Winamp TV, version 1.9beta11,

Winamp TV, version 1.9beta11,
a plugin for WinAmp 2/5 to watch television 
by Branimir Lambov <barnie@dir.bg>

WHAT IS WINAMP TV?

Winamp TV is an input plugin for Winamp 5 which turns your Winamp into a TV tuner program. It uses Microsoft's WDM streaming technology to play video and connect sound. The plugin also works with Winamp 2, but is not officially supported for the old versions.

Winamp TV uses small ".tvc" files to describe channels - their frequencies, names and settings. You don't need to download or create these files, Winamp TV will do that for you when you perform scans.

QUICKSTART

Start Winamp, go to preferences (Ctrl-P), click the input tab. Select Winamp TV, click on configure. For an analog card, select your TV system, the folder to store the files, and do a quick or full scan, or manually add S-Video or Composite if you don't have a tuner.

If you have a digital card, select a folder to store the files and use "Scan transponder list" to find the digital channels you can view. You will need a transponder list for the satellite (DVB-S) or region (DVB-T) you want to receive. You can download these at the plugin's site.

Click on Set as Playlist. Now try playing one of the files in the new playlist. Stop closes the video window and pause mutes it. Use "File Info" (Alt-3) to modify a channel's parameters.

Newer analog TV tuner cards usually do not come with audio connection cables and require a digital audio connection. The plugin has no way of knowing if this is the case, so the digital mode has to be explicitly selected. If your tuner does not have an audio cable that connects it to the sound card, open the configuration, go to the Audio tab, select "digital, played by DirectShow" as the audio connection method, and select the tuner as the audio source.

When you have it running, read "Configuration hints" to get the best quality and features.

FEATURES

• windowed, always-on-top or fullscreen playback, output in winamp's video window 
• quick & full range frequency scan
• capture quality control
• changeable channel names, ability to make playlists of channels
• global volume, brightness, contrast, etc. settings and local adjustments for each channel
• TV system setting local for the channel
• uses winamp for channel selection, i.e. easily controlled by general purpose winamp plugins 
• on-screen display with comprehensive menus
• comprehensive stereo support
• composite/s-video in support
• FM radio support
• hardware de-interlacing
• (not in lite) audio can be routed through WinAmp's visualization, EQ, DSP and output plugin
• supports PCI, USB and All-in-one TV tuners, video capture and VIVO cards
• (not in lite) supports digital satellite cards with BDA drivers, as well as SkyStar 2
• (not in lite) supports digital terrestrial cards with BDA drivers
• (not in lite) recording to AVI and MPEG-2 (third party encoders required)
• basic teletext support, will work once Microsoft fix their teletext filters

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

either

• a TV tuner or capture device with WDM drivers installed. The plugin will not work with VFW (VxD) drivers.
• Win98 SE/ME, Win2K or WinXP. WDM streaming does not work with previous versions of Windows.

or

• a digital satellite or terrestrial tuner with BDA drivers or a SkyStar2 card with a full driver installation.
• WinXP SP2 with the KB896626 patch.

CONFIGURATION HINTS

• (analog cards) Set the capture size to 768x576 (PAL/SECAM) or 640x480 (NTSC). If you are using a PCI tuner with Philips chips, use 720x576 for PAL. Use YUY2 for the video format (i.e. do not change it unless you have a good reason).
• Turn on the VideoMixingRenderer9 if you have DirectX 9 installed, or VideoMixingRenderer7 if you're using Windows XP. When you turn on de-interlacing, the VMR should automatically select the best method.
• (digital and MPEG cards) use the Advanced options in the Video tab to select the best pair of decompressors. You will probably need to experiment with these.
• (analog cards) The crossbar inputs in the audio page select where the audio should come from in the different modes. If you have a mono tuner, leaving them at the default setting should work fine. If you have a stereo card, you may need to change the "Crossbar Stereo" line to something different (e.g. Pinnacle used "AES Digital" for stereo in their driver 434q1610e s prior to 5.50). If you have a stereo tuner and there is no other selection available apart from "Line", the default should work (this is the way it is done in Pinnacle's 5.50 drivers and most other current drivers).
• (analog cards with an audio cable) Make sure you select the correct mixer line for things like volume and muting to work. There is a mixer line selection for the external sources as well-- this is because most probably you connect your external source directly to your soundcard on a different line.
• (analog cards without an audio cable) Make sure a digital audio connection mode is selected, and the proper device is chosen for the audio source.
• If you want to use DSP, visualization and output plugin, select an audio connection mode that sends the audio to Winamp. Make sure that the output plugin's prebuffer size is not bigger than 1 sec, otherwise you will probably see frame dropping.
• If you are having problems, please check the compatibility chart. It may contain an answer to your question.

WHAT'S NEW

as of 1.9

• (beta12) DVB-C support. At the moment you will need to create your own transponder list file, see forum.
• (beta12) completely reworked recording code, supports several recording modes, including AVI, MPEG-2 compressors from Intervideo, Cyberlink and Elecard and all formats supported by ATI's transcode engine.
• (beta12) recording from digital cards: bouquets as transport stream or single program as MPEG or DVR-MS.
• (beta12) recording from cards with hardware compression including USB2 MPEG devices.
• (beta12) various fixes in the recording code. Improved compatibility with digital audio modes, frame sizes not divisible by 32, synchronization of audio and video, smoothness when recording is stopped.
• (beta12) fixes in the code for sending audio to Winamp. Visualizations now work even if the audio device does not provide big enough samples. The sampling rate is now adjusted according to the data coming from the stream.
• (beta12/lite12) other fixes in audio handling. Delay setting stereo now works properly on Pinnacle PCTV pro. Advanced audio configuration no longer mutes the audio. Pal B <-> Pal D switches should be cleaner.
• (beta12/lite12) radio scanning method is changed, now correctly scans radio frequencies with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150 and other MCE-compatible cards.
• (beta12/lite12) the plugin now supports translations in .ini files. Take a look at the translations page (coming soon) for the available translations or in the translations forum for the most up-to-date versions and information on how to translate the plugin to your language.
• (beta12/lite12) other bugfixes, tweaked tuning code, and several changes to All-in-Wonder code.
• (beta11a) updated code to make BDA connections. Fixes a problem with single-filter DVB devices failing to connect in some circumstances and issues with connecting in Network-Provider-bypass mode.
• (beta11a/lite11a) fixed a bug that caused failure to catch power broadcasts.
• (beta11a) slightly tweaked sound synchronization code (prefers the sound to be late than early)
• (beta11) many improvements in the audio modes that send the sound to Winamp. New synchronization code. Now it works with MPEG encoders and DVB tuners as well as analog.
• (beta11) support for bypassing the Microsoft network providers. Scanning is not supported in this mode, enable if you are having problems with msdvbnp.ax.
• (beta11) some fixes in the channel configuration for digital channels. Now it lists the available audio components.
• (beta11/lite11) after a failure, the plugin should no longer stay in a stuck state where no configuration change makes it work again.
• (beta11/lite11) the plugin will now stop playing if the computer goes to standby or suspend, and will start again when it resumes.
• (beta10) DVB-T support for cards with BDA drivers. In the "Channels" tab, select a folder to store the files and scan one of the terrestrial transponder lists provided at the plugin's site.
• (beta10) scanning for DVB-T and DVB-S with BDA drivers (sorry, doesn't work with SS2). Uses transponder lists in .tpl format. Some of them can be downloaded at the plugin's page.
• (beta10) fixed a problem where the audio volume would not be set when a channel is played.
• (beta10/lite10) support for using the video mixing renderers in YUV rendering mode.
• (beta10/lite10) fixed a bug that would not allow turing off deinterlacing for MPEG devices.
• (beta10/lite10) fixed a possible bug in the renderer selection.
• (beta9/lite9) fixed a bug with "Set as playlist" after scanning or manual addition of channels.
• (beta9/lite9) fixed a problem in the graph disconnect code that was causing digital graphs not to reconnect (if you were getting faults after almost any change in the configuration, probably this was the case). Also included in lite as it may have effect on analog graphs as well.
• (beta9) support for digital satellite cards with BDA drivers. No scanning yet, you will have to import the channels from a SatcoDX text file.
• (beta9) recording: the compressor options are now also saved for compressors that support IPersistStream
• (lite9) Record no longer appears as an option (grayed) in the right-click menu
• (beta8b) recording: the audio compression format is now saved individually for the encoder
• (beta8b) fixed bugs in the recording configuration
• (beta8a) fixed bug in the recording tab where OnApply would not change the filters
• (beta8a/lite8a) fixed OSD bug that would cause faults after some configuration changes
• (beta8/lite8) tool tips
• (beta7/lite7) a new OSD configuration tab: now its duration and transparency, the size of the small channel list and the indications can be set up.
• (beta7/lite7) the OSD now displays indications for Mute and Recording.
• (beta7/lite7) the up and down arrows now bring up the small OSD channel list.
• (beta7/lite7) the OSD now shrinks to compensate for magnification and remains fully visible.
• (beta7/lite7) fixes a bug where the OSD could stop appearing if the video settings are changed.
• (beta7) fixes a possible freezing of the video after recording.
• (beta7/lite7) fixed a bug with negative channel adjustments not being saved.
• A Lite version is introduced that does not support recording, audio capture or digital tuners.
• (beta6) reworked audio with new audio configuration: support for devices that connect the audio digitally (i.e. without an audio cable) with or without capturing it and sending to Winamp;  support for recording without audio being sent to Winamp; the audio renderer can be selected for digital audio; audio options can be changed without restart. some combinations currently don't work: recording with digital audio and recording or capturing the audio with an MPEG hardware encoder or digital card. Your choice of mixer lines will be reset by this version.
• (beta6) "Default renderer" has been added to the video renderer choices. This renderer is quite CPU-intensive and does not allow de-interlacing or OSD. Use as a last resort, it is provided for cases where nothing else works or cases where moving from one display to another does not work.
• (beta6) the "Zoom to fill" command can now be sent through Winamp's main window. Use WM_COMMAND 32785 to toggle it from an external application (e.g. remote control program).
• (beta5) initial DVB-S support. Currently we only support a single B2C2 device, i.e. a SkyStar 2 DVB-S card, to be extended with BDA support in the future.
• (beta5) there are no scanning interfaces in the SS2 SDK, thus we don't support scanning. Instead, we support importing channels from a SatcoDX text file which can be freely downloaded from the internet.
• (beta5) aspect ratio compensation for screen resolutions that do not have square pixel aspect ratios. The adjustment lets you define the screen ratios for all monitors in the system and then automatically keeps the aspect ratio of the video regardless of the resolution, tracking also monitor changes. Especially useful for anamorphic TV-out on a 16x9 TV. Some examples: the mode 1280x1024 on a normal 4x3 monitor squeezes 4x3 video vertically and leaves two black bars on top and bottom -- if that monitor is mapped to the screen ratio 4:3, the plugin will adjust the video so that it is displayed with correct proportions; most (or all?) tv-out chips are limited to 4x3 resolutions, regardless of what are the actual proportions of the connected screen -- but if the TV is widescreen and mapped to 16:9, the plugin can maintain the correct aspect ratio and fill the whole screen. You can find this setting in the new Magnification tab.
• (beta5) option to zoom the video to fill the screen. This option is called differently in other software: 'pan-scan' for 16x9 video on a 4x3 screen, or 'cinema mode' for 4x3 video on a 16x9 screens. Both actions are supported (and chosen automatically), as well as fitting the video to fill other screen or window sizes without affecting the aspect ratio. Accessible via Maginification tab, right-click menu, key combination (Alt-Z), and OSD.
• (beta5) overscan from -5% to 25%. The effect is applied after zoom-to-fill. Accessible via Magnification tab and OSD main settings menu.
• (beta5) OSD setting for the 16x9 channel option.
• (beta4) added a Video Mixing Renderer 7 mode to help with some performance problems in XP SP2 and to allow OSD and deinterlacing control in situations where VMR9 is not a good choice.
• (beta4) the video dialog has been redesigned, resolution presets have been added, extra settings have been moved to an "Advanced" dialog.
• (beta4) deinterlacing modes are now set by the program itself. Previous versions could only do this if the DirectX SDK was installed.
• (beta4) deinterlacing modes can now be set for MPEG-2 tuners as well. In the case of hardware-assisted decoding, choosing a deinterlacing mode may not be work (in these cases deinterlacing is probably working at its best already).
• (beta4) support for MPEG tuners that require custom filters (e.g. Adaptec VideOh Media Center).
• (beta4) capture device configuration for MPEG tuners has been added.
• (beta4) fixed an OSD issue with MPEG cards.
• (beta4) for the first run in the case where there are more than one capture cards in the computer, the plugin will no longer start with the first one, but will make you select the device. This is to help in cases where the plugin would not run if it associated with the wrong device.
• (beta3) supports fullscreen viewing on a multi-monitor system. Previously fullscreen would be lost if another program acquired the keyboard focus.
• (beta3) adds an option to disable stereo control to work around problems with faulty drivers (see "Known Issues").
• (beta3) disables hyperthreading for the process to avoid some known bugs (see "Known Issues" for details). This is only a temporary workaround, to be replaced by proper solutions for the problems later.
• (beta3) fixes temporal order problems with deinterlacing without the Video Mixing Renderer 9.
• (beta3) fixes problems with the first time recording is turned on that could cause the program to close.
• (beta3) small interface changes and bugfixes
• (beta2) handling recording stop caused by filled hard drive or other errors.
• (beta2) warning if frames have been dropped during recording.
• (beta2) option to prompt for a file name after recording.
• (beta1) recording. It needs to be enabled in the new "Recording" tab of the configuration. The approach the plugin uses does not require it to reconnect the graph to start or stop recording, which means that recording can start almost instantly without any glitches in playback. In fact it is so smooth that you'll wonder if it is really recording.
• (beta1) audio capture mode has been rewritten and now uses a different filter to maintain synchronization. Captured audio is now even better synchronized than non-captured.
• (beta1) the folder for scans is now saved and is initialized to "My Documents\TV\". The plugin will ask for confirmation if files may be overwritten by a new scan.
• (beta1) updated deinterlacer attachment algorithm. Now it can make better use of intelligent connect to have decoder or color space convertors to make the connection.
• (beta1) fixed a "Default TV System" setting being incorrectly overridden by country code with MSI cards.

as of 1.7

• (d) fixed a serious bug with the initialization for the Settings tab of the configuration that was introduced in 1.6b. If you were or still are seeing only a black screen, read the Known Issues item about this.
• (c) fixed bugs in the screensaver and power-off disabling code.
• (b) disables the screensaver whenever a TV channel is playing.
• (b) fix to the problem of Winamp TV loading incorrect video settings in the first run which cause a black screen.
• (b) the Esc key now closes fullscreen.
• (b) update to be compatible with the updated API of Bluetooth mobile phone remote control plugin version 0.1a. Also added a link to btrc's main menu.
• (a) interoperability with the Bluetooth mobile phone remote control plugin. The remote control will use WinampTV's menus automatically if a TV or FM channel is being played.
• (a) fixed a bug with the playlist context submenu.
• the OSD is working properly now. Turn it on in the Capturer configuration tab and tap Enter to go to the main OSD menu.
• several bugfixes.
• translations are now easier to make.

as of 1.6

• (c) (beta) On-screen display with quite a few options. Works only with the Video Mixing Renderer 9. Known issue: unfortunately the up and down keys are also caught by Winamp, making the feature almost unusable. I'm working on fixing this.
• (c) supports keying-in playlist numbers: just tap the number and press enter. If OSD is on you will see what you're selecting and can also use the up and down arrows.
• (c) bugfix on channel brightness etc. offsets getting stuck at -1.
• (b) only relevant to MSI TV@nywhere: the country code box in the channel configuration is now removed and is implicitly generated from the tv system setting. I decided to follow my own advice in a message I posted at tv-cards.com and to follow the original plan of using the country setting as little as possible (i.e. only in quick scans).
• (b) global video settings with channel settings as offsets. Warning: your old customized channel settings for the video will be ignored by this version. However, the new flexibility will let you do the configuration much more easily.
• (a) different All-in-wonder graph building sequence.
• (a) setting stereo is now delayed by four seconds (the time it takes the slowest decoder to recognize the standard). The delay can be changed or disabled by changing "DelayStereo" in plugin.ini.
• (a) fixed problem loading in Windows 98 and ME.
• (a) the in_tv subfolder with the three channels has been made obsolete by the manual channel adding. They are now removed.
• support for separate audio and video crossbars for ATI tuners and possibly others.
• ability to manually add channels. Use this e.g. when the radio scanning does not find any channel or finds too many.
• 16x9 support (per-channel). Just select select it in the channel configuration.
• (experimental) suport for audio capture via the audio part of the tv tuner chip (if supported by driver). not very stable yet!
• interface corrections
• per-channel country selection. Helpful if your TV channels come in a mixture of standards, see the country code remark in "Configuration hints".

as of 1.5

• (b) full MSI TV@nywhere Master support, including full band scanning, fine-tuning, stereo, FM, audio capture
• (b) more scanning options
• (b) now taking full control over the timestamps. In practice, this means captured audio will be synced with both pins and there will be no problems with the capture pin when the audio is not captured
• (a) improved scanning
• (a) three generic channels are now included and extracted to a "in_tv" subfolder of the installation folder. they can be used for capture cards that don't have a tuner. "channel_None.tvc" can possibly be used with WebCams.
• (a) Winamp fullscreen commands are now captured and reacted upon. If you have an IR remote control, you can send WM_COMMAND 40337 to the main Winamp window to toggle fullscreen for both video and tv.
• (a) Hiding the video window will stop playback if the option to stop video on window close is turned on and you're not playing radio.
• (a) a compatiblity table has been started on the support site. Please contribute.
• (a) some compatibility with Winamp 2 is lost. Update to 5 if possible.
• added the ability to output into Winamp's video window (beta). This feature has a few problems, see the section in known issues about that, but basically it works stably.
• added audio capture source selection in the "Capture audio" tab. This will let you capture with one board and output with another, useful e.g. when you want to use USB or Bluetooth headphones.
• added audio capture line selection: needed for certain sound cards because the capture lines are not the same as the playback. Implemented Audigy support for audio capture ("Record Without Monitoring" on, line not muted). With this modification audio capture has been verified to work with NForce2 and Audigy. Drop me a line if you have tried it with a different sound card.
• now automatically restarts after changes to the configuration requiring it.
• fixed my bug that caused full scan and the plugin not working with btwincap and other drivers. Also fixes an issue with the frequency range not being recognized correctly.
• bugfix in getfileinfo that gave Winamp incorrect information about the file titles.
• added FM radio crossbar input.
• the context menu now has a submenu listing the contents of the current playlist.

as of 1.4

• (a) fix of an ugly bug which would cause GPF at stop if audio capture was off.
• (a) more skip-tolerant audio synchronization. may still have problems.
• Audio capture (beta). Now you have the option to route the sound through WinAmp, i.e. through visualization, DSP and output plugin. Gives you a host of possibilities: use the automatic EQ loading to customize the sound for TV channels, use a DSP plugin for automatic gain control or compression or anything else you like, use the output plugin to record a radio station, use Visualizations for FM Radio, etc. See the hints section for information on how to configure it effectively.
• The de-interlacing filter is now given information whether a stream coming from the "Capture" pin comes from PAL/SECAM or NTSC source. This fixes erroneous deinterlacing behaviour (stuff jumping back and forth, i.e. wrong order of the even and odd frames). Not supported on the "Preview" pin.

as of 1.3

• De-interlacing. Done by the Video Mixing Renderer 9, that is by your video card -- no extra overhead for the processor. You can also select the deinterlacing method you want to use. Depending on your video hardware you may have more options than the standard Bob and Weave.
• various bugfixes.

as of 1.2

• FM Radio support. Look for the "Scan radio" button in the Scan page of the configuration.
• Simple teletext support. You can choose to display teletext in a channel. Suggestion: copy the channel file to have one with teletext and one without. If it doesn't work well, see "Known issues".
• VideoMixingRenderer9 is now included in the graph by default. That is: no more competition for the only overlay in the system, video files will play at their best while Winamp TV is active. Requires DirectX 9 and the checkbox to be ticked :)

as of 1.1

• full stereo support: Winamp TV will now give you the ability to select an alternative crossbar input for stereo channels.
• full composite/s-video etc. support: you can now add extra sources when the channel scan is complete. there are distinct audio mixer and crossbar input settings for external sources.
• the channel setup now covers all settings Windows allows.
• interface changes: fullscreen on double click, drag by clicking anywhere in the window, option for thin window border, audio muting is now an option.
• video tuner crossbar input is now explicitly selected. this should fix problems with certain drivers.

as of 1.01

• aspect ratio control
• unmuting and muting the audio line when needed

KNOWN ISSUES

• DVB scanning does not recognize encrypted channels.
• DVB radio is not tested.
• Recording with digital audio does not work.
• Recording does not work with MPEG cards. 
• MSI TV@nywhere Master's drivers have problems with stereo control that may cause it to freeze the machine while changing channels. If you experience such a problem, use the option in the Audio tab to disable stereo control. Stereo will still work, but it will be controlled only by the card. If you experience the same problem with a different card and this option helps you, please let me know.
• if you are using audio capture or recording, raise Winamp's process priority class to Realtime (it is in the "General Settings" tab of Winamp's preferences). For some reason WinXP SP2 drastically increases the processor usage of the plugin.
• Beta11a no longer restricts the plugin to only the first available CPU. Now the default "Affinity Control = 1" is taken to mean no affinity control. If you want to force it for some reason, use the value 2.
• recording and audio capture can not be supported on the preview (videoport) pin of integrated capture cards (VIVO/AIW). Some code is present to try to support it from the capture pin, but I do not know if it works. If you try it, please let me know the result.
• recording is not verified to work with USB cards, especially in "no recompression" mode. If you try it, please let me know the result.
• recording without recompression is currently failing with PCI cards.
• in recording, the handling of CPU overload/dropped frames is not the best possible. Since a dropped frame makes the recording unusable anyway, it is possible that it will not be improved. 
• some audio capture sources have a clock that drifts, which cause problems after watching a while. This will not happen if the source is the same as the destination, so I suggest you use your sound card for capture until I figure out how to apply efficient resynchronization if the clock drifts.
• formats other than YUY2 may fail to work, especially if audio capture and recording are on.
• the OSD is a bit slow. This is due to the way bitmaps are passed to the Video Mixing Renderer 9. 
• many bt878 cards have drivers that do not support all of the features of the card (e.g. PixelView, Aver, etc. do not support FM radio). If the software that comes with your capture card supports this feature, this does not mean that the driver does -- lame things like accessing chips on the card directly are incredibly spread among TV card manufacturers. However, I think all of these cards are supported by btwincap, which supports all the features the plugin can use. If you have problems with FM radio or stereo, try installing btwincap.
• FM radio scanning usually does not work. Most drivers simply do not give any information whether they tune in to something or not (with a few exceptions including Pinnacle's PCTVPro). Use the manual addition of channels to tune in to the radio stations you know. I cannot do anything more about this problem.
• some drivers for the newer chips do not know they have FM Radio circuitry (e.g. MSI TV@nywhere Master). Still it may be possible to listen to radio via the TV chip.
• do not ask me to support FM radio by direct access to chips on the card or proprietary libraries. It goes against my principles (A driver is what makes hardware work. Period. Bad drivers == bad hardware. Complain to your card manufacturer and/or don't buy from them again).
• using Winamp's video window has a few limitations: dragging by left-clicking on the image works only with classic skins, the half/1x/2x buttons and commands do not work. The window may sometimes hide, especially when switching between video files and TV, press play again or use Alt-V if this happens. These are all problems of the current implementation and documentation of Winamp. If it becomes possible to fix some of these issues, I will do it.
• the brute force reset of the plugin is by deleting the Winamp TV section in plugin.ini. use this if the configuration page won't show up.
• Microsoft's VBI slicer is no good. most of the time teletext will show crap instead of what it's supposed to (they're supposed to offer a working one "sometime in the future")
• Microsoft says teletext doesn't work with VideoMixingRenderers-- switch it off if you have problems (the only one I see is the need to use alpha for transparency-- I think it looks even better)
• for the time being FM Radio does not disconnect the video part of the graph. if you care about processor usage you might not like it-- send me an e-mail and I'll probably fix it

KNOWN LIMITATIONS (planned features)

• no FM radio recording
• no closed captioning/teletext for DVB
• does not support recording with hardware encoders yet
• no scheduling of recordings
• no timeshifting
• no epg
• there is only one profile that is shared between recording and viewing
• no help system
• no initial configuration wizard

TROUBLESHOOTING

• Program says "Cannot add capturer": You either do not have the needed hardware or the needed drivers. Try installing WDM drivers.
• Program says "Cannot connect downstream": De-interlacing video is not supported with this video format or size (the height should be greater than half, 288 for PAL or 240 for NTSC, otherwise de-interlacing is not needed). Try setting the format to YUY2, the size to 768x576 (PAL) or 640x480 (NTSC). If it does not work, try turning de-interlacing off.
• Program says "Graph can't connect": Probably the video size/format combination is not supported by the output filter. Try YUY2 at 320x240. If that works, try increasing the size to 768x576 or 720x576 (PAL) or 640x480 (NTSC). Also try toggling the "Use Video Mixing Renderer 9" flag.
• Program says "Can't get tuner", does not let you scan or add TV channels, or tuning simply doesn't work: try downloading and installing this patch for DirectX 9.0b. If it still does not work, contact me.
• Winamp freezes every time you try to use DVB: Please download Microsoft's KB896626 patch and try again.
• The sound doesn't work: does your TV tuner come with an audio cable? If it does, make sure it connects the TV tuner's audio output to your sound card and that the correct mixer line is selected in the audio tab. If the tuner does not come with a cable, it probably needs a digital audio mode. Go to the audio tab, select a digital audio connection and make sure you select the TV tuner as the audio source.
• FM radio or stereo does not work although the card supports it: the card does, but the driver doesn't. See the entries in "Known issues" about FM radio.
• The plugin freezes the system or causes a blue screen of death: Try disabling stereo control in the Audio tab. Read the entry about it in "Known issues".

MISCELLANEOUS

This program aims at being small, simple, and able to handle any strange TV environment there can be (like mixtures of PAL and SECAM channels, frequencies that do not adhere to any standard, etc.). It was originally created in response to TV card manufacturer's stubbornness to make TV tuner applications that try to look and behave like a normal TV set and miss out on all the opportunities the much more sophisticated computer interfaces give.

My first TV card came with something that did not even let you give names to the channels! There is still shit out there that does not let you arrange them (e.g. MSIPVS). For FM radio, the situation with the software provided is so much worse.

With radio Winamp is at its best, and I don't think it is possible to do better than the combination of it and Winamp TV in audio capturing mode.

FEEDBACK

I am interested in your feedback. Send mail to barnie@dir.bg . If you have any suggestion or comment, especially ones that I don't have in the "Known issues/limitations" lists, please let me know.

If you have a TV tuner or video capture card that is not listed in the compatibility page, please test it with all the options it supports and in the "Best configuration" described there. Send me the results so that I can add your card to the list. 

Look for updates at https://winamptv.zapto.org.