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DVBEdit Home Page |
Updated June 15, 2001
What's Here?
Introduction
DVBEdit is a channel editing and general utility program for
use with DVB2000 satellite receiver software which runs on Nokia
9200, 9500 and 9600 receivers. DVBEdit can communicate with DVB2000
using serial or SCSI interfaces - SCSI is highly recommended since
it's transfer performance is literally thousands of times faster
than serial.
DVBEdit has these and many more features:
- Complete channel editing, including channel name, position,
PIDs
- Channel sorting by name, frequency, service ID and polarity
- Firmware upgrade capability either with serial or SCSI. Serial
takes a few minutes to upgrade (significantly faster than Nokia's
SeriServ program) - SCSI takes about seven seconds!
- Cut, copy and paste capabilities
- Channel listing printing - excellent for a hardcopy of your
channel list
- Serial band scanner which can automatically search a selected
range of frequencies for MPEG-2/DVB compatible signals
- Integration with the Chaparral Monterey 140 receiver
- Dolby Digital AC3 decoder in software - no special sound
card or external AC3 decoder required
New Features
Now switched to release mode - we now treat each release by
it's build number. Changes for build 61:
- Supports the latest AC3 capable DVB2000
These new features have been added to version 5.0 beta 9:
- The AC3 decoder now displays information about the AC3 stream
- channels, sampling rate, bit rate and audio type
- The AC3 decoder now detects a channel change and restarts
itself on the new channel automatically
These new features have been added to version 5.0 beta 8:
- Improvements to the Monty 140 interface
- AC3 decoder added. You can now listen to the audio from AC3
channels on your PC speakers, regardless of sound card type.
Just set the audio PID on the Nokia to the PID containing the
AC3 audio. There is no lip-sync at all - because of the hardware
on the Nokia, there is no way to do lip-sync, but this is better
than silence!
These new features have been added to version 5.0 beta 7:
- Updated to the latest MPEG Search Project format
- Added support for the Chaparral Montery 140 receiver. This
feature will tell the Montery receiver to change satellite/polarity
when you change channels in DVB2000. For more details and setup
information, please follow this link.
These new features/bug fixes have been added to version 5.0
beta 6:
- Ability to change the symbol rate, FEC and acquision bandwidth
on a range of channels.
- Improved the channel editing capabilities to include functions
like Auto PMT, Auto PID etc.
- Ability to change Auto PMT and Auto PID on a selected range
of channels.
- New paste option to allow channel input from the MPEG Search
Project. This project is a North American effort to catalog all
DVB carriers using a web-based channel chart. This site is private
- for details, please see the North American MPEG-2 Forum on Delphi
- Fixed a lockup that happened if all channels were deleted.
- Zap to channel now works on both serial and SCSI interfaces.
- Added "New" option to create a blank channel list,
allowed pasting and inserting into a blank list
These new features/bug fixes have been added to version 5.0
beta 5. You must be using DVB2000 1.79.7 or later to use
this version.
- Fixed serial upgrade problems when using systems with two
512K flash chips
- Corrected problem with time display on the EIT server. If
you're not using NT, you'll always see Universal Time - NT users
see local time
- The SI parser now checks for a signal lock rather than hanging
when changing frequencies
- Major improvements to the EIT parser - handles channels >
10000 and handles events that occur in the past
- PID scanner is much improved by scanning 32 PIDs at a time.
Additionally, when the scan has completed, double-clicking on
a PID will show the transport stream packets from that PID.
- Improved QPSK scanner from Rolf Zerr - thanks Rolf!.
- Corrected pasting of marker channels - service type etc is
now pasted correctly.
These new features/bug fixes have been added to version 5.0
beta 4:
- Corrected the file extension on multi-PID recordings. This
really should be .m2t to signify an MPEG-2 transport stream.
- Ability to edit a channel's service ID. This field is the
channel number that the broadcaster has associated with the stream.
- Ability to set the service type on a selected range of channels.
- Fixed a bunch of bugs related to running DVBEdit on Windows
9x - I develop on NT which is much more tolerant of subtle bugs
like these! These parts of DVBEdit now work correctly on Windows
9x: Multi PID transfer, printing channel charts and the multi
PID recording tester.
- The SI parser no longer locks up if there's no NIT present.
However, this code is experimental and still not stable yet.
These new features/bug fixes have been added to version 5.0
beta 3:
- Some changes to Paste. If a single channel is highlighted
and a paste is performed, the pasted channels will be inserted
after the selected channel (it's always been done it that way).
If more than one channel is highlighted, pasting will now delete
the selected channels and replace them with the channels being
pasted. This is much more like most Windows apps.
- When editing channels, the channel names now have trailing
spaces removed, making the addition of text to the end of a channel
name much easier.
- The screen grab feature is now reinstated - both serial and
SCSI are supported as before.
- Much improved scanner. The scanner now generates a calibration
scan the first time a particular LNB configuration is used. When
this scan is operating, you need to remove all signals from the
LNB by simply taping a piece of cardboard in front of the LNB.
DVBEdit then uses this calibration scan so that the scanner charts
aren't so dependent on the output signal from your LNB and on
the sensitivity of the Nokia tuner.
|
Old style without the calibration scan. Notice how the peaks
aren't well defined and how the signal levels fall off as the
gain of the LNB and receiver's frontend decreases due to the
frequency increase. |
|
Same satellite but now with calibration scan. Looks much more
like a crappy spectrum analyzer's output now! |
These new features/bug fixes have been added to version 5.0
beta 2:
- PID Scanner. Scans each PID within a transport stream for
active packets. Although DVB2000 has this feature, DVBEdit does
it 8 PIDs at a time, shows you the packet count and the scrambling
flags for the PID. With a 750ms dwell time (recommended minimum),
scanning an entire transport stream takes about 17 minutes. This
feature is great when you find a transponder that says "No
PAT".
- Bug Fixes: Firmware upgrade over serial now works and the
serial band scanner is about 3 times faster (Thanks to Rolf Zerr
for these fixes!)
- Update checker - click on Help/Check for Update from within
DVBEdit to automatically check for new releases.
These new features/bug fixes have been added to version 5.0
beta 1:
- Multi PID Recording. Generates a transport stream file containing
both video and audio for the channel recorded. MPEG-2 video plus
AC3 audio recording is also supported by manually entering the
PID containing the AC3 stream.
- System Information Parser. Shows lots of technical information
about the DVB System Information based on the NIT
- EIT Parser. Reads the EIT and SDT tables to show the program
guide being transmitted on a transponder. Also reads the TDT
so that the PC's clock can be synchronized with the satellite
provider's clock.
- Multi PID Checker. Reads transport stream files and reports
statistic and error information.
- Zap Function. Pressing Ctrl+Z on the PC keyboard switches
the receiver to the currently selected channel.
- Paste Option. Allows channels to be pasted either before
or after the selected channel.
More on Multi PID Recording
First, let's talk about MPEG-2 files. They are in one of two
formats: transport (TS) and program (PS) stream. TS format is
used for satellite services because multiple programs can be present
within the multiplex and is able to handle errors that occur on
satellite. PS format is used for storage devices like DVDs where
a single program is provided with very high reliability. DVD actually
use a third format called VOB which is just encrypted PS.
Most MPEG-2 decoder cards and software DVD players can only
process PS format. Unfortunately, since we're recording from satellite,
we are forced to use TS as our recording format which means that
only a few cards will be able to playback the format that DVBEdit
records. One such card is the NetStream 2 from Sigma Designs. We know of no currently available
software MPEG-2 decoder that'll do TS, although Ligos have said
that they plan on such a product in the future.
The MPEG-2 specification defines a mathematical representation
of an MPEG-2 TS decoder called the T-STD. Most of the definition
is related to timing of packets as they pass through the model.
Unfortunately, due to the way in which we're forced to do TS recording
because of the hardware in the Nokia receivers, we actually end
up violating the T-STD model because the temporal position of
the transport stream packets changes as they move from the Nokia
to the PC. The NetStream 2 board actually does a very good job
handling the messed up stream we record, but you may occasionally
notice some lip-sync problems - especially after the clip has
been playing for a number of minutes.
Re-multiplexing the TS is the way to fix these problems, however,
without hardware this is virtually impossible real time, so we're
really stuck with this limitation.
Downloading and Registering
To download DVBEdit 5.0, just click on the icon below. This
will download a setup program that'll install DVBEdit easily onto
your system. You need to be running Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows
NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 as your PC operating system in order to
use DVBEdit.
|
Download DVBEdit 5.0 beta 8 (1.65MB)
This is a full setup utility and should be used the first time
you install DVBEdit |
 |
Download DVBEdit 5.0 beta 8 (182KB)
This is a ZIP file containing the changes from the last build.
Use to update to the latest beta. |
DVBEdit has taken a considerable amount of time to develop.
I write code for a living and although DVBEdit is more about a
hobby than work, it does cut into my time. If you use DVBEdit
on a regular basis, please click the Digital River icon below
and register your copy. The cost to register is $39.95 US and
although you don't receive any serial number, by registering you'll
help fund future development of the program.
|
Click this icon to register DVBEdit on-line with a credit card. |
Support Information
DVBEdit is supported only via a web-based board. We do not
offer email support for DVBEdit. If you have a question regarding
DVBEdit, please use the DVBEdit forum on the NoAccess web board.
This can be found at http://www.no-access.de/cgi-bin/board/YaBB.pl?board=1006
Before asking a question, take a few minutes to read through the
messages on the board - perhaps your question is already answered.
Linking and Mirroring Information
Please do not mirror DVBEdit on your website - we don't
want multiple versions out there nor the hassle required to keep
everyone up to date. Feel free to link to this page, but please
do not link directly to the executable - we want people
to read this page before downloading and since the executable
name changes between releases, you may end up with a dead link.
