For those not in the know, DVB-T is terrestrial digital television - or in the UK "Freeview". I recently bought myself two "Freecom DVB-T USB Stick" digital television cards for my computer.
It didn't work under Ubuntu Breezy because the driver wasn't available in the Linux Kernel supplied with Breezy. So I upgraded to Ubuntu Dapper and it works. I'm thinking of trying out KnoppMyth or maybe install Dapper, but follow the Ubuntu Instructions.
Until then I've used some marvellous free tools to enable me to eatch telly. Firstly Wolfbane is a great website to find out which is the nearest terrestrial transmitter to you based on your post code. Looking outside at the direction of my aerial I see mine is pointing at the transmitter at Crystal Palace.
Next a natty tool called scan which is part of a set of linux based DVB tools can be used to see what channels are available on said transmitter.
$ scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/uk-CrystalPalace > channels.conf
Which generates a file called channels.conf that looks like this: (this is just the first few lines split up for readability)
BBC ONE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:
FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:
GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:600:601:4164
BBC TWO:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:
FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:
GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:610:611:4228
BBC THREE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:
FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:
GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:620:621:4351
Ok, so now I know I can get BBC ONE and a bunch of other channels I can tune in and watch them using some information in that file. A program called dvbstream can tune the DVB-T tuner in and then pipe the resulting output to another program to display the result. In my case I use mplayer but I understand that other players can be used.
Here's the incantation:
$ dvbstream -f 505833 -a 601 -v 600 -o | mplayer - -aspect 4:3
The 505833 comes from near the start of the line, the 601 and 600 are the audio and video channels of BBC 1. The output is piped to mplayer which I can then tweak with its own command line parameters.
This results in something like the following picture - which is a screenshot of my desktop as I typed this blog entry and watched telly.
I'll play with this more later I think.
Have you got the 2 cards
Have you got the 2 cards working in linux at the same time?
I've been running one for about 6 months with no hassles, but I've bought a second which does not get picked up by linux.
Not asking for help but hopefully confirmation that you can use 2 of these cards in 1 linux box at once.
cheers
gary
It's easier...
... with Xine, because you don't need multiple processes:
xine "dvb://Channel 4"
But whatever floats your boat... :)
You could use xine
If you copy your channels.conf to your .xine dir, you can use xine to watch tv. The best thing about this is that you can change channels without having to manually grep the channels.conf file first.
can i get a copy of yor
can i get a copy of yor channel.cof file?
Im having trouble running the scan!!
have you managed to tune into Sky Three?
My email add is Duttydea@yahoo.co.uk.
Thanks in advance
That probably won't do you
That probably won't do you any good unless you are pointing at the same transmitter.
What transmitter are you pointing to and what have you tried?
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