QAM Scanning and Preview in Web Radio (beta)

[mvallevand]

The attached "experimental" update to Web Radio adds support for QAM scanning and preview which some people have asked for, and I can understand it since it can be difficult to identify channels. Note that this uses non-supported public interfaces in NPVR which sub will not guarantee, but for now it is working quite well for me on the PC and NMT (untested on the MVP)

To use it in the NPVR Config select Web Radio and tick the QAM Tuning check box. Two menu options will appear, QAM Scan and Tune and, Last QAM scan.

When you select QAM Scan select the tuner you want and a scan will begin. It will use the .INI file that you use in NPVR or Tuning\QAM\WebRadio.ini if it exists.

While waiting for a video data, you can abort the wait (ie there is no data) with a stop. Afterwards you have the advantage of using the excellent NPVR ts player to preview the station. Because of the methods used, you can see multiple audio tracks in a stream, but it will crash if you select another one.

I use this feature to watch the OnDemand channels that might be playing in the clear that only exist for the duration of the show.

Another feature in this is that it is possible to listen to QAM radio without having database entries.

Let me know how it goes, and of course I am open to suggestions for improvements. Logs of course are required to debug problems.

Thanks to pcostanza for checking this out.

Martin

[mvallevand]

For those of you not in North America, I thought I'd show you what the result of QAM scanning are and why we have so many problems Excuse the crappy quality this is Windows Media Encoder, but you get the idea. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywqPnvRN9dk

Normally jwe get a list of frequencies and ID some consider meaningless but actually the Silcon Dust site show them, sometimes. This scan was just for the On Demand channels which use quite dynamic IDs so they won't be listed.

Anyway back to the show and tell, from these cryptic ID codes, you see I have one blank streaming nothing, and one that doesn't deliver this is usually the norm, and so mapping can be quite time consuming.

Martin