How to play recorded HDTV files with I-O Data AVeL Link
Player |
By Terry Peterson
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One
of the most exciting things about the AVeL Link
Player is the possibility of accessing your saved
HDTV program files in full HD resolution remotely
from your (perhaps noisy) HTPC.
You can do this with the Link Player in two
ways—over your local network or by saving the
files to DVD.
1.
Playing HDTV files over the LAN:
You
can play ordinary MyHD and FusionHDTV hard disk
capture files on the AVeL Link Player by making them
accessible to it via a “server”.
The Link Player comes with a setup CD-ROM
that includes such a server for Windows PCs, called
the AVeL LinkServer
The LinkServer installation and use is described on the IO-DATA
website here: http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/AVLP2_Setup2.php
Once
you’ve installed and started LinkServer,
you can access and play your saved HDTV HDD files
over your LAN by choosing them from a list—with
one catch—until IO-DATA updates the LinkPlayer
firmware to recognize “.tp” files, you need to
rename your files from “xxx.tp” to “xxx.ts”
for them to show up in LinkServer
(Note to IO-DATA: Please update LinkServer to recognize that “.tp” files are the same as
“.ts” files!) 
Final
tip on LinkServer: You’ll probably want to define the folder(s) where you
normally keep your HDTV files as a “watch”
folder for LinkServer, so that you can browse to them easily from the AVeL Link
Player’s menu, rather than explicitly defining
play lists.
OK,
cool as it is to play HDTV “.ts” files over the
LAN with the HTPC in another room, renaming all your
“.tp” files is not very convenient if you have
many of them. So, isn’t there a better way?
Yes, a more convenient method is to use the
Advanced AVeL Server, which you can find, along with
installation instructions, here: http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/AVLP2_Setup4.php
Unfortunately,
the Advanced Server also doesn’t recognize
“.tp” files out of the box.
But it does allow you to modify its
configuration to add them to its lists without a
name change. Here’s how:
-
Open in WordPad, the file “server-config.xml”.
This file is in the following folder:
C:\Documents
and Settings\<username>\Application Data\
I-O DATA DEVICE,INC\AVeL Link Advanced Server
- Find
in the file, the following line:
<mediaFile
extension=".ts"
/>
-
Add
immediately after that line the following one:
<mediaFile
extension=".tp"
fake=".ts"
resumable="yes"
/>
- Save
the file (after making a security copy of the
original).
-
Restart
Windows and your Link Player server menus will
show and play .tp files.
Note:
Both LinkServer
and
the Advanced Server support “Wake on LAN” (WOL)
so that you can configure your server PC to
hibernate or standby when it's inactive and the AVeL
Link Player will wake the server up when you attempt
to access its files.
Note
on H2M (HDTVtoMPEG2) edited files:
The popular free TS editor, H2M, makes quick
cuts from files for deleting unwanted segments.
However, most H2M cut points introduce a
playback glitch and/or lip-sync mismatches in Link
Player’s play using the current (12/05) firmware.
[Note to IO-DATA:
Please fix this in the next firmware
release!]. One
way around this issue is to use the (not free)
editor VideoReDo instead.
2.
Playing HDTV files from CD/DVD ROM:
Just
save your file to a CD or DVD recordable disk,
remembering to use a ".ts" file name
extension. Optionally,
you can strip null packets from the file (using H2M,
for example) to save space on the disk.
(Note:You need to use "UDF" format to write files larger
than 4 GB on a DVD). When you put the disk into the player,
it will
present on screen a menu of the files on the disk,
if there are more than one, to select for play.
(Note: It’s
probably not a good idea to record your files in
segments, since each segment appears in the menu
list and plays separately.
Perhaps IO-DATA will address this and the
lack of “.tp” file support on DVD in a future
firmware update)
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