Welcome to FreeTV 5.20 !

IMPORTANT NOTE: IF YOU WANT TO DECODE PAL COLOR YOU SHOULD ENSURE YOU DONT 
DROP FRAMES (HAVE 25 FPS). 
IF YOU DROP FRAMES THE PHASE MAY CHANGE AND YOU MAY HAVE TO PRESS BACKSPACE AGAIN. 
I BELIEVE THIS IS A BOOKTREE DRIVER ISSUE.

Introduction
============
This program is a technology demonstration. Its purpose is to demonstrate the power of
new hardware and software technologies like MMX and DirectX. Only the combination of these
technologies enables FreeTV to achieve its breakthru performance. FreeTV descrambles and
displays a nagravision encoded video signal in realtime on todays entry level PCs.
Even an AMD K6-200 can easily reach full frame rate in color 320*576 scaled to fullscreen 
using YUY2 overlay video acceleration hardware. If your graphics card sucks nothing will
help anyway.

Disclaimer
==========
This program is not intended to be used as a tv viewer. The author takes no responsibilty
for anyone using this program in any way. Also, this program comes with no warranties,
neither expressed or implied. It is not guarrantied that this program fits a certain purpose
or does cause some damage. You use it at your own risk and are the only one reponsible!
I is not allowed to use this software to illegally watch pay tv!

Usage
=====
Tune to your favourite Syster encoded tv station with your TV app. 
Quit the TV app and launch FreeTV.
Hit BACKSPACE to toggle color phase if in color mode and there is no color at all.

Keys
====
BACKSPACE Toggle Phase
SPACE     Toggle Decoder
ESC       Quit FreeTV
F1        Toggle Color Enhancer
F5  	  Show Video Source Dialog
F8	  Toggle Pause
F11	  Save INPUT data as 24 But BMP image to c:\FreeTVInput*.bmp
F12	  Save OUTPUT data as 24 But BMP image to c:\FreeTVOutput*.bmp
          Note the saved data is the decoded data BEFORE display.
          On your screen it may look better because you are using an
          video overlay.


Changes
=======
Version 5.20
- changed image enhancer stage order
  slightly reduces color flickering
- BMP input/output capture

Version 5.10
- 800*600 support is no longer requiered
  This should help Erazor owners to get TV-Out.
- Availability of Overlay will be tested.
  Some people did not even recognized 
  they have no overlay support
  and falsely stated that it doesnt help.
- Overlay mode cannot be selected if there
  is no overlay support

Version 5.00
- New Input color format: YUV12 (FOURCC: "YV12")
  May work with some ATI capture boards
- new binding file sheme
- users can call video source dialog
- smaller GUI for 640*480 desktops
- Program no longer starts (and crashes) without key.txt

Version 4.00
- Color Enhancer
  Produces almost that geat fantastic breathtaking 
  real live TV-like color from all the crap!!!! 
  No messing around with the saturation!
  Just pure color !
  NOTE:First increase stages, then passes. 
       1 pass 2 stages looks already nice
- New Input Formats: 
   320*576 
   640*576
- New Output Formats (if your fucking graphics card supports them) :  
   320*240
   400*300
   640*480
   720*480
   720*576
  NOTE: Only for color output. Greyscale will work in 800x600 only

Version 3.10
- New Input Formats: 704*576 and 352*576
  might work with Erazor
- Capture device selection
  dont know if it works but it should

Version 3.00
- New PAL Color decoding 
  in fact, the old one I used years ago. Its equal to the decoding used by NagraTV or Syster4.
  I once removed it because I thought the horizontal lines suck. Watching Syster4 I found out
  that decreasing saturation minizes this effect amazigly strong. So it is the currently the
  better choice.
- uses DirectInput

Version 2.01
- Support for 32768 Color displays. This should make FreeTV working with Riva128 and ATI Cards
  like 
   * ATI Rage II+ boards (i.e. 3D Charger)
   * ATI RagePro boards (i.e. Expert@..)
   * ELSA Victory Erazor
   * Diamond Viper 220
- Fixed Overlay code to accept more configurations. 
  Now most ATI cards and some S3 should also work.
- No more empty containers in the Task Bar

Version 2.00
- Double Lines Mode for RGB output
- Enhanced Color Mode
- up to 80 couples

System Requierements
====================
Anyway minimum system requierements are

- MMX Processor
- 64 MB RAM
  Less may cause constant swapping.
- PCI Graphics Card with 800*600 in 256 color and 16 Bit HiColor
  The availability of a streched YUY2 overlay significantly imroves performance
- a Video for Vindows compatible video capture card than can capture 576 lines at a width
  of 320,360,384,720 or 768 in RGB16 or YUY2 at full frame rate

Suggested is:
- AMD K6 or Intel Pentium II processor with 233 MHz or more
- 64 MB RAM
- Fast Graphics Card with scaled YUY2 overlay
- a Video for Vindows compatible video capture card than can capture 576 lines at a width
  of 320,360,384,720 or 768 in YUY2 at full frame rate with low overhead, like Bt848 cards
  like Hauppauge's WinTV or WinCast/TV and Miro's PCTV do

Compatibility
=============
Capture:

Hauppauge Win(Cast)/TV
Miro PCTV             

Matrox Rainbow Runner does not work.

Graphics output:

Adapter                  HiColor YUY2
-------------------------------------
ATI Expert@Work            X      X
ATI Expert@Play            X      X
ATI 3D Charger             X      X
Diamond Viper 220          X      ?
ELSA Victory Erazor        X      ?
Hercules Stingray 128/3D   X      X*
Matrox Mystique            X
S3 Trio 64V+               X      ?
S3 Virge DX 4MB		   X      X

* indicates the overlay is not properly implemented in the driver.
      


Installation
============
Just copy it to your harddisk and get the appropriate KEY.TXT for the stations you want to watch. 
FreeTV uses PCTV compatible key files. This means that a key file is a text file which has 255
lines with a number from 0..31 in each. The keyfile is not included since it may be illegal to
extract the proper keys. You ca get valid key files from the PCTV home page at www.eurosat.com and
various other sources. Just copy it to the program directory.

Bindings
========
FreeTV uses "Binding Files" that tell it at what position the capture board actually digitizes
a given source line. The file names follow a special naming sheme. For different input formats
different bindings are used.
NOTE: The binding files for different input widths are usually identical.
The naming convention is:

FreeTV <colorformat> <first|second>.bnd

Valid examples are:

FreeTV RGB16 first.bnd
FreeTV YUY2 second.bnd
FreeTV YUV12 first.bnd
FreeTV Greyscale second.bnd

Note that RGB16 input is internally flipped so the bindings are for a top down image.
Note that the Bindings for other cards than the Hauppauge will be different. 

Performance Tuning
==================
Best performance comes in 360x576 YUY2 -> YUY2 Overlay with a low number of couples and "Be Clever" turned on.
Or just Greyscale, if thats not too ugly;)

Quality Tuning
==================
- dont use less than 12 couples, prefer at least 16 or 20
- 768x576 YUY2 -> YUY2 Overlay with a nice video scaler, "Be clever" if it works and a high number of couples
  and Mutithreading of.

What means "Be Clever"
======================
This decode mode makes some assumptions about the encoded image. This does not always work. It is
reported to work with premiere for all movies and most other broadcasts, but is reported to fail
sometimes on their own productions.
IMPORTANT: In order to work "Be Clever" mode REQUIERES that you can achieve a high decode rate,
say above 20 fps. If the decode rate is below 25 fps decode errors are caused be the inconsistent
frame rate, sorry. This is probably a bt848 driver issue only.

Contact
=======
Watch the movie or use the MASCOM messageboard. Please write in english.
I will not answer an questions there but notice problems posted there like the 32768 color issue.
I would be happy to see some compatibility and performance informations about your systems there.
Especially information about the availability and performance of RGB Modes and 
- most interesting - YUY2 overlays should help to improve this program.

Known Bugs
==========
YUY2 Overlay may not work on some machines that should support it. Just use HiColor output here.
There is a theoretical possibility of boards using non-standard RGB16 modes. Please report them
on www.eurosat.com (see above!).
Also it would be nice to know which Video boards actually work and how.

Frequently Asked Questions
==========================
Q: My capture board does not work. Will future version of FreeTV support it.
A: Use the included diag.exe to produce a list of your capture modes and post
   them alog with a problem description on the MASCOM message board.
   http://freetv.noxtrix.de links to it!

Q: Does FreeTV support SECAM ?
A: No, ans it will not till someone posts the necessary informations.

Q: Would it help to limit output size b removing top and bottom lines for movies? 
A: With a modern graphics adapter there is not much gain in doing so (less than 5%).

Q: I get only 25 fps while fella X claims gets 28.
A: Since it is impossible to have more than 25 frames (50 fields) thats crap.

Future Improvements
===================
- Easier Binding configuration.
- Smooth for HiColor Output
- maybe more greyscale resolutions - probably not