In the manual control panel you can test the functions of the tv-server without a client actually connecting to the tv stream. That means that the tv server will communicate with the tv card, tune into a channel and even start recording without the output being shown at a client. This can be used to quickly test if a channel is working correctly, or to see how good the signal strength is at a given channel.

It also gives you a quick status overview of all cards and what they are doing.

When you first enter the manual control panel it will look approximately like this:

Card Overview

This section shows an overview of all available tv cards and their current status.

Card

This column displays the unique number of the card that MP has ascribed to each tuner-card.

Type

Displays the type of card. Possible entries include DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-C, DVB-IP, RadioWebStream

State

Displays the current state of the card. Possible entries include:

• Idle - Card is doing nothing
• Grabbing EPG - Card is tuned for the purpose of Grabbing EPG from the signal
• Timeshifting - Card is currently streaming to a client
• Timeshifting(Grabbing EPG) - Card is currently streaming and also updating the EPG information from the stream.
• Recording - Card is currently recording the stream.
• Disabled - Card has been disabled within TV-Servers

Name

This displays the name of the Channel currently being accessed.

Scrambled

This displays whether the stream is scrambled or not

User

This displays the machine name of the client accessing the card.

Card Name

This displays the name of the card configured on the Server:

• scheduler(nnnn) where nnnn is the individual number of the scheduled recording
• client name, if a client is connected to the TV-server and actively watching TV
• epg in case this card is epg-grabbing
• setuptv in case you start timeshifting or recording a channel from this panel (see below)
• stress-nnn while stress-testing the TV-server via the[ Test Channels|Test Channels] control pane

Subchannels

A received DVB-stream consists of multiple subchannels. When you are recording (or watching from different clients) several programs that are present on the same DVB-stream, the TV-server decodes and distributes these subchannels to the desired locations (file or client).

Stop/Start Service

This button can be used to stop/start the TV Service. If clients are connected when this is depressed, all clients will lose connection and they will have to re-select the channel they were watching once the service is back up. Stopping the service will free all tv cards so they can be accessed by other programs.

Refresh DVB EPG

This button, when pressed instructs the TV Service to restart the EPG Grabbing function for all channels defined in TV Channels/TV EPG Grabber section. This does not trigger an xml import and will most likely delete all EPG information currently stored.

Note: If you select the Refresh DVB EPG button to initiate an immediate grab of the EPG, an EPG grab occurs only if:

• You have enabled EPG grabbing while idle and you are not watching or recording a programme, or
• You have enabled EPG grabbing while timeshifting/recording and you are currently watching or recording an appropriate channel.

If neither of these conditions is true, the Refresh DVB EPG button does nothing.

Test or record a channel

Select a channel

First, select the group of the channel you want to test from the dropdown list Group. This will populate the dropdown list Channel with all channels from this group. When you select a channel you can start timeshifting or recording on this channel.

Start/Stop TimeShift

This button will start/stop timeshifting on the selected channel in the Channel dropdown box. In the top section you will see the status of the current connection:

• Tuner locked: Yes/No
• Channel: Shows a detailled description of the current channel
• Signal level:
• Signal quality:

If the channel cannot be tuned successfully, it may be for one of the following reasons (the error will be displayed on the screen):

No signal detected: This means that either the signal is too weak to receive at your location, or the transmitter is no longer broadcasting a MUX on the frequency that you are trying to receive.

No Pmt detected: This means that the tuner is receiving the MUX successfully, but the MUX  does not contain the channel that you are trying to receive.  The channel may have moved to a different MUX, or the channel may no longer exist.

No Video/Audio detected: This means that the tuner is receiving the MUX successfully, and the MUX does contain the channel that you are trying to receive, but the channel is not currently broadcasting any content.  This occurs when a channel is a part-time channel (that is, the channel does not broadcast content for all 24 hours each day).

Record

Same as above (Start/Stop Timeshifting) with the difference that the stream is also saved as a recording (can only be enabled once a timeshift buffer is started).