[Kwintv] Snapshots (no, not those kind...)

[Andras Mantia]

George Staikos wrote:
> stability.  The big question is, does everyone agree that we should change
> the executable name and strings in CVS to KWinTV now? 

Depending who counts from the "everyone". :-)

> I don't think the 
> old
> code is worth anything anymore in comparison.  The only feature we lack is
> recording, and the old recording code wasn't all that special anyway.  
> The second question is, does anyone volunteer to do it? :)

I've just updated from the CVS and it improves well (compared to last week
or so), I like especially the fact that the image is not frozen while you
fine-tune the channel with v4l/XVideo overlay. Still, before it's renamed
to kwintv (and thus conflict with the old kwintv, so parallel installation
of both is harder to achieve), I think some issues must be solved:

1. When using v4l plugin with overlay, the maximum size of the picture is
fixed (according to Dirk, it depends on the chipset you have), and there is
no option to change the resolution when going fullscreen. This means that
on a 1024x768 desktop I get a quite small image. Due to the extreme CPU
usage and frame skipping when not running in overlay mode and the bad
picture quality with my card (which may be common - Geforce2MX400) in
XVideo mode, this would be the best solution to watch TV fullscreen.
[KWinTV 0.8.x had this feature]

2. Picture settings per channel. Very nice thing, and the only application
so far I seen that it had was KWinTV 0.8.x. Many channels require different
contrast/brightness settings, some even different color settings.

The above are quite important, especially #1 can be considered a
showstopper. Some more things missing here that were present in KWinTV
0.8.x and would make the new QtVision much usable:

3. Direct access to the channel properties from the RMB menu of the main
window or RMB of the channel list. Now you must do: RMB->Configure
qtvision->Channels->select the channel->Edit.

4. Easier reordering of channels in the channel list (not in Configure
qtvision). Possible by D&D.


And last, some bugs (but not showstoppers, just simple bugs):

5. transparent teletext is not working with v4l / overlay mode.

6. I have a device for /dev/video and /dev/video0. The first is a symlink to
the later. I think symlinks should be resolved prior to detecting the
devices, as they point to the same device.

7. one should be able to disable devices. Now I have an NVIDIA Video
Interface Port - XVideo port 111 device and if I switch to it by mistake, I
get a blue screen, but all my further display is broken (the colors in the
TV are changed, I believe the RGB order becomes BGR os something similar)

8. This may be a showstopper. While writing this message, QtVision was
running in the background (v4l/overlay mode, configure qtvision dialog
visible). It's the second time that I see my system slowing down and X uses
87% of CPU, the rest is used by qtvision. If I kill qtvision, everything
goes back to normal. 

9. Might be a KWin bug from KDE 3.2+: switch to TV mode, make it Always On
Top, switch to Full Screen and back to TV mode. The Always On Top setting
is lost.

I don't think I have any other problems against QtVision really becoming the
next generation kwintv.

Andras