Topfield-Launcher connects to a specified ftpd-topfield host and lists recorded files available on the connected Topfield TF5000 series PVR. The user can navigate about the PVR directories and select a file to play to his PC. The Topfield-Launcher will start the specified media player (VLC is recommended) to stream the requested file from the remote PVR, to the user's screen.
Topfield-Launcher also provides the user with the ability to delete or rename recorded files.
See screenshots at http://wiki.github.com/bulletmark/Topfield-Launcher/.
Copyright (C) 2010 Mark Blakeney. This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ for more details.
You need a Topfield PVR with a USB connection to a computer or NSLU2 or similar device running ftpd-topfield. That instance of ftpd-topfield may be running on your own user-end PC, or on another remote PC/server such as a NSLU2 to which you have a network connection from your user PC. You install Topfield-Launcher and any necessary software as described below, on your user PC.
You will find that VLC will not stream recorded files at real-time speed unless you have installed the USB accelerator TAP or firmware patch on your Topfield. Get the USB accelerator TAP or patch from http://www.tapworld.net/. Note that you don't need to use ftpd-topfield turbo mode. Performance is excellent. I find that scrolling through a program is much faster using VLC than on the toppy itself.
I developed and tested Topfield-Launcher on Linux Ubuntu with ftpd-topfield versions 0.7.6 and 0.7.7 running on my NSLU2 running Debian. See http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/ for instructions on installing Debian. My wife uses Topfield-Launcher on Windows XP where it looks and runs as well as on linux.
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Ensure you have at least python version 2.4 or later (not python 3).
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Install wxpython 2.8+ and dependent packages. Also install the python-dateutil 3rd party package and VLC. (e.g. on ubuntu):
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8 python-dateutil vlc -
Click/run Topfield-Launcher.py and ensure player path and Topfield host are appropriate for your setup. If you run ftpd-topfield on your local PC then the Topfield-Launcher host must be set to "localhost".
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Download and install python 2.6.x or later (not python 3) Windows installer from http://python.org/download/. Do a default install. I have not tested with 3rd party python distributions, e.g. ActivePython, but it should work.
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Download and install wxpython 2.8+ runtime for python 2.6 (win32/64-unicode) from http://www.wxpython.org/download.php#binaries. Do a default install.
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Download the python dateutil library from http://labix.org/python-dateutil.
Unpack the archived file. Winrar is a good small windows archiver which will unpack .bz2 files. Get it from http://www.rarsoft.com/download.htm. A recent version of Winzip will also unpack bz2 files. Copy the dateutil\dateutil folder to C:\Python2X\Lib\site-packages. Make sure you copy the "\dateutil" sub-folder only! You can then delete the dateutil stuff you downloaded.
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Download and install VLC from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. Do default install.
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The Topfield-Launcher.py file requires a ".pyw" extension on Windows to avoid a secondary console window appearing. So rename it manually.
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Click/run Topfield-Launcher.py and ensure player path and Topfield host are appropriate for your setup.
I haven't tried installing this on a Mac yet but it will probably run fine there and the procedure will be similar to the Linux instructions above. Mac OS includes python by default so you just need WX python 2.8+, dateutil, and vlc.
The specified host name can be an alphanumeric name or a numeric IP address. If for some reason you are running ftpd-topfield on a non-standard port then you can specify the host as host:port.
You can add startup options to the specified player if you like. E.g. Add '-f' if you prefer VLC start in full screen.
The player and host settings are stored permanently (in the usual platform dependent locations) and so are remembered between invocations.
You can start a file playing, or enter a directory, either by selecting it and then clicking the select button; or simply by double clicking on the entry.
You can delete a file by selecting it and clicking the delete button. Deletes are only actioned after a confirm dialog is presented. Directory deletion is not allowed. You can also rename files.
The refresh button forces the display to update from the Topfield PVR disk.
Steve Bennett, the author of ftpd-topfield, has created a patch for vlc which fixes the skip forwards/backwards hotkeys for streamed media. It also corrects the total time length displayed. This patch is superb and provides easy ad-skipping functionality. For some odd reason the patch has not yet been integrated into the vlc source tree. If you can build vlc from source then get the patch from http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/2985.
That should be it. Email me if you have any questions.
Mark Blakeney, markb@berlios.de. I was user "markb" on the Topfield Australia forums before they disappeared.