- The driver distribution includes some simple utilities which
- are mainly intended for testing and to demonstrate how the
- DVB API works.
-
- Depending on whether you have a DVB-S, DVB-C or DVB-T card, use
- apps/szap/szap, czap or tzap. You must supply a channel list
- in ~/.[sct]zap/channels.conf. If you are lucky you can just copy
- one of the supplied channel lists, or you can create a new one
- by running apps/scan/scan. If you run scan on an unknown network
- you might have to supply some start data in apps/scan/initial.h.
-
- If you have a card with a built-in hardware MPEG-decoder the
- drivers create a video4linux device (/dev/v4l/video0) which
- you can use to watch TV with any v4l application. xawtv is known
- to work. Note that you cannot change channels with xawtv, you
- have to zap using [sct]zap. If you want a nice application for
- TV watching and record/playback, have a look at VDR.
-
- If your card does not have a hardware MPEG decoder you need
- a software MPEG decoder. Mplayer or xine are known to work.
- Newsflash: MythTV also has DVB support now.
- Note: Only very recent versions of Mplayer and xine can decode.
- MPEG2 transport streams (TS) directly. Then, run
- '[sct]zap channelname -r' in one xterm, and keep it running,
- and start 'mplayer - < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0' or
- 'xine stdin://mpeg2 < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0' in a second xterm.
- That's all far from perfect, but it seems no one has written
- a nice DVB application which includes a builtin software MPEG
- decoder yet.
-
- Newsflash: Newest xine directly supports DVB. Just copy your
- channels.conf to ~/.xine and start 'xine dvb://', or select
- the DVB button in the xine GUI. Channel switching works using the
- numpad pgup/pgdown (NP9 / NP3) keys to scroll through the channel osd
- menu and pressing numpad-enter to switch to the selected channel.
-
- Note: Older versions of xine and mplayer understand MPEG program
- streams (PS) only, and can be used in conjunction with the
- ts2ps tool from the Metzler Brother's dvb-mpegtools package.
-
-3. Which other DVB applications exist?
-
- http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/
+ Together with the Linux Kernel, the Digital TV developers support
+ some simple utilities which are mainly intended for testing
+ and to demonstrate how the DVB API works. This is called DVB v5
+ tools and are grouped together with the ``v4l-utils`` git repository:
+
+ https://git.linuxtv.org/v4l-utils.git/
+
+ You can find more information at the LinuxTV wiki:
+
+ https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVBv5_Tools
+
+ The first step is to get a list of services that are transmitted.
+
+ This is done by using several existing tools. You can use
+ for example the ``dvbv5-scan`` tool. You can find more information
+ about it at:
+
+ https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Dvbv5-scan
+
+ There are some other applications like ``w_scan`` [#]_ that do a
+ blind scan, trying hard to find all possible channels, but
+ those consumes a large amount of time to run.
+
+ .. [#] https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/W_scan
+
+ Also, some applications like ``kaffeine`` have their own code
+ to scan for services. So, you don't need to use an external
+ application to obtain such list.
+
+ Most of such tools need a file containing a list of channel
+ transponders available on your area. So, LinuxTV developers
+ maintain tables of Digital TV channel transponders, receiving
+ patches from the community to keep them updated.
+
+ This list is hosted at:
+
+ https://git.linuxtv.org/dtv-scan-tables.git
+
+ And packaged on several distributions.
+
+ Kaffeine has some blind scan support for some terrestrial standards.
+ It also relies on DTV scan tables, although it contains a copy
+ of it internally (and, if requested by the user, it will download
+ newer versions of it).
+
+ If you are lucky you can just use one of the supplied channel
+ transponders. If not, you may need to seek for such info at
+ the Internet and create a new file. There are several sites with
+ contains physical channel lists. For cable and satellite, usually
+ knowing how to tune into a single channel is enough for the
+ scanning tool to identify the other channels. On some places,
+ this could also work for terrestrial transmissions.
+
+ Once you have a transponders list, you need to generate a services
+ list with a tool like ``dvbv5-scan``.
+
+ Almost all modern Digital TV cards don't have built-in hardware
+ MPEG-decoders. So, it is up to the application to get a MPEG-TS
+ stream provided by the board, split it into audio, video and other
+ data and decode.
+
+3. Which Digital TV applications exist?
+
+ Several media player applications are capable of tuning into
+ digital TV channels, including Kaffeine, Vlc, mplayer and MythTV.
+
+ Kaffeine aims to be very user-friendly, and it is maintained
+ by one of the Kernel driver developers.
+
+ A comprehensive list of those and other apps can be found at:
+
+ https://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TV_Related_Software
+
+ Some of the most popular ones are linked below:
+
+ https://kde.org/applications/multimedia/org.kde.kaffeine
+ KDE media player, focused on Digital TV support
+
+ https://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Main_Page