTP URLs anymore.

  • Deleting installed key files did not work correctly under certain circumstances.

• Removed: OSD: All games and the Alarm Timer page, assuming that nobody uses/needs it anymore. The pages can be reactivated with a tweak. Please post in the forum if there is any need for it.

• Fix: OSD Mini EPG: When using the Mini EPG for browsing through channels (requiring Options -> TV/Radio -> Browse in Mini EPG to be switched on), previously displayed EPG data was not replaced by "No EPG data available", if no EPG data for the next channel and given time was available (since 7.2.2, see here). Furthermore the bar in the Mini EPG showing the already elapsed time of the currently running program did not vanish when switching to the EPG of future or past programs with OSD Right/Left and did not show the elapsed time correctly after returning to the EPG of the currently running program (since 7.2.2, see here).

• Change: OSD Mini EPG: The time for which the EPG shall be displayed is reset to “Now” on each channel change, or to the time of the currently played program in case of timeshifted playback. Previously the last set time was kept (see here).

• Added: Radio Text:: Detection and display of radio text embedded in AAC frames, as broadcasted by the German ARD via satellite. This applies to playback of live radio and recordings in TS and .AAC format, no matter whether they have been recorded by earlier DVBViewer- and Media Server versions or converted from th broadcasted LOAS/LATM container to ADTS AAC. Please note that the used method (reading the AAC frames in reverse direction) detects almost all radio text, but may overlook parts of it in rare cases.

• Fix: TS Stream: General failure with URLs containing no path element, but an at sign (@) or colon in the query part (something like http://xxx.xxx?y=@zz:zz). They were parsed incorrectly, causing a socket error. Moreover redirections from a persistent “keep-alive” HTTP connection to an HTTPS URL with the same domain were not handled correctly.

• Removed: Channel List: Menu item “Sort by Channel Number” in the context menu of channel list representations (introduced in version 7.2.2). It didn’t prove to be useful (see here).

• Change: Channel List: After the import of M3U or INI channel lists by using the -l command line parameter (introduced in 7.2.0) DVBViewer saves its channel list automatically if it is configured as client of a Media Server on the same PC, in order to also update the channel list used by the Media Server (see here).

• Added: Channel Editor: On M3U (IPTV) channel list import the Channel Editor now adopts channel numbers from tvg-chno tags, if present. Using them for channel selection by number input requires Options → TV/Radio → Use custom channel numbers to be switched on.

• Fix: DiSEqC Editor: Display fault in the top area (see here).

• Added: Playlist Window: New “Auto-Save when DVBViewer Closes” item in the context menu. If checked this setting lets DVBViewer automatically save the current playlist to the Playlist.m3u file in the configuration folder on closing for restoring it on next start. Previously the playlist could only be saved manually.

• Change: Playlist Window: Now the Save/Reload Playlist tool buttons and context menu items are only enabled if the playlist differs from the content of the Playlist.m3u file in the configuration folder. Previously they were always enabled. The numbering of items (if switched on, see context menu) now is one-based. Previously it was zero-based.

• Fix: Playlist Window: Drag and drop of media files / folders from the Explorer into the Playlist Window did not work anymore as soon as a playlist item was selected.

• Fix: HbbTV: If a HbbTV video was playing, Playback → Playback Off did not finish the OSD HbbTV mode, so that the keyboard did not return to its normal OSD functionality and HbbTV content possibly remained on the screen.

• Change/Fix: HbbTV: Several HbbTV-related fixes and enhancements enabling to show (mostly German) HbbTV content and play HbbTV videos/streams that did not work before, for example the ARD and ZDF Replay function (see here), allowing to watch the currently running program from the beginning.

General remark about HbbTV: Due to the generally problematic preprocessing of HbbTV content for presentation in PC browser components, and also because of out-dated third party HbbTV components, the HbbTV add-on for DVBViewer should not be expected to work flawlessly in every respect. It still works passably in German speaking countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). However, this can not be guaranteed for the future. In other countries the HbbTV add-on is mostly unusable.

[Griga]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.2.4.0

• Change: Recorder: Handling of loading/saving the timer list from/to the file timers.xml for avoiding data loss on crashes (see here):

  • If the file timers.xml can not be loaded, because it is corrupted, DVBViewer now automatically replaces it by the file timers.bak, which contains the previous timer list state before the last saving. Previously DVBViewer preserved an already existing timers.xml by renaming it to timers.bak before saving a new one, but did not use it.

  • If the file timers.xml is detected as invalid on loading, it is deleted or renamed, so it cannot become timers.bak anymore on next saving. Renaming occurs if there is still some content in the file. The new name is timers[yyyymmddhhnnss].bak, where [yyyymmddhhnnss] is the current date and time, e.g. timers20230105100634.bak. This file can be used for manual repair attempts.

  • DVBViewer now avoids unnecessary saving of the timer list right after loading the timers.xml on DVBViewer start and before the PC enters sleep mode / hibernate. In the latter case usually all timer list changes have been saved before. However, the list is still saved on closing DVBViewer “just in case” to make sure that the current state of the timer list is identical with the one on disk. Normally this yields identical timers.xml and timers.bak files.

• Added: Timer Recording and Recording Statistics Window: The list views in these windows now also respond to tilting the scroll wheel or rotating the horizontal scroll wheel by horizontal scrolling (previously only in the EPG Window).

• Fix: TV/Radio Playback: On Rebuild Playback the (stored) ID of the last channel was overwritten by the ID of the current channel, so that the Last Channel function subsequently performed a retune instead of returning to the previous channel.

• Added: Channel Editor: Automatic conversion of a user agent indication in imported M3U IPTV lists (#EXTVLCOPT:http-user-agent=…) to an equivalent DVBViewer URL appendix (?addhdr=User-Agent:…, see here).

• Change: Channel Search: In order to make a channel search more comprehensible for first-time users, the “Scan” button on the Reception Settings panel and the “Scan Range” button on the Channel Search panel have both been renamed consistently to “Channel Search” (see here). However, the function remains unchanged. It lets DVBViewer scan all frequencies starting with the one selected in the “Start” field up to (and including) the one selected in the “End” field.

• Change/Added: Channel Search: The “Scan Frequency” button above “Scan Range”, that previously let DVBViewer scan a single frequency selected in the “Start” field, has been substituted by a different button at a different place. Altogether there are three possibilities to scan a single frequency:

  • The new “Scan” button next to the “Start” field for scanning the frequency selected here.

  • The new “Scan” button next to the “End” field for scanning the frequency selected here.

  • The “Scan this Frequency” item in the (right-click) context menu of a selected channel for scanning its frequency. It does not change the start frequency to the channel frequency anymore, previously requiring an additional click on “Scan Frequency”, but immediately triggers the scan.

• Change/Fix: Subtitles: Enhancements concerning TTML subtitles, that are preferably used for MPEG Dash streams. Additional styling methods for colors, markup and text position are now recognized and applied.

• Fix: Subtitles: DVBViewer used “fully transparent” as wrong default value for subtitles background. It was temporarily adjusted to the intended “half transparent” by opening the subtitle options, but permanently corrected only by applying them after some change.

• Added: Hardware Options: Tweak “Allow BDA tuner re-detection by name” (→ launch Tweaker.exe). Switching this option on allows DVBViewer to re-detect BDA tuners by name if Windows has changed the hardware ID (e.g. after driver installation or a reboot). Retrieving "lost" tuners is performed on DVBViewer start. It avoids "No matching DVB device available" messages and a manually performed "Scan Devices" (see here). Please note: This option should only be applied if really necessary, because two or more tuners with the same name and tuner type (DVB-S/T/C) could be mistaken for each other. After a resulting automatic correction of hardware IDs DVBViewer updates the file hardware.xml immediately.

• Change: Hardware: On tuner availability checks and tuner initialization DVBViewer now only searches for a device with matching ID in the Windows device enumeration. It does not additionally compare the tuner name anymore (see here).

• Fix: Hardware Options: For some hybrid/multi-standard BDA tuners a wrong identification string was created on device detection and subsequently transmitted to other simultaneously running applications from the DVBViewer family (e.g. TransEdit), so that they could not recognize a tuner occupation by DVBViewer and vice versa. Please note that performing a new device detection in Settings → Options → Hardware is necessary for the fix to take effect.

• Change: TS Stream: Changed timing when receiving radio streams in order to avoid problems with unsteadily arriving data.

• Fix: HbbTV: “arte Mediathek” did not work anymore, caused by a changed HbbTV version indication in the HbbTV user agent string (since 7.2.3).

• Fix: HbbTV: Due to a bug ARD and ZDF HbbTV videos did not become visible in Automatic Color Key mode, because they remained covered by the HbbTV OSD. Furthermore, due to the same bug, the playback of ZDF HbbTV videos was stopped after some time (since 7.2.3).

• Fix: HbbTV: An additional empty line in the HTTP header could cause servers to send no response.

• Fix: General: A runtime library function for conversion of 64 bit integer numbers to text yielded wrong results (particularly concerning Channel IDs), if DVBViewer was running on Apple hardware with ARM M1/M2 CPU in a Parallels Desktop virtual machine.

• Fix: General: Uninstalling DVBViewer left a still installed Media Server in an unusable state and even prevented uninstalling the Media Server subsequently, if the user opted for DVBViewer program directory deletion. Therefore the DVBViewer uninstaller now prompts the user to uninstall the Media Server first, if it finds DVBVservice.exe, and terminates without doing something.

• Updated: OpenSSL Libraries to version 1.1.1t (see here).

[Griga]

Change Log DVBViewer Pro 7.2.5.0

• Added: General: Possibility to open the context menu of list view column headers (allowing to hide/show columns) by pressing Alt + F10, provided the list view is focused, so it can receive keyboard input. Previously the menu could only be accessed by right-clicking the headers, which was an obstacle for visually impaired users. Additionally, if the list supports sorting, a “Sort by…” sub-menu inserted at the top of the context menu allows to select the column by which the list shall be sorted. Selecting an already selected column (marked with a “radio button” dot) reverses the sort order from ascending to descending and vice versa. Previously this could only be achieved by left-clicking column headers. The additions apply to the “EPG per Channel” and “EPG at…” tabs of the EPG Windows, the Timer Recordings and UPnP Server windows and the “Recording Status” and “Recordings” tabs of the Recording Statistics window.

• Fix/Added: General: Measures for receiving Windows suspend/resume messages in case of modern (connected) standby (see here), so that sleep / wake-up events can be handled properly. In contrast to normal standby applications explicitly have to register for the messages.

• Fix: General: Adjustments avoiding certain issues if DVBViewer is running under Linux/Wine.

• Fix: General: Potential issues concerning window positions, caused by unreliable acquisition of the difference between the visible window bounds and the ones reported by the Windows 10/11 API (see 5.6.0 changes: “Windows did not dock gaplessly to the desktop edges or other windows under Windows 10”).

• Fix: Main Window: The title bar flickered when the DVBViewer main window was moved (since 7.2.4, see here).

• Fix: URL Playback: DVBViewer did not recognize the content of HTTP carrying a transport stream if the URL contained no .ts filename extension.

• Fix/Change: Playback: The “Resume playback after sleep mode / hibernation” function (see Options → General) has been reworked. It now ensures that playback does not resume until the user has logged in, if a lock screen is present after wake. The previous lock screen detection method did not work reliably. In case of a network/internet TV/Radio source or HbbTV auto-start the new method additionally ensures that playback does not resume after wake until the host is reachable, checked by a ping once per second, because network adapters may not work at an early stage.

• Fix: Playback Components Options: Switching “Use DVBViewer Filter for *.m2ts” off on the DVBViewer Filter tab did not take effect because the setting was not assigned correctly to the .m2ts filename extension.

• Added: Playback Components: Support for the MPC Video Renderer. It can be selected on Settings → Options → Playback Components → Video as video renderer, if it is registered in the system. See here what is working / not working with it. The MPC Video Renderer is recommendable if DVBViewer is running under Linux/Wine.

• Change: OSD: DVBViewer does not display “n/a” for unknown artists or album names on OSD main menu → Media Center → Music anymore, but omits it.

• Added: OSD: “Record Series” items in the OSD Blue context menus of OSD pages showing EPG data. Please note that the items are only available if DVBViewer is configured as client of a Media Server full version (not Basic version) and “Send timers to the server” is enabled (see Options → DVBViewer Media Server). DVBViewer itself contains no series recording functionality.

• Change: OSD: The overscan settings in Options -> OSD General, enabling a certain OSD size reduction on each side so it doesn’t get cut off on CRT TV sets (see here), has been replaced by OSD size adjustment settings. They allow to shrink the horizontal and/or vertical OSD size to a certain percentage of the whole display area extent. An additional “Only apply to full screen” checkbox enables using the settings for OSD adjustment to an ultra wide screen monitor (21:9) or a monitor with portrait orientation (9:16), thus avoiding OSD deformation to the full extent (see here).

• Removed: OSD: The code for games and the Alarm Timer page. They cannot be reactivated with a tweak anymore (see 7.2.3 changes).

• Change: Music Database: A database cleanup now also deletes single music files that are no more present (previously only directories including their content that are no more present).

• Added: Music Tags: DVBViewer now recognizes and reads the IDv2.3 “Album Artist” tag and uses it as artist information for its music database, if no per-track-artist is specified.

• Fix: Recorder: After a download of a file referenced by an MPEG Dash URL (.mpd) the recording representing the download was not stopped automatically.

• Change: Timeshift: No (useless) timeshift recording is started automatically anymore if a video and audio PID are missing in the channel data. DVBViewer now waits until the automatic channel update has retrieved the PIDs.

• Fix: Timeshift: In case of timeshifted playback, activated “Warning on timeshift termination” option and the start of a live stream via the file playback code branch (where live streams are detected and redirected to the live TV branch) the user was prompted two times to decide whether timeshift should be canceled, because after the first confirmation timeshift was not stopped.

• Fix: Channel Logos: Before using a cached channel → channel logo assignment from the file ChannelLogos2.ini, DVBViewer now checks if the image file exists. If not, DVBViewer automatically deletes the assignment and tries to find another matching logo for the channel. This avoids missing logos in the UI due to removed or renamed logo image files. Previously the user had to reset all cached logo assignments in the Channel Logo Options or to delete the file ChannelLogos2.ini for getting it fixed.

• Fix: Channel Editor: On a transponder list update to which the user agreed (see 7.2.2 changes), user defined settings stored in the old transponder list (name, channel group, DiSEqC, LOF values) were not copied to the new (updated) one.

• Added/Change: EPG Window: The EPG export as XML now conforms to the XMLTV format (see here), which is widely used for storing and processing EPG data. Additionally the export function provides saving the EPG in the DVBViewer data format (*.dat), that conforms to the format of the file epg.dat in the configuration directory, where DVBViewer stores its EPG data when it is closed.

• Change: Hardware: Due to frequent DiSEqC timing problems, the DiSEqCCount value for TBS DVB-S devices is now 2 by default (previously 1), so that every DiSEqC command is sent two times to the switch (see here). The change takes effect on the next device detection (see Options → Hardware).

• Change: Hardware Options: The “Shared LNB” option has been renamed to “Shared antenna cable” and supplemented by the hint “Tuner connected via 2-way splitter” that appears on mouse-over, in order to prevent misunderstanding and wrong usage.

• Fix: RTSP (Sat>IP) Client: Increased timeout for connection attempts to Sat>IP servers if the presence of Bitdefender security software is detected, that delays the procedure considerably, so that the normal timeout lets the initialization of virtual RTSP network devices fail.

• Fix: TS Stream: Memory leak if a transport or radio stream was received and the server forcibly closed the connection (WSAECONNRESET socket error, see here).

• Added: HbbTV: Support for HbbTV-only channels without DVB video and/or audio, that only display HbbTV content from the internet. The channel search now recognizes such channels, includes them in the search results and appends “(Internet)” to the channel name. This triggers an HbbTV auto start, so that switching to the channel immediately activates the HbbTV content, particularly playback of HbbTV IPTV channels.

• Updated: HbbTV: Default file HbbTV2.xml, that defines a user agent with lower HbbTV version number for URLs containing “hbbtv.zdf.de” in order to make the ZDF Mediathek work again. DVBViewer automatically updates the file in already existing installations with HbbTV add-on by downloading HbbTV2.xml from dvbviewer.tv.

• Fix: HbbTV: Some issues with live streams started from HbbTV if DVBViewer timeshift was active:

  • Jumping in the broadcaster’s MPEG Dash timeshift buffer with HbbTV functions did not work correctly because DVBViewer reported the current position in its own timeshift recording to the HbbTV app and tried to apply the position change to the recording.

  • DVBViewer did not recognize a new live stream URL, that was supposed to start playback at a different position, as MPEG Dash stream.

  • In case of timeshifted playback, activated “Warning on timeshift termination” option and playback start of a video or live stream via HbbTV, the prompt for confirmation that timeshift shall be canceled terminated HbbTV. Due to the lack of a better solution DVBViewer currently avoids it by suppressing the prompt (only in this case).