PixTV
Online Manual

1) Introduction

PixTV has three main functions: 1) Download pictures from the internet. 2) Play pictures in a slide show, and 3) Organize your pictures.

In order for PixTV to download pictures, it must know the location of your Internet Service Provider's "news" server. It is useful to think of news servers as a collection of bulletin boards where internet users post pictures, and other things. PixTV can be thought of as a robot that runs around to all of those bulletin boards making copies of the pictures for you. To enter your news server, click the Settings button and then click the Server tab on the Settings window. You will find further instructions there. Don't forget that if you change ISPs, you will have to change this setting.

PixTV must also know which bulletin boards, or channels, that you want to get pictures from. You tell PixTV which channels you want by right-clicking on the channel buttons on the left-hand side of the PixTV window. That will open up a window where you can choose a channel. PixTV has the most common channels built in, however, they may not all be available on your ISP's news server. Once you select a channel, click the Check button to make sure.

Once you have your news server entered, and your channels selected, you are ready to start downloading pictures. Click one of the channel buttons so that it is pushed down, and then click the Get More button. PixTV will then go to the bulletin board on your ISP's news server and start looking for pictures. When it finds one, it will download and decode it, and save it. (Files are saved in your \PixTV\Pictures\channel-name folder.) This approach eliminates the World Wide Wait, and allows PixTV to acquire large numbers of pictures for you with very little effort on your part. After PixTV finishes downloading a picture, it will display it. You will also see the number of pictures in the channel, shown at the lower-right of the screen, go up by one. Use the arrow buttons to the right to look at all the pictures in the channel.

The number of pictures in a bulletin board depends on how many your ISP decides to keep, and will vary from ISP to ISP. When PixTV has downloaded all of the pictures in a channel, you will not be able to get any more for that channel until more arrive on your ISP's news server. Also, some channels are more popular than others and have larger flows of pictures.

Once you have some pictures, PixTV can play them in a slide show so that you can enjoy them. To start a slide show, click a channel button, and then click the Play button. PixTV will start showing pictures one by one. You can tell PixTV how often to switch pictures by clicking the speed button and changing the setting. You can play a slide show while you are getting more pictures. Click the maximize button on the PixTV title bar to run the slide show full-screen. When you click the Play button, PixTV automatically hides everything so that whole screen can be devoted to the pictures. Click anywhere to bring back the buttons. If you want to hide them again, click the Hide Stuff button.

To organize your pictures with PixTV, you can drag your favorite ones to the Favorites button. Or you can drag them to other channel buttons. Click on a picture, hold the mouse button down, drag the picture over a channel button, and then release the mouse button. If you see pictures you don't want to keep, click the Delete button to get rid of them.

2) Screen Objects

Channel Buttons

Along the left side of the screen are the "Channel" buttons. The first channel button is a special button called Favorites. Use this button to store your favorite pictures and then play them in a slide show. Drag-and-drop pictures from other channels onto this button. You can not use the Get More button with Favorites. Assign channels to the other buttons by right-clicking on them to open the properties window. There are twenty buttons, though you may not be able to access them all depending upon your monitor size and resolution.

In the lower-left corner of the screen, you will see the progress bar. This bar shows how fast your news server is sending the picture that PixTV is currently downloading. It is updated each time a piece of the picture is received and may cycle through several times before the whole picture arrives. To the right of the progress bar, you will see the percentage of the picture downloaded. Nothing happens here when PixTV is not downloading.

At the bottom of the screen in the center, you will see the status message area. This is where PixTV displays various messages, and let's you know what it is doing while it is downloading pictures.

To the right of the Status Message Area, you will see numbers such as "3 of 5", etc. These numbers show which picture you are looking at in the channel. So, "3 of 5" means that you have five pictures in the channel, and you are looking at the third one. Use the arrow buttons to move back and forth through the pictures in the channel. If you are downloading pictures, you will see the second number move up as PixTV adds more pictures to the channel.

When you start PixTV, you will see instructions in the picture area. When you click a channel button, you will see the pictures in the channel. When PixTV is done downloading a picture, it will display it in the picture area, unless you turn off the Show Pictures setting on the Settings window. You can make the picture area larger by clicking the Hide Stuff button. Click anywhere in the picture to bring back the buttons. If a picture is too large to fit in the picture area, PixTV will either scale it down, or show it with scroll bars. You can change which way PixTV shows it by right-clicking on the picture. For pictures that fit into the picture area, nothing will happen when you right-click on it.

Along the right side of the screen, you will see the command buttons. The Play button starts a slide show of the current channel. While the slide show is going, it changes to a stop button, which will stop the slide show. The Get More button tells PixTV to start downloading more pictures for the current channel. It also changes into a stop button. The Delete button will delete the current picture. The Hide Stuff button hides the screen controls so that you have more room for the picture. Click anywhere on the picture to bring back the screen controls. Click the Speed button to open up a window where you can tell PixTV how fast to switch pictures during a slide show. Click the Settings button to open the Settings window. See below for more info. When you click the Help button, you will get a menu that allows you to show the directions, show the about window, or go to this online manual. The Register button will show a menu that takes you through the registration process, and allows you to enter your registration key. Once you have registered, the name of the button changes to "Registered" and it no longer does anything. Clicking the Exit button shuts down PixTV.

3) Settings Window

The Setting window allows you to change the following settings:

1. Shrinking pictures to fit in the picture area.
2. Changing the background color.
3. Turning on or off the Panic Button feature.
4. Turning on or off the Silent Start feature.
5. Whether or not PixTV should display pictures when it is downloading.
6. News server address and password.
7. Reconnect time.
8. Cross-post filter.
9. Debug Mode.

Each one of the above items is explained right on the window.

You can also add new channels with the Custom Newsgroups tab of the Settings window. On this tab, you will see a list of all the channels and which newsgroups they map to. If you don't know what a newsgroup is, then you should not attempt to change anything here. Follow the instructions on the screen to add, change, or delete a channel. When done, the changes will be reflected on the properties window that comes up when you right-click on a channel button. The Last column shows the ID number of the last article that PixTV downloaded. You can change this number. You may need to do so if PixTV gets stuck on a file. In that case, you can add one to the Last number to have PixTV skip the problem article and resume downloading on the next one.