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 (http://www.linuxtv.org).
DVB-S (direct satellite reception), DVB-C (Cable) and DVB-T (Teresstrical)
cards should be supported (e.g. the Hauppauge WinTV Nova DVB-S card).

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

Download and install the drivers from http://www.linuxtv.org, the 1.0.0 release
should work fine. 

You will need kernel sources configured for your configuration for 
a successfull build, preferably in /usr/src/linux plus a link to them in
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/build. Once you have that you should be ready 
to compile the driver

# cd linuxtv-dvb-1.0.0/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 something like

DVB: registering new adapter (TT-Budget/WinTV-NOVA-S  PCI).
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0d.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:0c.0
DVB: registering frontend 0:0 (stv0299 based (e.g. Alps BSRU6 or LG TDQB-S00x))...

in your dmesg.


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

xine's dvb input plugin needs a channel/transponder list that fits your 
dvb equipment. xine now uses the channels.conf format of szap, czap and 
tzap as appropriate for DVB-S, DVB-C and DVB-T. it will search the channel
list file in ~/.xine/channels.conf

channel list format for DVB-S:

NBC         :11053   :h  :1        :27500      :550 :551 :1:8008
station name:freqency:h/v:sat no   :symbol rate:vpid:apid:?:????

you automatically scan for all available channels using the scan utility
which comes with the dvb package. compile it using something like

# cd linuxtv-dvb-1.0.0/apps/scan
# make

then start scanning

# scan >channels.conf

this can take a while. in a DiSEqC environment, use the -s N switch to select
different sattelites to scan and paste the results in one big channels.conf file.

HINT: you might want to manually sort the channels.conf file to have your favourite
channels at the top and maybe remove scrambled channels which you don't have access to.


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-9 / NumPad-3 keys, 
or using the next/previous chapter buttons in your gui.

An OSD menu is available too. Press NumPad-8 / NumPad-2 to scroll 
through the channels, then press NumPad-Enter to switch to the channel
you have selected.

You can use MENU3 (F2 in xine) to zoom into the centre of a videostream.
This will allow you to view 4:3 content that has been embedded into a 
16:9 stream in fullscreen (no more black borders).  Press the key again
to return to normal viewing.  There is also an option in the xine
preferences to zoom automatically when using xine to view DVB.

MENU7 (F6 in xine) will toggle viewing of the current channel name on the
OSD.

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


recording digital television
----------------------------

there is a very simple vcr-like feature built into the xine engine. just press
MENU2 (that is F2 in gxine, or F1 in xine for example) to start/stop recording 
the currently displayed program to your local disc. a small osd in the upper 
left corner of your screen will tell you the file name the recorded stream is 
written to.

Have fun.