
In the manual control panel you can test the functions of the tv-server without a client actually connecting to the tv stream. That means that the tv server will communicate with the tv card, tune into a channel and even start recording without the output being shown at a client. This can be used to quickly test if a channel is working correctly, or to see how good the signal strength is at a given channel.
It also gives you a quick status overview of all cards and what they are doing.
When you first enter the manual control panel it will look approximately like this:

This section shows an overview of all available tv cards and their current status.
This column displays the unique number of the card that MP has ascribed to each tuner-card.
Displays the type of card. Possible entries include DVB-S, DVB-T, DVB-C, DVB-IP, RadioWebStream
Displays the current state of the card. Possible entries include:
This displays the name of the Channel currently being accessed.
This displays whether the stream is scrambled or not
This displays the machine name of the client accessing the card.
This displays the name of the card configured on the Server:
A received DVB-stream consists of multiple subchannels. When you are recording (or watching from different clients) several programs that are present on the same DVB-stream, the TV-server decodes and distributes these subchannels to the desired locations (file or client).
This button can be used to stop/start the TV Service. If clients are connected when this is depressed, all clients will lose connection and they will have to re-select the channel they were watching once the service is back up. Stopping the service will free all tv cards so they can be accessed by other programs.
This button, when pressed instructs the TV Service to restart the EPG Grabbing function for all channels defined in TV Channels/TV EPG Grabber section. This does not trigger an xml import and will most likely delete all EPG information currently stored.

First, select the group of the channel you want to test from the dropdown list Group. This will populate the dropdown list Channel with all channels from this group. When you select a channel you can start timeshifting or recording on this channel.
This button will start/stop timeshifting on the selected channel in the Channel dropdown box. In the top section you will see the status of the current connection:
Same as above (Start/Stop Timeshifting) with the difference that the stream is also saved as a recording (can only be enabled once a timeshift buffer is started).