Available Devices

When a broadcast client starts, the Video Access server creates a list of the devices available on the client. Using this list, your application can programmatically query and control individual devices. In the current version of Broadcast Architecture, the only listed device is an analog television tuner card. Future versions will support output devices and other input devices, such as devices that play a stored multimedia file.

The Video control obtains this list of available devices through the BPCDevices collection. Each BPCDeviceBase object in this collection represents a particular device on the client. The properties and methods of BPCDeviceBase can programmatically query and control these client devices.

The Video Access server builds this list of available multimedia devices using the Plug and Play enumeration in the DirectShow application programming interface (API). Once the Video Access server creates this enumeration, you can set the device providing Video control input to one of the enumerated devices. For more information about the device enumeration, see BPCDevices.