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BBC Red Button / MHEG Captures

(June 2016)

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:-(
A former member
Just wondering - is anyone capturing BBC Red Button, Connected Red Button or other MHEG service pages in the same way as people (deliberately or accidentally) captured Oracle / Teletext / Ceefax pages? I know there's probably no easy way to do it, but it would be of interest for historical purposes.
NG
noggin Founding member
CrispyPotato posted:
Just wondering - is anyone capturing BBC Red Button, Connected Red Button or other MHEG service pages in the same way as people (deliberately or accidentally) captured Oracle / Teletext / Ceefax pages? I know there's probably no easy way to do it, but it would be of interest for historical purposes.


Connected Red Button would need to be captured via an HDMI or Composite capture system from a set top box (and would be video capture - not the data)

MHEG-5 is reasonably easy to capture as it is just another PID in the DVB-T/T2 or S/S2 streams - like subtitles, audio, video etc. However there aren't many easy ways of displaying MHEG-5 on a PC (Windows Media Center has an MHEG5 decoder - not sure if you record in that domain you can access the MHEG5 services on recordings... Will check when I get a chance - have a dim memory that you can, as you can with DVB teletext on non-UK channels) There may also be an MHEG-5 decoder implemented in MythTV.

*** Edit : Just had a look at MythTVs sources on github and they do have some MHEG5 code here : https://github.com/MythTV/mythtv/tree/4d24d54ef43164f1325fcbe914450b7dea37e28f/mythtv/libs/libmythfreemheg ***
OV
Orry Verducci
noggin posted:
Connected Red Button would need to be captured via an HDMI or Composite capture system from a set top box (and would be video capture - not the data)

MHEG-5 is reasonably easy to capture as it is just another PID in the DVB-T/T2 or S/S2 streams - like subtitles, audio, video etc. However there aren't many easy ways of displaying MHEG-5 on a PC (Windows Media Center has an MHEG5 decoder - not sure if you record in that domain you can access the MHEG5 services on recordings... Will check when I get a chance - have a dim memory that you can, as you can with DVB teletext on non-UK channels) There may also be an MHEG-5 decoder implemented in MythTV.

DVB Viewer has full support for both MHEG-5 and HbbTV, which makes capturing the Freeview and Freesat red button services as simple as loading them up and hitting the screen capture option. I've not yet tried Connected Red Button with it so I'm not sure how well that's supported, but the MHEG red button services all work perfectly. I believe it also works from a recorded transport stream, although again I've not tried it myself.
NG
noggin Founding member
Orry Verducci posted:
noggin posted:
Connected Red Button would need to be captured via an HDMI or Composite capture system from a set top box (and would be video capture - not the data)

MHEG-5 is reasonably easy to capture as it is just another PID in the DVB-T/T2 or S/S2 streams - like subtitles, audio, video etc. However there aren't many easy ways of displaying MHEG-5 on a PC (Windows Media Center has an MHEG5 decoder - not sure if you record in that domain you can access the MHEG5 services on recordings... Will check when I get a chance - have a dim memory that you can, as you can with DVB teletext on non-UK channels) There may also be an MHEG-5 decoder implemented in MythTV.

DVB Viewer has full support for both MHEG-5 and HbbTV, which makes capturing the Freeview and Freesat red button services as simple as loading them up and hitting the screen capture option. I've not yet tried Connected Red Button with it so I'm not sure how well that's supported, but the MHEG red button services all work perfectly. I believe it also works from a recorded transport stream, although again I've not tried it myself.


I should have remembered that. ISTR that it was an optional extra that required extra payment, so I've never added it to my install of DVB Viewer.

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