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The Freevo system has been designed to run on a PC and display the output either on a PC monitor or a TV screen. The system is controlled by a remote controller or a keyboard.
When the system is first started the main menu is displayed. By using the remote the highlight bar can be moved to an activity and then the activity can be selected. The highlight bar is moved with the up, down, left or right keys and the activity is selected with the OK button.
Figure 3 shows the main menu.
In the Watch TV Menu at the top of the page are a list of programs that will be recorded over the next few days and then the following options are available: TV Guide, Recorded Shows, Scheduled Recordings, View Favorites and Manual Record.
The TV Guide, shown in Figure 4, is a table of channels and times. The channels are listed down the screen and the times are across the page. The individual programs are displayed as blocks in this table. The highlight bar can be moved across with the left and right keys and up and down with the up and down and paged up and down with the channel up and channel down keys. To view a channel press the OK button and to record a program press the record button.
By pressing the record button another menu appears that allows the program to be ``Schedule for recording'', ``Search for more of this program'' or ``Add to favorites''.
The schedule for recording action simply tells that the program has been scheduled for recording.
The search for more of this program will search through the TV schedule and generate a list of programs that match the same title.
Add to favorites option add this program title to the favorites list and displays a menu that allows the name, channel, day of the week and the time of day to be changed. When a favorite is added this program will be recorded at the same time every week. It is possible to have a favorite that can be added for any channel, any day and any time and it will be recorded whenever it appears in the program schedule.
A program can also be removed from the schedule by pressing the record button again when the highlight is on a program to record. These are shown in the program table as green items.
The recorded shows menu gives a list of programs that have been recorded, see Figure 5.
The recorded shows window shows the details of the program that the highlight bar is currently on. The highlight bar can be moved up and down with the cursor buttons and the channel buttons.
Figure 6 is a picture taken for a recording on BBC Prime with Czech subtitles.
The scheduled recording window displays a list of programs that are scheduled to record. By moving to a program and pressing the OK button it is possible to Remove from the schedule, search for more of this program and to add or remove from the favorites.
The view favorites window displays a list of programs that are recorded whenever they occur. By pressing the OK button it is possible to modify the favorite or to remove the favorite.
The manual record window is a method to record a program of several programs in one recording. It is useful when the TV guide has changed from the published version displayed in the TV guide.
Watch a movie menu displays a list of folders that contain movies and the DVD drive. Figure 7 is a picture of a the watch a movie menu. It is possible to use another PC to copy movies into folders. From a Windows PC this is possible by using Windows Explorer and searching for the machine called freevo or freevo0 and then using explorer to copy movies into the \\freevo\freevo\movies or \\freevo\freevo\tv folder.
The folders under the watch a movie menu can, as with other folders, can be viewed and configured to behave differently.
The listen to music menu has four items that can be selected and these are: Music Collection, Play lists, Radio and Drive DVD. The music collection is a set of folders and music files. The play lists is a collection of music titles that can be played in one action. Items are added to a play list by highlighting a music artist or album folder and selecting ``Enqueue this music in Playlist''.
With music it is possible to copy a CD onto the hard disk as MP3s, Ogg, Flac or Wave files. This is possible by highlighting the DVD drive and pressing the Enter button. Then it is possible to select one the formats and copy the CD.
Music can also play in the background, for example when looking a pictures and this is achieved by playing music and pressing the blue (display) button.
Figure 8 is a picture of playing an album.
The looking at pictures menu displays two folders one for images and one for slide shows. It is possible to copy pictures from a second PC to these folders in the same way it is possible to copy movies.
Slide shows is a collection of images that can be played in a random order or repeated forever. Slide shows are controlled by .fxd files. Fxd files are text files that have a special format and they describe what to do with the images. In fact, fxd files are used throughout freevo to provide additional information to the used.
Headlines is a news service taken from RSS data feeds from the Internet. This service is configured in the system configuration file. Figure 9 shows an example of the headlines for one service.
Weather is a service to get the current weather and the forecast for the next few days. It also get a radar map of the region. The up and down buttons display the various pages. Figure 10 shows the current weather conditions.
Figure 11 shows an extended forecast for the next four days.
Shutdown is a menu item to exit freevo and turn off the PC.
