These tips cover using TVTonic with Windows Vista Media Center. If you use TVTonic with Windows XP Media Center and/or Internet Explorer (on either Vista or XP), please go here.
Getting Started
After you have installed TVTonic, the first thing you'll want to do is start browsing the Channel Guide in order to subscribe to some channels (video podcasts are called channels in TVTonic). You get to the Channel Guide by opening the TVTonic menu.
To reveal the TVTonic menu, select the right arrow on your remote or hover your cursor over the glassy 'eye' icon in the upper-right of the screen. The TVTonic menu is the main way you'll interact with the software.
TVTonic is in its first-run state. In the upper right, you can see the Channel Guide button highlighted, in the lower left you can see the User Tip overlay.
When you open the TVTonic menu, you'll see two buttons at the top: Channel Guide and Service Settings. Below that is the My Channels menu. If you haven't added any channels yet you'll see only one channel in My Channels: TVTonic Preview. This channel is subscribed automatically and cannot be removed.
Select the Channel Guide button to open the Channel Guide menu. The Channel Guide is organized by categories. Featured Channels are channels that are guaranteed to update often with quality video. If you're just getting started with Internet TV, you might want to select a few of the Featured Channels. Otherwise, browse the guide and add as many channels as you like.
Once you've subscribed a channel it is added to the My Channels menu and it starts to download video in the background. You can also play videos that haven't downloaded yet. There may be some delay or stuttering in playing on-line video depending on your Internet connection.
User Tips
By default, when you first run TVTonic, the software prompts you with a User Tips overlay. This overlay gives you contextual tips on how to use the interface. It might be a good idea to keep the User Tips on for a bit while you get to know the interface. You can close User Tips by selecting the close button. If you would like to reveal them again you can do that in the Service Settings menu.
The My Channels menu loaded up with some channels.
You'll have video items that are on the web or already downloaded. The button style shows you which is downloaded to your hard disk.
The Channel Settings menu showing the Unsubscribe Channel button and the Cache Settings button.
Navigating The Interface
TVTonic has a unique 'overlay' interface. The video always plays full screen and you interact with the software with sliding menus that overlay the video.
To reveal the overlay menus, select the right arrow on your remote or keyboard. Or you can hover your mouse over the glassy TVTonic icon in the upper right to reveal the menus. To hide the menus you can keep selecting the right arrow until the menus are hidden. Or move your mouse cursor to the middle of the screen and the menus will be hidden.
The key point to remember is that if no menus are visible, you can always show a menu by selecting either right or left arrows. The menus are like a revolving door, you keep selecting either right or left to eventually exit the door.
Bonus tip: if no menu is visible and you select the left arrow, you can jump directly to the details about the current video.
Playing Videos
After you've subscribed a few channels, select the left arrow to navigate back to the My Channels menu. You will see all the channels you have subscribed in the My Channels menu.
Each channel button in the channel menu displays the channel's name as well as the number of videos currently in the channel. Highlight the channel button and select it to play all the videos in the channel. To see a list of the videos in a channel, while the channel button is highlighted, hit the right arrow key (either on your remote or keyboard). If you're using your mouse, click the small arrow to the right of the channel button to show it's video menu. Once a channel's video menu is visible, simply highlight a video item and select it to watch that video.
Video items are styled differently depending on the state of the video. If a video has been downloaded to your local hard drive, the button is opaque and has a film strip icon. If a video item is on-line, it's button is transparent and it's icon looks like a film strip with an arrow in it.
Adding And Removing Channels
You subscribe to channels in the Channel Guide. Go to the Channel Guide at any time by selecting the Channel Guide button that is available on the My Channels menu. Once you're in the Guide, select a channel's button to subscribe to that channel. After you subscribe to a channel, video will start downloading and the channel will appear in the My Channels section of TVTonic.
You remove channels via the Channel Settings menu. To access this menu, highlight a channel in the My Channels menu and select the right arrow button (or click the arrow to the right of the button) to reveal the channel's menu. Select the Channel Settings button at the top of this menu and in the resulting menu, select the Unsubscribe Channel button.
Manage Disk Space
After you subscribe some channels, it's a good idea to set their disk cache settings. This is how you control how much hard drive space TVTonic uses for downloaded content. To do this, follow the instructions above to open the Channel Settings menu and then select the Cache Settings button. This will open the Cache Settings overlay. Simply move the slider to the desired amount of space you would like to allow for the channel and select Save.
The Cache Settings screen allows you to set how much disk space each channel is allowed to use.
To determine how much space a channel will need, you might allow the channel to download for a day or two and see how much space it generally uses and adjust accordingly. If a channel is topical, updates often and you watch it often; you might want to set the cache low so that you are only saving the newest videos. If you don't have lots of free space, you also might want to set all the channels to a low cache size.
Subscribe Any RSS 2.0 Video Feed
TVTonic's Channel Guide contains tons of great channels and video podcasts, but it doesn't cover everything on the web. With TVTonic you can subscribe to any RSS 2.0 video podcast feed. Just select the Add Custom Channel button in the Channel Guide menu and follow the on-screen instructions. Note, you will need to use your web browser to add channels by their RSS feed.