Arch Linux

tekwyzrd

Member

Registered: 2014-01-08

Posts: 6

DVB and ATSC capable apps

For years Kaffeine was a reliable app for use with a tv tuner card but unfortunately as time passed it did not receive the attention it needed and has become buggy and prone to crashes. There seems to be a lack of apps for use with tv tuner cards. TV Time and xawtv are still available but are obsolete and don't support digital transmissions. I have tried mplayer but can't seem to get sound and the video is not smooth. Are there any tv apps left that actually work correctly? I don't mean pvr type apps like xbmc or mythtv, just a simple app to view atsc tv shows.

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 575

Re: DVB and ATSC capable apps

mplayer, mpv, ffplay will all play atsc tv fine.
You can always try to cache some video to file for a while and then play the file.
Or add some cache to the player.
You need a channels.conf file first. Look at community/linuxtv-dvb-apps

Examples:

mplayer dvb://

H and K to change channels

mplayer dvb://WABC -dumpstream -dumpfile tv.ts

Or you can zap a channel and play the device node

azap -r -c /../.mplayer/channels.conf WABC

mplayer /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0

cat /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 > tv.ts

There is also a little signal app called femon that comes with dvb-apps

femon -H

Make yourself a shell script that will automate all that.

#! /usr/bin/env bash

#dvb:// tuner-player. Requires dvb-apps and one of mplayer, mpv or ffplay.

while :; do
	clear
	PS3="
$(tput setaf 2)Enter channel number:  $(tput sgr0)"
	chans=$(cut -d ":" -f1 < $HOME/.mplayer/channels.conf)
	echo "$(tput setaf 3)		  	
Select channel then adjust antenna for 75% or better signal 
quality while watching signal meter. Press (enter) to play 
that channel once good signal is acquired.					  	
During play press (q) to quit station, (f) for fullscreen.					 	
-----------------------------------------------------------
Select a channel.   Ctrl C to exit.$(tput sgr0)
"
	select opt in $chans; do
		azap -r -c $HOME/.mplayer/channels.conf $opt > /dev/null &
		disown
		femon -H | cut -d "|" -f2 &
		disown
		read
		pkill femon
		clear
		echo "Wait I'm tuning it."
		mplayer -cache 2048 -cache-min 80 /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 &> /dev/null
		#mpv /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 &> /dev/null
		#ffplay &> /dev/null - < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 
		pkill azap
		break
	done
done

Darksoul71

Member

Registered: 2010-04-12

Posts: 319

Re: DVB and ATSC capable apps

I am not so fond in ATSC requirements but keep in mind when you use mplayer, that Video acceleration is needed for smooth playback. At least on weaker systems when playing back HDTV.

Beside VDR as backend and Kodi as frontend I have often used both VLC and SMPlayer for watching TV over DVB-S2 under Linux. Depending on your video card, GPU and driver used VDPAU or VAAPI are the typical backend drivers for video acceleration.

For simple recording streams a combination of mplayer with -dumpstream -dumpfile plus chron comes handy. Much more efficient than VDR or TVHeadend but pretty basic in its functionality.

HTH,
D$

Last edited by Darksoul71 (2015-05-22 14:24:56)

---

My archlinux x86_64 host:
AMD E350 (2x1.6GHz) / 8GB DDR3 RAM / GeForce 9500GT (passive) / Arch running from 16GB USB Stick

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 575

Re: DVB and ATSC capable apps

rtcwake works good for that too, and it's easily scriptable
Like this simple example.

#! /usr/bin/env bash

#Put machine to sleep, wake at 3am tomorrow
rtcwake -m mem -t $(date +%s -d 'tomorrow 0300') &&

#zap a channel
azap -r -c $HOME/.mplayer/channels.conf WABC &
disown

#Don't overwrite a video that's already there
num=1
until [ ! -e tvshow$num.ts ]; do
	num=$(( $num + 1 ))
done

#Direct the output of dvr0 to file
cat /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 > tvshow$num.ts &

#let it run for a 30 min program
sleep 1800

#Stop recording
pkill azap
pkill cat

#atsc is the same audio/video standard as dvd (.ac3 / .mpeg2)
#If you want to reencode to file.mp4 for storage
ffmpeg -i tvshow.ts -bsf:a aac_adtstoasc -c:a copy -c:v libx264 -b:v 2500k Ouput.mp4

#Go back to sleep
sytemctl suspend

#-----------------------
# Example wake 4pm today
#rtcwake -m on -t $(date +%s -d 1600)

Standard def atsc tv will play on a P4 2Ghz and up if you have a video card that's any good. I have a P4 with an old but good Nvidia fx 5400 that will play it. (15 years old.)
You can drop the screen resolution down and open the video fullscreen with mplayer. Example:

xrandr --output VGA-1 --mode 720x400
azap -r -c $HOME/.mplayer/channels.conf WABC
mplayer -fs -cache 2048 -cache-min 80 /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0

That will open the video full screen which is smaller than the videos original size. If it's standard def you can watch it just fine without pegging the cpu at 110% and without vdpau using noveau.