Well, it’s been a long time coming, but DVBLogic have just released the betas for DVBLink TVSource and Home Server v4 products. Get them now before they release an update!

Well I know that I am eager to play around with it, and I am sure we will be discussing it at length on next week’s Digital Lifestyle podcast. And I think the upgrade fee they are proposing is very reasonable as well.

Here is what the DVBLogic guys have said:

DVBLink TVSource and Home Server v4 products are released for public beta!
We are extremely happy and proud to announce that DVBLink TVSource and Home Server products have reached public beta stage.

There are a lot of new things and improvements comparing to the v3.x. Some features are the same but done/accessed in a different way.

The following presentation summarizes the most important of them:
http://www.dvblogic.com/download/Trunk/DVBLink_v4.pdf

Now some practical things to know before you start installing v4 beta:

– You must uninstall existing DVBLink software from the machine where v4 will be installed. Do not forget to make backup – v4 will pick up (most of) DVBLink v3 settings.
– MediaCenter integration is now only available for Win7 (e.g. no Vista support anymore)
– Currently only TVSource and DVBLink Home Server are available for beta. The DVBLink for IPTV and DVBLink for Dreambox will be added soon. DVBLink Connect! Server is expected to be available for beta in about 4-5 weeks. This means that if you are using IPTV or Dreambox sources or need Internet/IPhone connectivity functionality, please wait for the next beta’s.
– This first beta has only 4 virtual tuners available for MediaCenter integration (more tuners will be added later). If you are using more than 4 stream sources (for example 5 or more tuners) do not install this beta as you will be limited to 4 tuners only.
– DVBLink Server configuration page can be accessed from web browser (IE may have some tables incorrectly shown). Enter address of the PC and port 39876 into address bar – for example http://localhost:39876
– Most of the layout features of web configurator should be familiar to v3 users
– At the moment there is no way back from “Sources and Channels” part of configurator to its main landing page. If you need to go back just enter http://localhost:39876 again in the browser
– We have seen certain instability in web configuration request handling. We are looking into it. For the time being if you have done some action in the configuration web page and browser says that it is waiting for the server and it takes a long time (say more than 15 seconds), just hit Escape and try operation again. If there is a wait dialog – just go to the main page at http://localhost:39876 and navigate to where you have been before.
– Channel preview is available on channel selection tab. Move mouse over the channels in the left tree and you will see a pop-up play button. Press it to start preview. Once preview is started browser will download an m3u file that you can open with, say, VLC. Preview will be automatically stopped after 1 minute. Please note that MediaPlayer cannot play transport stream sent over UDP and thus cannot be used for preview.
– When doing TV Setup in MediaCenter
– Configure all 4 DVBLink tuners even if you have only one or two physical tuners
– In the course of installation MediaCenter will try to download and intall PlayReady and fail. It will ask you whether to try again. Say “No” and proceed.
– Use Synchronize channels button in DVBLink addin to synchronize channels as usual. Synchronization will be started automatically on the MediaCenter startup and will be repeated every 12 hours.
– We have seen that channel scanning in MediaCenter during TV Setup may hang – if this is the case, press cancel button and proceed.
– If using EPG mapping to Microsoft Guide Listings you may need to select “Get latest Guide listings” to start EPG population process
– Location for xmltv files is not selectable anymore – they should be put into “xmltv” folder of DVBLink installation root
– If source is deleted its channels will stay in MediaCenter until its virtual tuner is reused for another source. We know that this is important issue and we look into it to solve as soon as possible.
– Colors of the sources in the configuration web page might be the same and they are not editable yet.
– For TVSource the following functionality is not implemented yet:
– No EPG scan configuration tab exists yet although the scan itself is working with the default settings. Also if you are restoring from backup the scan settings will be automatically picked up.
– No custom diseqc commands dialog yet
– No tuner settings dialog yet
– No channel tree overview tab yet
– Channel preview is running from under the service now, so you need to use plugin monitors (e.g. no task bar icons)

I think that I have definitely forgotten to mention something, but we will find it out soon.

As mentioned before v4 will be paid upgrade for v3 and v2 users. Upgrade will be performed per user – e.g. single flat fee of 10 euro for all DVBLink products v3/v2 that he or she has bought. Customers, who have bought DVBLink v3 products between 1 July 2011 and v4 release date, will be upgraded for free.

DVBLink TVSource and Home Server v4 beta 1 can be downloaded here:
http://www.dvblogic.com/download/Trunk/ … rce_b1.zip
http://www.dvblogic.com/download/Trunk/ … ver_b1.zip

Install DVBLink Server first, followed by TVSource and Home Server installation. DVBLink Network Client should be installed on a client PC where networked Mediacenter runs.

Enjoy and report your findings, comments and impressions here!
DVBLogic team

So, are you going to test it? Let us know what you think.