5 xine can be used to watch digital television.
7 xine supports Digital TV (Digital Video Broadcasting - DVB) cards using the
8 Linux DVB drivers in your kernel or from http://www.linuxtv.org/.
10 Many DVB-S (direct satellite reception), DVB-C (Cable) and DVB-T and ATSC
11 (Terrestrial) devices are supported via these drivers.
14 Driver download and installation
15 --------------------------------
17 You may need to download and install drivers for recent hardware. See the
18 "Getting Started" section at http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/ .
20 You will probably need to add yourself to group "video". With a DVB device
21 installed and recognised:
23 $ ls -l /deb/dvb/adapter0
25 crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 4 2007-08-07 15:33 demux0
26 crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 5 2007-08-07 15:33 dvr0
27 crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 3 2007-08-07 15:33 frontend0
28 crw-rw---- 1 root video 212, 7 2007-08-07 15:33 net0
30 This shows that you need to be either root or in group "video" to be able to
33 You can find out if you're already in this group by using the "groups"
34 command in a terminal. If you aren't, then trying to use the DVB plugin will
35 cause a "no input plugin" error: this is somewhat misleading because the DVB
36 plugin was actually found but it failed because it couldn't open the device
39 Adding yourself to group "video" is the best way; one of
42 $ sudo adduser fred video
44 will do the job for a user named "fred". Note that the change won't take
45 effect until after fred has logged out if he's currently logged in.
48 Install a channel list
49 ----------------------
51 xine-lib's dvb input plugin needs a channel/transponder list that fits your
52 dvb equipment. xine-lib uses the channels.conf format of szap, czap and tzap
53 as appropriate for DVB-S, DVB-C and DVB-T. It will search the channel list
54 file in ~/.xine/channels.conf.
56 channel list format for DVB-S: (satellite)
57 -------------------------------------------
58 NBC :11053 :h :1 :27500 :550 :551 :1 :8008
59 station name:freqency:h/v:sat no :symbol rate:vpid:apid:sid:????
60 -------------------------------------------
62 channel list format for DVB-T (terrestrial):
63 -------------------------------------------
64 WINSA :557500000:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_AUTO:QAM_64: \
65 TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8:HIERARCHY_NONE :33 :36 :1
66 station name:frequency:config options go on seemingly forever ... :vpid:apid:serviceid
67 -------------------------------------------
69 You scan for all available channels using the scan utility which comes with
70 the dvb-apps package (also known as dvb-utils). See
71 http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Scan for more information.
73 $ scan /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/uk-PontopPike >~/.xine/channels.conf
74 $ scan Hotbird-13.0 >~/.xine/channels.conf
76 This can take a while. In a DiSEqC environment, use the -s N switch to
77 select different satellites to scan and paste the results in one big
78 channels.conf file. As always, please be sure to read the man page for the
79 version of the tool you are using.
81 HINT: you might want to manually sort the channels.conf file to have your
82 favourite channels at the top and maybe remove any scrambled channels to
83 which you don't have access.
86 Using xine to watch digital television
87 --------------------------------------
89 Make sure you have a recent libxine and front end installed, then simply
94 or, perhaps, click on the DVB button in xine-ui. You should be able to zap
95 around using the NumPad-9 / NumPad-3 keys, the xine playlist, or using the
96 next/previous chapter buttons in your gui.
98 An OSD menu is available too. Press NumPad-8 / NumPad-2 to scroll through
99 the channels, then press NumPad-Enter to switch to the channel you have
100 selected. The channel list can be brought up and scrolled through via the
101 mouse wheel. Use the left mouse button to switch to the channel you've
102 selected. The side buttons (6 & 7) can be used to rapidly switch to
103 previous/next channels, if they are available on your mouse.
105 You can use MENU3 (F2 in xine-ui, F3 in gxine) to zoom into the centre of a
106 videostream. This will allow you to view 4:3 content that has been embedded
107 into a 16:9 stream in fullscreen (no more black borders). Press the key
108 again to return to normal viewing. There is also an option in the xine
109 preferences to zoom automatically when using xine to view DVB.
111 MENU7 (F6 in xine-ui or F7 in gxine) will toggle viewing of the current
112 channel's Electronic Program Guide (information on the current/next program)
113 on the OSD, if available.
115 HINT: if audio or video is stuttering, pause (space key) shortly to give
116 xine-lib a chance to fill its buffers. If watching a large HDTV stream, you
117 may need to increase the xine video & audio buffer size - increasing audio
118 buffers to 300 and video buffers to 700 has been known to work with streams
119 up to 1920x1088 in size.
122 Recording digital television
123 ----------------------------
125 There is a very simple VCR-like feature built into the xine engine. just
126 press MENU2 (that is F2 in gxine, or F1 in xine-ui for example) to
127 start/stop recording the currently displayed program to your local disc. A
128 small OSD message in the upper left corner of your screen will tell you the
129 file name the recorded stream is being written to. You can select the
130 directory to save to in the xine configuration under the MISC tab, otherwise
131 the plugin will record to your home directory. You can pause the recording
132 at any time by pressing MENU4 (F3 in xine-ui, F4 in gxine). An OSD in the
133 top left hand corner will notify you of the status of the recording.
134 Pressing MENU4 again will resume recording.