Access TV Tuner Stream/Feed in WPF

Question

My team built a WPF (C#) Application that integrates with Media Center to show a video in the center of a dashboard. Essentially, the application begins recording a TV channel via Media Center, waits 10 seconds and begins playing back the file as it is being recorded. In the year since the application has launched, we have had roughly 50 help desk tickets created, 45 of which are specifically for the Media Center integration and setup.

We have determined that we need to make a major change in the implementation and architecture to remove the Media Center application all together and try to show the feed from the TV tuner directly, like you would a web cam. Unfortunately, nobody on the team here has done this before nor can we find any resources or samples of this being done.

I'm looking for working code samples that can take the stream from the TV tuner and show it in Windows Form or WPF application. I'd even be willing to buy 3rd party components out there or software. Heck, I'd even be willing to pay someone that knows how to do this to do just that!

Can you please point me in the right direction?

CODE FOR VIDEO

<MediaKit:MediaUriElement x:Name="MediaContainer" Volume="1" 
     Stretch="Uniform" HorizontalAlignment="Center" 
     UnloadedBehavior="Manual" LoadedBehavior="Play" 
     Height="820.00020739959" Width="1393.843"/>

CODE FOR RECORDING VIDEO

DeletePreviousRecordings();
MediaCenterControl mcc = new MediaCenterControl();
mcc.StopAllRecordings();
DateTime recordingStartTime;
DateTime endTime = DateTime.Now.Subtract(TimeSpan.FromDays(1));
int loopCount = 0;
do
{
    if (loopCount++ >= 5)
    {
        // TODO: Show error
        break;
    }
    recordingStartTime = DateTime.Now;
    RecordingEndTime = recordingStartTime.AddMinutes(RecordDuration);
}   //loop count was added below so it knew not to throw until five shots have been missed @ scheduling.
while ((endTime = mcc.RecordMedia(recordingStartTime, Settings1.Default.RecordChannel, RecordDuration, loopCount)) < DateTime.Now);
if (endTime > DateTime.Now)
    RecordingEndTime = endTime;
}

Answer 1

This can definitely be done but you would have to narrow down to one tv tuner. I actually have this working using the WinTV-HVR-1950. It took me a while but you have to get down and dirty with the hauppage drivers to get the signal and send it to the application. I'll have to look up that code but I think I may have your solution.