VDR
Contents
The Video Disk Recorder
VDR is a personal video recorder system aimed at the DVB market. It supports DVB-S, DVB-C and DVB-T tuner cards. More details can be found at the VDR homepage.
It is the second PVR system integrated into LinuxMCE. The main aim is for a seamless integration into LinuxMCE. The UI should not change between VDR and the other LinuxMCE pieces. The first version of this integration is scheduled for January 2008, and is mainly sponsored by Convergent Home Technologies Ltd.
Configuration
Recently I managed to setup VDR under LinuxMCE successfully. This brief howto is a result of my personal experience. So, don't hesitate to improve it.
Installation
VDR can be chosen by two ways. The first one is initial configuration after installation. During setup the media center property you should choose VDR and not MythTV. The second way is to tick VDR and tick off MythTV on the Software modules page - Wizard --> Media Directors. In both cases VDR will be installed automatically and will start after installation.
To make VDR configuration and manage easier its web interface - VDRAdmin can be used. It should be installed manually:
sudo apt-get install vdradmin-am
and then enabled to be able run by replacing ENABLED="0" by ENABLED="1" in the /etc/default/vdradmin-am. Also don't forget to add a new firewall rule for the port 8001 - Advanced -->> Network --> Firewall Rules.
Another useful tool is set of DVB utilities should be also installed manually:
sudo apt-get install dvb-utils
Configuration
To configure VDR we should get the list of all available channels for desire satellite. You can find it somewhere or create using DVB utility scan. To do that we need the list of transponders stored as INI file. Get it from the JoshyFun's site. Store it somewhere on your LinuxMCE core. In my case I use the INI file for Hotbird.
Before scanning stop VDR:
sudo /etc/init.d/vdr stop
and start scanning procedure:
scan -o vdr -p -x 0 0130.ini > channels.conf
It might take about 10-20 minutes depends on the number of available channels on your satellite. When scanning is finished just upload the created channels.conf file via Admin site - Advanced --> Configuration --> VDR. And then pickup your satellite from the list (see picture above).
Quick reload router (most probably is not needed) and press button TV on the on-screen Orbiter. You should be able to watch live TV. To navigate on that screen use F6, F7 and F8 buttons on your keyboard, Gyration mouse or Fiire remote. Additionally you can switch channels, see EPG and schedule recording from VDRAdmin web interface.
Troubleshooting
If VDR works not as you expect you can do following:
- Check VDR log - /var/log/pluto/<ID_VDR_IN_YOUR_SYSTEM>_VDR.log
- Check if everything ok with your DVB card:
- lspci - you should see your card in the list of PCI devices
- dmesg|grep -i dvb - if driver if your DVB card is loaded correctly you will see it here. Note that in some cases you should place a firmware for your card into /lib/firmware!
Adding your own plugins to vdr
Installing vdr-dev
If you want to build and add plugins to vdr you need to install the vdr-dev package. Open a console session at your core or ssh in from another machine and do;
apt-get install vdr-dev <return>
Now follow the instructions for building the plugin you are interested in.
