The Video Disc Recorder (VDR)
[ DEUTSCHE VERSION ]
Welcome at my site about the Linux Video Disc Recorder (VDR). This site provides some general information about
VDR and links the most important web resources.
You will also find some details, fotos and screenshots from my personal VDR-Box. Last but not least there
are my own VDR-projects which can be downloaded.
NOTE: I do not give any links to VDR-projects or plugins (except to my own ones). To find the newest versions
use a search engine and type 'plugin-name vdr' or goto
www.vdr-wiki.de because that site is always up-to-date.
Have fun...
TOC
General information
What is VDR
The Linux Video Disc Recorder (VDR) is an open source software project by Klaus Schmidinger. The idea is to turn
a normal PC into a digital TV-receiver. To use VDR a linux installation is required. VDR uses the API
from the LinuxTV V4l-DVB project which is integrated in the linux kernel. So it is all open source and
total for free - you just need to buy the hardware.
Features
- Digital TV receiver
- Recording the TV program to HD in full quality ( also Dolby Digital audio)
- Timeshift (Recording a programme and viewing it asynchronously )
- Electronic programme guide (EPG)
- Programmable recordings (timers)
- Cutting of recordings (remove advertisment)
- CI/CAM support (PayTV)
- The V4L-DVB API (and therefor VDR) supports up to 4 receiver devices. Parallel recording/watching of
different programmes is possible
VDR provides the possibility to load plugins. Many people have developed plugins to give VDR even more power.
This is just a small view of the available plugins:
- DVD playback
- mp3 playback
- playback of AVI and many other formats (using mplayer)
- extended EPG
- image viewing
- VCD playback
- Create DVDs from HDD-recordings (digital quality - also Dolby Digital audio)
There are many more. More plugins you will find at the linked websites.
Important weblinks
This site only provides less general information about VDR. Please visit the following sites for further information.
My VDR-Box
A friend told me about VDR somtimes about May 2004 and I was fascinated immediatly. In June
I ordered a pack of hardware, bought a smart MicroATX case at ebay and after putting all
together installed Debian woody and the whole VDR stuff.
I upgraded to Debian Sarge because it contains more recent versions of the required
software packages.
Hardware
- Intel Pentium IV 1.8 GHz
- ASUS P4R800-VM
- 512 MB RAM
- Haupauge NEXUS-S with CI
- Technisat SkyStar II (Rev. 2.6)
- Samsung 160 GB hard disc
- LG DVD writer
- Yeong Yang A206 case
In January 2006 I added a 128x64 LCD which I mounted on the front side of the case. At the same time
I managed to get an Alphcrypt Light CAM to watch PREMIERE (PayTV) with a legal card.
Before using VDR I had a digital settop box (without digital audio output) and a budget
DVD player. The rest of my 'home cinema' is still the same:
- PHILIPS 16:9 82cm CRT TV
- Onkyo Dolby Digital Receiver A-DS650
- 5 speaker (made in GDR)
Noise reduction
My VDR was much too loud. The process of noise reduction took much time and was very
anoying. My advice: whenever possible use a 'normal' ATX case for your VDR because there is
a huge offer of quiet power supplies and coolers. For MicroATX cases this is unfortunatly
not the case.
- Changed Intel CPU cooler to Artic P4 Silent Pro ( much quieter )
- Changed case cooler to Papst 612 NGL (2x) ( quieter than the standard cooler )
- Changed 200W power supply to a 270W version with controlled Papst 612 NGL ( very quiet )
- Installed manual controlable fan controller for the chassis-fans
Now everything is fine concerning noise level. Most of the noise reduction stuff I ordered
at www.ichbinleise.de.
Plugins and screenshots
You do not believe it - here some screenshots to give the proof.
 |  |
| programme information | VDRs main menu |
 | |
| recordings menu | |
VDR and PREMIERE (PayTV)
Because I can borrow a PREMIERE card from my girlfriend's parents I was interested in getting Pay-TV work with VDR.
When building the box I ordered a Hauppauge Nexus-S and an extra CI-device to mount in a 3,5" slot.
I did not know anything about CI/CAM and was annoyed that the PREMIERE smartcard could not be plugged into the CI.
I pointed out that a CAM was needed. I contacted PREMIERE to get one but they do not help and do not sell - even not
to over 10-year customers. Their point of view is that customers have to use their 'certified' garbage boxes.
A friend bought an Aplhacrypt CAM at ebay but it was an illegal repro an did not work properly. He had some trouble
to give it back so I did not want to buy it there. Some months passed and in December 2005 I heard that a small
TV-shop here at the end of the world sells CAMs. I asked the shopkeeper and he ordered one. One week later got
it but had a bad feeling immediatly because a big red PREMIERE sticker was on it (of course that could not work ;).
After some rebooting and crying I saw the CAM in VDRs CICAM menu. When entering the CAM menu at a certain point
a message 'The receiver is not PREMIERE compatible' was displayed. I knew that this message was not produced by VDR
but has to come from the CAM itself. I returned it to the shop and the keeper ordered a real Alphacrypt Light.
Another 2 weeks later it was there and I finally got PREMIERE working. Unfortunatly a reboot is necessary to get
the CAM working.
I borrow the card at night mostly and record two or three movies from PREMIERE 1 or 2 because only that channels broadcast
Dolby Digital 5.1.
Screenshots follow.
As mentioned before many people have written plugins for VDR to give it even more power. Here is a list of my favourite plugins:
EPGSEARCH
Great plugin which extends VDRs normal EPG a lot. You can define points of time and look what's on at that time (e.g. prime time = 20.15).
You can create search entries which give you results from the EPG. When selecting an event in the EPG you can easily find out if and when
it will be repeated.
 |  |
| what's on now? | details about programme |
 |  |
| what's on at prime time? | commands |
 | |
| programme repeatings | |
DVD
Plugin to view video DVDs. The plugins requires some libraries and libdvdcss to view copy protected DVDs. Sometimes problems occur when
the DVD creators have been to creative concerning menus and interaction. 99% of DVDs run without problems.
 |  |
| dvd playback | menu on a dvd |
MP3 / MPLAYER
Plugin to play mp3 and OGG audio files. Files can be selected from hard disc or DVD/CDROM. The plugins also contains a mplayer wrapper
to play AVIs and many other video formats. I don not use mplayer very often because quality of most AVIs you get is very poor.
 |  |
| mp3 browsing | mp3 playback |
IMAGE
Plugin to view all kind of images on the TV screen. Browsing is similar to mp3. Zooming and rotating in 90 degree steps is possible.
 |  |
| image view | selecting from 3x3 preview |
GRAPHLCD
Plugin to control a small LCD. The LCD I bought at ebay and mounted it on the front side of the case. The plugin works stable and shows
the current programme on the display if nothing else is done.
When entering menus it displays a small version of VDRs menus. Playback of DVD, mp3 or recordings is also drawn on the LCD. It is perfect
for listening to music because you do not have to turn on the TV everytime you want to switch something. (screenshots follow)
TEXT2SKIN
Somewhere within version 1.3 VDR introduced skins. Skins are different layouts. The default skins 'classic' and 'ST:TNG' work fast und reliable
but look a bit outdated compared to modern Set-Top-Boxes. Because writing skins requires C-programming a plugin to read XML-skinfiles was
developed. After some time a lot of skins for that text2skin have been written.
Some only work with so called 'modded cards' - meaning the viedeo memory of the full featured TV-card has been increased by mounting
additional memory. Because this is not just plugging a module (like PC-RAM) I kept things as they were. In my opinion the best skin for
unmodded cards is DeepBlue. You can see DeepBlue on all the screenshots on this site.
I have some more plugins installed (of course my own which can be found down the page).
Remote Control
For a long time I used the remote control that was shipped together with my Nexus-S FF card. Unfortunately a lot of
VDRs keys (like RECORDINGS, INFO, SCHEDULE ...) were missing on that RC.
When thiefts entered our office and stole all the TFTs they also took away a Microsoft MediaCenter-PC but
left the remote control. Since there was no use without the PC the boss gave it to me as a present for my VDR.
As you can see on the picture it is also a Hauppauge device.
 |
| new and old remote control |
I tried to find out the name of that rc but just found it in the Hauppauge shop:
Remote Control. The price of 14.95$ is OK since that is one of the best RCs to use with VDR.
My 'mission' is now to enable all the keys on the new RC:
| KEY | Intergrated to VDR |
| Music | learned as user-key and assigned to mp3-plugin in keymacros.conf |
| Pictures | learned as user-key and assigned to image-plugin in keymacros.conf |
| Radio | learned as user-key and assigned to radiolist-plugin
|
| TV | learned as CHANELS-key
|
| Prev Ch | learned as user-key and assigned to zappinghistory-plugin in keymacros.conf. Unfortunately the zappinghistory plugin has problems on multi-card systems. It seems that not only the user-zapped channels appear in history but also channels VDR switched to for epg-scan or pid-scan. I will try to fix that. |
| Mute | Because mute does not work with digital out I use that key for AUDIO selection. I tried to 'relable' the key on the RC but it is quite difficult to get the letters off |
| Skip | patched VDR and several plugins to have Skip/Replay functionality. See Skipkeys patch |
| Replay | See Skip above |
My VDR projects
Digicam plugin
The idea
In late summer 2004 my girlfriend decided to buy a Canon EOS 300D digital camera. I tested
it with Linux and got it working with gphoto2 even before the camera worked with Windows
(she had to install 300MB of drivers and software - grrrr).
When watching some pictures on the VDR (image plugin) the idea of the DIGICAM plugin was born.
The goal was to get the files from the camera via OSD and watch them. After some studies and
tests with gphoto2 I started writing the plugin.
Features
- Browsing camera's memory via OSD
- Download files from the camera and store on the VDR via OSD
- Selection where to store downloaded files via OSD
- Delete files and directories on the camera
- Creating directories on the VDR
Some parts are taken from the image plugin. Please see the README for more information. I only
tested with the CANON EOS because all other cameras I got were not supported by gphoto2
(see SUPPORTED for a list of about 400 cameras which are supported by gphoto2 and should
somehow work with the plugin).
Unfortunatly older cameras only are USB 1.0 /1.1 devices. Downloading 1GB of holiday images
with the plugin will not be a good idea via USB 1.0/1.1. The newest cameras (e.g. EOS 350D)
are USB 2.0 devices and provide the same speed as card readers do.
Screenshots
 |  |
| camera browsing | camera browsing |
 |  |
| file browsing | file information |
 |  |
| directory information | view copy progress |
 |  |
| camera information | choose copy location on HD |
Download Digicam plugin
For version details see HISTORY
- Version 1.0.2: release for VDR 1.4
- Version 1.0.1: no OSD status messages are displayed from within the download thread
Version 1.0.2: vdr-digicam-1.0.2.tgz
Older versions: Archive
Bug and test reporting
If you have any problems or test results you are welcome to send me an email: vdr@unterbrecher.de
EGGTIMER Plugin
A little plugin which turns your VDR into a full-featured eggtimer. The purpose is to remind you to certain things you will probably
forget while watching TV (e.g. tea, the duck in the oven or just to call someone back).
The new version 0.9.0 can do some more. It is able to switch channel or execute a command from VDRs commands.conf
at a certain point of time.
After selecting from VDRs main menu you can set the eggtimer to countdown a certain number of minutes or seconds. The countdown is
done in background. When time is over a repeating status message is displayed via OSD until you stop the eggtimer in VDRs main menu.
It does not interfere with any running playback or plugin. You can define templates in a config file to create standard scenarios like
'Tea: countdown 5 minutes'.
Languages:English, German, French, Finnish
If you want to provide translations please contact me: vdr@unterbrecher.de
Download EGGTIMER plugin
For version details see HISTORY
ATTENTION
- Version 0.9.5: release for VDR 1.4 and Dutch translations.
- Version 0.9.4: snytax of the eggtimer.conf template file has changed. Please adapt your config.
- Version 0.9.3: Eggtimer now uses a secure way to display OSD messages from background threads which was introduced in VDR 1.3.37.
All stability issues when the eggtimer-message is displayed should be gone with VDR >= 1.3.37 and vdr-eggtimer >= 0.9.3. Therefor
I recommend to use VDR >= 1.3.37 (see also HISTORY )
Thanks to Tobias Grimm for bringing light into this.
Download 0.9.5: vdr-eggtimer-0.9.5.tgz
Older versions: Archive
Screenshots
 |  |
| set the eggtimer | message when time is over |
 |  |
| set the eggtimer to execute a command | set the eggtimer to switch channel |
EGGTIMER Plan
- View running countdown via a new status menu
JVdr - A remote GUI for VDR
JVdr is a java based client application to control VDR over network. Communication is done via VDRs SVDRP remote administration interface.
JVdr provides a remote control like GUI and a screen panel which displays a screenshot.
JVdr can save the screenshot to a JPEG-file. All the VDR-screenshots at this site were taken via JVdr. It is much more comfortable to navigate
through VDR menus from your desktop PC and saving screenshots that easy.
Currently german and english locales are integrated.
NOTE: It seems that screenshots do not work with softdevice because it does not implement VDRs GRAB function.
ATTENTION: JVdr does NOT display a live stream - just screenshot jpegs. It can also be used in a slow network and/or on slow machines.
To run JVdr you need a working JRE (Java Runtime Environment) or a JDK (Java Development Kit). Java technology is platform-independent so
JVdr will work on Linux, Windows and MAC.
To download the JRE got to: java.sun.com
Download JVdr
Current verion: 0.0.3. See HISTORY for versioning details.
Older versions: Archive
Screenshots
 |  |
| connection wizard | connected to vdr |
 | |
| settings wizard | |
RADIOLIST Plugin
The plugin provides a second channel-list which only contains channels with VPID = 0, usually known
as radio channels. I wrote the plugin to enable the RADIO-key on my remote control.
In the plugin's setup you can disable the main menu entry (call plugin via user-key and keymacros.conf).
It is also possible to enable the channel seperators from the orginal channel view.
Download RADIOLIST plugin
For version details see HISTORY
Download 0.0.2: vdr-radiolist-0.0.2.tgz
Screenshots
 |  |
| radio list in main menu | list with radio channels |
ZAPHISTORY Plugin
The zaphistory plugin creates a list of previously watched channels. The list is displayed via an OSD menu.
Channels can be switched from that menu.
The original version is not my work and was published on the German VDR-PORTAL in spring 2005.
That version had a bug on multicard-systems leading to a history full of channels VDR switched to for
background scans (EPG/PID).
Current features
- history is stored in file
- zap counter and watch time is collected for each channel
- 2 views: channel + EPG and channel + statistics
- reset menu
Languages:English, German, French, Spanish, Estonian
If you want to provide translations please contact me: vdr@unterbrecher.de
Download ZAPHISTORY plugin
Version details HISTORY
Download 0.9.5: vdr-zaphistory-0.9.5.tgz
Older versions: Archive
Screenshots
 |  |
| History display with EPG | History display with statistics |
 |  |
| Sorted by zaps | Reset history menu |
 | |
| Setup | |
ZapHistory plan
- display EPG-data for each entry (configurable)
DVD chapters patch for vdr-burn
This patch modifies the vdr-burn plugin to turn vdr cutting marks to DVD chapters. I use it with concert
recordings and place marks before each song. So I can use the prev and next key during DVD playback to jump
between songs. Do not forget to delete 'real' cutting marks remaining from cutting process before you place your new marks.
root@fontina:/usr/src/vdr/current/PLUGINS/src/burn# patch -p1 < vdr-burn-0.0.5-chapters.diff
The patch works against the plain vdr-burn-0.0.5 version from xeatre.tv. Any other or patched versions may
produde conflicts. The patch includes all modifications to use vdr-burn with vdr-1.3.25+.
It will probably not work with vdr <1.3.25.
I have been asked to adapt the patch for extended VDR-BURN versions and I tried to do so. Unfornately all modified VDR-BURN
version produced problems here so testing was not possible.
Download: vdr-burn-0.0.5-chapters.diff
Feel free to report problems or results.
Patch: SKIP keys for VDR and plugins
Here you find some patches to enable the skip-keys on your remote control. Since version 1.3.47 these keys
are available in vanilla vdr and only the plugins have to be patched.
Skip-keys Patch for VDR (tested with 1.3.43 - 1.3.46). Since 1.3.47 this patch is not needed any more
Download: vdr-1.3.43-skipkeys.diff
Howto apply: root@fontina:/usr/src/vdr/current# patch -p1 < vdr-1.3.43-skipkeys.diff
Skip-keys Patch for DVD-plugin (tested with CVS version from 03-03-2006)
Skip keys jump between DVD-chapters. That is common behaviour of standalone DVD-players.
Download: dvd-cvs-skipkeys.diff
Howto apply: root@fontina:/usr/src/vdr/current/PLUGINS/src/dvd# patch -p1 < dvd-cvs-skipkeys.diff
Skip-keys Patch for MP3-plugin (tested with mp3-0.9.14 and 0.9.15-pre)
Skip keys jump between tracks
Download: mp3-0.9.14-skipkeys.diff
Howto apply: root@fontina:/usr/src/vdr/current/PLUGINS/src/mp3# patch -p1 < mp3-0.9.14-skipkeys.diff
Skip-keys Patch for IMAGE-plugin (tested with image-0.2.5)
Skip keys jump between images
Download: image-0.2.5-skipkeys.diff
Howto apply: root@fontina:/usr/src/vdr/current/PLUGINS/src/image# patch -p1 < image-0.2.5-skipkeys.diff
Feel free to report problems or results.
Patch: Text2Skin plugin and VDR >= 1.3.38
I noticed that with VDR 1.3.38+ the text2skin plugin does not work correctly. Nice things like
replay logos and current recording status (DeepBlue-skin) are not working any more.
This patch fixes that problem. (tested with text2skin CVS version from 03-03-2006)
Download: text2skin-vdr-1.3.38.diff
Howto apply: root@fontina:/usr/src/vdr/current/PLUGINS/src/text2skin# patch -p1 < text2skin-vdr-1.3.38.diff
About me & contact
My name is Peter Juszack, I was born in 1980 and live at the countryside in Münchehofe about 50 km south of Berlin, Germany.
Since 2001 I am a student of business informatics at the University Of Applied Sciences Wildau.
My other interests:
- My seconde patience are old motorcycles build by MZ (Motorradwerk Zschopau, former GDR). Until now I
renewed two bikes from bad condition to almost brand new. The older motorbike was manufactured in 1959.
Working with these fascinating old bikes is a beautiful contrast to the work in front of the screen.
If you want to know more (German only): www.unterbrecher.de
- For a couple of years I play Basketball. In the last years only once a week
- Chinese cooking - best in a real wok above an open fire
- All kind of work concerning our house ( electric installation, woodcraft aso.)
When building our roof-flat I helped a lot. When doing the electic installation I also installed a CAT5 data-network
in (almost) every room and brought 2 SAT cables into the living room. At this time I did not have a VDR yet but
the 'investment' should be very useful some day ;)
For questions, problems or anything else contact me per mail:
[ DEUTSCHE VERSION ]
