PART I - Setup * What are the minimal software requirement to run ostbox in a set top box configuration ? You need to have a running X Server. Do not use a window manager since it would cause more trouble. LIRC support is also required, unless you can configure your remote to send keyboard events in X. For sound, you need alsa drivers and alsa-utils installed. (oss won't do.) * When I hit power off, i'd like screen to switch off (but not the computer) Set the "screen power mode" setting to DPMS. This way, ostbox will just switch off or on the screen when you hit the power key. PART II - Viewing TV / Listening radio * What is the zapping plugin ? The zapping plugin allow you to watch TV or listen to radio using differents video player, but with a transparent control mecanism. You select channel by number (shortcut) or by browsing them, from lirc device. By default, the channel browsing keys are grouped on the numeric keypad. You can configure your lirc remote for this as well (in the configuration menu) The default configuration is ready for using mplayer to play dvb, listen to webradio and watch analog TV with xawtv. However, you'll still need to manually configure your channels (see next questions) * What is the syntax of the channels.xml file ? In the channels.xml file you describe your tuners and configure command to control the player program. (ie, how to start/stop/change channel/display a message). Webradio player is also defined as a tuner (you could define more than one tuner for webradio, for example if you wish to use xine for some and mplayer for others...) In the tuner tag, you must also configure the "frequency". They arethe identifiers recognized by the player. Finally, in the channels.xml, you define channels. Options include display name, shortcut on the lirc command, and frequencies to use. Most of the time a channel is associated to one frequency of one tuner. It is possible to associate a channel to different tuners. In this case, when you select the channel, ostbox will choose between the different players which can play the channel. Thre criteria are : * The tuner availability is checked (it is possible to cooperate with a background recorder) * It will cycle throught tuners if you re-select the current channel * If a player is already started, it will try to reuse it * In last ressort, the order of definition of the frequencies is respected. The default channels.xml comes preconfigured with for : * DVB-T, using mplayer and tuned for french DVB-T * video4linx with xawtv, tuner for french analog TV. * webradios using mplayer, again with some french channels configured. If you want to go further with the channels.xml syntax, have a look at the file src/interface/plugins/zapping/channels.syntax.xml. Also, don't hesitate to send me your own channels.xml file, I'll try to maintain a repository of preconfigured channels.xml * What do I need to configure to watch dvb tv with mplayer ? First, you need a working mplayer and dvb-t setup (ie mplayer dvb:// starts playing dvb tv). Then, you have to copy /usr/share/ostbox/config/channels.xml into your ~/.ostbox/ directory. Then you have to manually define all the channels presents in your ~/.mplayer/channels.conf file. For each channel, you'll have an entry under tuner, and a under the root (OstBoxChannelsConfig). Remember that when running in tuner mode, mplayer is started with lirc support turned off. This is because current version of mplayer cannot correctly handle at the same time input coming from lirc and a fifo. * What do I need to configure to watch TV with xine ? First, you need a working mplayer and dvb-t setup (ie xine dvb:// starts playing dvb tv). Then, you have to copy /usr/share/ostbox/config/channels.xml into your ~/.ostbox/ directory. Then you have to manually define all the channels presents in your ~/.mplayer/channels.conf file. For each channel, you'll have an entry under tuner, and a under the root (OstBoxChannelsConfig). For the moment, xine is not controlled by ostbox. Specially, ostbox cannot ask xine to print text. As a result, xine will get interrupted when the channel selector popups.. * What do I need to configure to watch TV with xawtv ? You need xawtv (with channels correctly configured) and the xawtv-remote program. This program doesn't come with all version of xawtv, so beware ! Note that your xawtv must not react to lirc event. You have to unconfigure any support for lirc in ~/.xawtv (channel changing, volume control) * I have trouble running xawtv from ostbox (xawtv never appears) At least on my fedora core 3, this is a problem with pam ! The v4l-conf util located in /usr/bin is just a symlink to consolehelper, and consolehelper just crash if it is started from ost-box... To revert this (as root!), remove the symlink and copy /usr/sbin/v4l-conf to /usr/bin/v4l-conf. Then gives it a SUID permission : chmod u+s /usr/bin/v4l-conf. * I want to use xine/vlc/anything else to watch TV You must create a new tuner entry in the channels.xml file. You'll need to provide commands to start and stop the player, to display a message over it, to switch channel, ... (see above) * Does OSTBOX support xmltv program ? Yes. Grabbing the xmltv data is up to you (a simple cron task should do it; see http://www.xmltv.org/). Once you get a valid file, put it in ~/.ostbox/guide.xml. OSTBox should load it automatically. Program will be displayed in the channel selection panel (when you hit channel +/- keys) and in the channel browser (the TV icon from the main menu). If the file is updated while ostbox is running, ostbox will detect it and re-read the EPG. * OSTBOX doesn't display my channel's program You'll have to adjust your channels.xml file to configure the match between channel id of channels.xml and guide.xml file. For example, suppose that program for the channel "TF1" is referenced with the id "C1.telepoche.com" in the guide.xml file. You can use the following : TF1 1 manual-id C1.telepoche.com Part III - Troubleshooting * After upgrading to 0.3, OST-Box doesn't react to keys anymore. The key naming scheme has changed. We switched from SDL to X11 key names. As a result, key configuration for the keyboard is not compatible between 0.2 and 0.3+ versions... The simple way to recover is to remove the file ~/.ostbox/map.xml and restart ostbox. This will reset any key settings. You'll then have to reconfigure any lirc remote in the setup menu. * The keypad is not working correctly in other applications when ost-box is running. Since version 0.3, ost-box uses some keys for the channel browser. These key are grabbed, so that if you hit them from anywhere, they will popup the channel selector, in the ostbox window or in the current TV/Radio viewer. If you don't use the channel selector and want to disable this behaviour, you can disable key grabbing in the configuration menu. * OST-Box does not return to full screen or loose X11 focus after a program ran. It is a problem with the window manager. icewm is know to cause trouble. KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox or blackbox are OK. The best is to use ostbox without any window manager, at fullscreen and in the default X11 resolution. * Can I run ost-box without X (in a framebuffer for example) ? Not really... It would basically work, but some functionnality relies on X11 (such as screen power control, key grabbing in other apps). However, I never tried... Feedback is welcome ! * My locale is not UTF8. Some character are not correctly displayed !!! Encoding other than UTF8 are not supported for the moment. It is on my far futur TODO list... However, if you feel brave, you can try to modify utils/ls.pl to convert on the fly file name encoding (only the display tag must be converted). You'll also have to adapt the displayBinaryPath function so that it convert from your locale to utf8... If it works, send me a patch ! PART III - Contributing ? * How do I translate ost-box ? Modify the file ostbox-i18n.xml. It must be encoded in UTF8 !!! Don't forget to send me back the file ! * How do I create a skin for ost-box ? This still lacks documentation