xine Digital TV (DVB)
=====================

xine can be used to watch digital television.

xine supports Digital TV (Digital Video Broadcasting - DVB) cards
using the Linux DVB driver from Convergence (so far this has only been
tested using a Hauppauge WinTV Nova DVB-S card).

driver download and installation
--------------------------------

Download and install the latest drivers from www.linuxtv.org. You will
need kernel sources configured for your configuration for a successfull build,
preferably in /usr/src/linux. Once you have that, unpack the driver sources

# tar xfvz siemens_dvb-0.9.4.tar.gz

and compile the driver

# cd DVB/driver
# make

if that doesn't fail, do a

# make insmod

to load the generated modules into your running kernel. If everything went
fine, you should have a line like

dvb: 1 dvb(s) found!

in your dmesg.


install a channel list
----------------------

xine's dvb input plugin needs a channel/transponder list that fits your 
satellite equipment. If you happen to live in central europe and want to
watch free channels from the astra 1a position you're lucky - you can simply
copy the dvb_channels file that comes with libxine (doc directory) 

$ mkdir ~/.xine
$ cp doc/dvb_channels ~/.xine

otherwise you'll probably want to write your own channels file. The file
format is very simple: for each station add three lines:

Program Name
A BBBBBBBB C DDDDDDDD E FFF GGG
(empty line)

with

A - diseqc number

B - Frequency

C - LNB voltage (H/V polarisation switch)
    (4: horizontal, 2: vertical polarisation)

D - Symbol Rate

E - FEC

F - vpid (video program id)

G - apid (audio program id)

once you have written a working dvb_channels file for your location/satellite,
you might want to share it with others on the xine-user mailing list :-)


using xine to watch digital television
--------------------------------------

make sure you have a recent libxine and frontend installed (latest CVS as of 
this writing). then simply start something like

$ gxine dvb://

you should be able to zap around using the NumPad-8 / NumPad-2 keys.

An OSD menu is available too. Press NumPad-9 / NumPad-3 to scroll 
through the channels, then press NumPad-Enter to switch to the channel
you have selected.

HINT: if audio or video is stuttering, pause (space key) shortly
to give xine a chance to fill up it's buffers.

Have fun.