This is a "plugin" for the Video Disk Recorder (VDR).

Written by:                  Christoph Haubrich <christoph.haubrich AT web.de>

Project's homepage:          not available

Latest version available at: not available

See the file COPYING for license information.

Description:
------------
Avards is a plugin to enlarge a widescreen film on the display if it is sent
in a 4:3 letterbox format. This is accomplished by changing the WSS signal
sent to the display.

It's based on the standalone version avards-0.0.6, available at
   http://habichthugo.vdr-developer.org/avards/avards.htm
See also the description there for a detailed information, hints and caveats.

Thanks to habichthugo@vdrportal and Oliver Endriss (o.endriss AT gmx.de) for
their work on avards, the driver and firmware.

Background:
-----------
If you've got a 4:3 display (CRT, LCD, ...) you will most likely not profit
from this plugin, but if you've got 16:9 display there are some situation where
this plugin will be useful:
- if the program is broadcasted in 16:9 it will be displayed in 16:9 (full screen)
- if the program is broadcasted in normal (full screen) 4:3 it will be displayed
  in 4:3 with black bars on the left and right
- if the program is broadcasted in letterboxed 4:3 it will be displayed with
  black bars on the left and right added by the display and black bars on the
  top and bottom because of the letterbox format and this is were this plugin
  comes in: it manipulates the WSS (wide screen signaling) to tell the display
  to enlarge the picture. According to the calculated size it will be enlarged
  to L14:9 or L16:9 format.
  See http://habichthugo.vdr-developer.org/avards/avards.htm (in german) for a
  more detailed description.


Requirements:
-------------
VDR >= 1.4.6
It should work with older versions but this was not tested


Installation
------------
The Avards plugin is installed the same way as any other plugin:
- cd <VDR>/PLUGINS/src
- tar xzf vdr-avards-<version>.tgz
- ln -s avards-<version> avards
- cd ../..
- make plugins


Usage:
------
Edit your runvdr (or whatever startup script you use) to load the Avards plugin, e.g.
  vdr -Pavards
to use Avards with the default settings.

Switch your VDR to 16:9 mode (Setup->DVB->Video format-> 16:9)

Avards needs access to the device files of the full featured dvb card which is used
to display the picture. If this is not the first dvb card the defaults can be overridden
with the following command line parameters:

  -v, --dev_video=<Device>  Video device
                            (default is /dev/video0)
  -d, --dev_dvb=<Device>    DVB device
                            (default is /dev/dvb/adapter0)
  -b, --dev_vbi=<Device>    VBI device
                            (default is /dev/vbi0)


Setup Options:
--------------
The following settings are available in the vdr->plugins setup menu
(most of them taken directly from the standalone version of avards):

- Show Start/Stop Mainmenu Entry: Show or hide the plugin start/stop entry in main menu

- Autostart:           start Avards automatically when VDR is started

- Pan Tone Tolerance:  Maximum difference of a pixel from the most gray tone pixels within
                       a pan vector (hex; grayscale; 0..255; default is 8).
                       This value is ignored if "Pan Tone max. Black" is greater than zero

- Pan Tone max. Black: Enable pan vector detection by a given lowest value of a pixel,
                       interpreted as black (hex; grayscale; 0..ff; choose 20 or so).
                       Otherwise the gray tone of the pan vector is detected automatically
                       (may be white, green or whatever just as well).

- overscan (%):        The width of a frame in percent around the picture which is ignored during
                       analyzing of the pan vectors (default is 3)

- logo width (%):      Maximum width in percent of a range with wrong pixels (a logo)
                       within a pan vector (default is 20)

- poll rate (milliseconds): Poll rate (delay between picture analyzing in milli seconds;
                       (default is 80 ms; lower values than 80ms makes no sense at the moment)

- delay (n polls):     Delay output until last <n> analyzed pictures produces the
                       same result (multiply with poll_rate to get the effective delay time, default is 25)

- test if frontend has lock: Enable 'frontend has lock' test
                       (no longer useful, because of black screen detection, but...)
