VDR

Got a “present” recently: A discarded Asus O!Play Mini

I recently realized, that I just have to announce streams by UPnP to access them using my Asus O!Play device.

VDR provides URLs like http://VDR_HOST:3000/EXT/ChannelNo for access to the live channels. So, I started using MediaTomb to publish the URLs by UPnP.

I upgraded my Asus O!Play media box to the latest release 1.30P on Sunday and CIFS support really improved.

Before that upgrade I had to open the Network folder twice to get my local Samba server into the list, now it will detect that immediately.

Using cat on the Linux command line for a radically simple merge of multiple MPEG4 files, will not work. You can check VLC on the result, which will stop after the first part.

I am using the following script to copy a VDR recording into a MPEG-PS container using a robust input decoder, so there is a good chance, that any errors in the recording are fixed:

I currently use the following ffmpeg script to convert the recordings of my VDR 1.6 to more compact MPEG4:

Up to release 1.6 VDR is recording into MPEG-PS files named *.vdr. In later releases this switched to MPEG-TS (with some impact on moving markers).

The Asus O!Play is fine with the TS (Transport Stream) format, but lacks support of the *.vdr files.

Since my VGA to PAL adapter attached to the VDR host is not really working well for video, I am now owner of a media player that covers the following options:

• low-cost
• wired networking capabilities
• support of many media formats
• small, moderate power consumption