Analog TV cards

If you have an analogue tuner and it appears in the list of TV cards under the TV Server in the left pane, when you select the card you should see the screen below:

Scanning

• Make sure you have an aerial with a good signal plugged in. Select the right country, whether the source is antenna or cable and the sensitivity from the drop down menus. When you hit Scan for TV channels, TV Server will start to scan for channels. Scanning has completed when the progress bar reaches the end. While it is scanning, any channels found will be displayed in the window.
  Additionally you can scan for analog (FM) radio channels by clicking on Scan for radio channels.

• Create "Analog" group

When this field is checked, a separate group (Analog) is automatically created in the TV channels groups (as well as in the Radio channels groups if you also scan for radio channels). Separate TV and radio groups can also be created for DVB-T ("Digital terrestrial"), DVB-C ("Digital cable") and DVB-S ("Digital satellite") channels so you can more easily identify your analog channels when sorting, combining and editing your channels.

• Don't merge channels with same name

• Channels names are broadcast with the teletext stream. MediaPortal will use this information to set a name for the channels. Sometimes a channel is broadcast on several different frequencies so if the same channel name is encountered twice, it is merged and assumed to contain the same channel.
  However broadcasters are known to make mistakes and set the same channel name for all their channels which means MediaPortal will merge them all into one. Select this checkbox to prevent merging channels.

• Composite/Component/S-Video Input

• To use the composite or component or S-video input from a tuner, use the Add S-Video Channels button. You may have to do some trial and error to see which channels are correct. Some may contain sound only, and others may be video only. There should be one that has both sound and video.
• Example S-Video#1 on 2. || Channel Name || Description ||

  CVBS	Composite
  S-Video	S-Video
  YRYBY	Component
  #x	input number
  on x	on tuner number

   

• Note: The following settings are available after the first successfully performed tune. This goes also for the "Add S-Video channels" button.

Settings

Here you can adjust the Video standard, Frame rate and Frame size.

• Video standard: Select a video format per card.
• Frame rate and Frame size: Change the frame size and frame rate per card. Since it is not very easy to detect all possible resolutions we will offer only a list with standard values.

Video Parameters

Here you can change the video parameter like brightness, hue, contrast, etc. The possible values are automatically detected and you can also only edit the values that are available.

Quality Control

TV-Server can have two settings for quality. One which is used for recordings and one for normal playback and timeshifting TV. While watching TV, you can change those settings temporarily via the context menu in MediaPortal. It is also possible to overwrite the settings for scheduled recordings within MediaPortal.

A quality setting consist of two parameters:

1. Bitrate mode: This means only the combination of the selected bitrate mode and bitrate defines the quality that is used. TV-Server uses a standardized interface which supports three bitrate modes:
   1. Constant bitrate: The bitrate is constant all the time. As bitrate the selected value will be used.
   2. Variable bitrate (Average): The bitrate that is used is variable, but in a specific time period (normally 5 minutes) the bitrate is the selected one.
   3. Variable bitrate (Peak): It is the same as Variable bitrate (Average) except that the maximum (peak) bitrate is also defined.
2. Bitrate: Unfortunately a standardized range for bitrate playback does not exist. Therefore TV-Server uses percental values. Generally if you want the best quality you should just set the bitrate to High as this is identical to 100% in the custom values.

Note:
Constant bitrate mode: Recordings are made with constant bitrate. This is probably not ideal, but it is possible that variable bitrate modes are not supported.
Variable bitrate average mode: Recordings are made with variable bitrate. This is preferred for better quality-per-bit (efficiency).
Variable bitrate peak mode: Same as variable bitrate average mode, except that the peak bitrate is constrained. Not all encoders support this.

The quality presets for bitrate are as follows:
Portable = 20%
Low = 33%
Medium = 66%
High = 100%
Default = Existing value. Whatever that happens to be.
Custom = The value set in the Custom value field.

The chosen bitrate sets the constant bitrate for constant bitrate mode, and the average bitrate for *both* variable bitrate modes.

If you choose variable bitrate peak mode then you can limit the peak bitrate. There are peak bitrates that correspond with each preset:
Portable = 45%
Low = 55%
Medium = 88%
High = 100%
Default = Existing value. Whatever that happens to be.
Custom = The value set in the Custom peak value field.

Note that variable and especially variable peak modes are not guaranteed to be supported by all encoders.