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TELE-satellite International — The World‘s Largest Digital TV Trade Magazine
— 06-07-08/2012
— www.TELE-satellite.com
Digital Picture Frame
Many viewers are perfectly happy with
a conventional set-top box that can be
used for watching TV, but nothing else.
For those of you with an interest in Linux
receivers, however, there are endless op-
tions to customise such a receiver, and
hundreds of plug-ins and extensions that
add new functions to the operating sys-
tem.
For this workshop we looked at some-
thing really neat: We took a conventional
digital picture frame and added some
modification so that it could be used as an
information panel in conjunction with our
AZBox ME. It then displays stylish chan-
nel logos, content information on the cur-
rent and next events or even the weather
forecast for your city. With the setup we
used it is possible to add a whole range of
tremendous features since text and im-
ages can be transferred using HTTP.
But let’s start at the beginning. How
come a conventional digital picture frame
can be turned into an additional display
for the AZBox ME? The trick lies in modi-
fying the firmware of the digital picture
frame to such an extent that it is able to
receive image files via its USB port that
is switched into slave mode. The frame
then can be used to display all images
sent from the Linux receiver. It sounds
Large and Beautiful
Channel Display –
the DIY way
Vitor Martins Augusto
1, 2, 3: A digital picture frame displays
the logo of the currently selected
channel. Whenever a new channel
is selected the display will change
accordingly.
all too simple: The receiver generates an
image file with the required content and
sends the file to the picture frame which
in turn instantly displays that file. In order
for that to really work the picture frame
obviously needs to come with a USB in-
terface. While most digital picture frames
these days fulfil this requirement without
even the blink of an eye, most are set
up as a USB host, which means the USB
interface can only be used to read out a
USB storage medium and to display the
image files that are stored on that me-
dium. Unfortunately, those models won’t