Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | Some very frequently asked questions about linuxtv-dvb |
| 2 | |
| 3 | 1. The signal seems to die a few seconds after tuning. |
| 4 | |
| 5 | It's not a bug, it's a feature. Because the frontends have |
| 6 | significant power requirements (and hence get very hot), they |
| 7 | are powered down if they are unused (i.e. if the frontend device |
Matt LaPlante | 992caac | 2006-10-03 22:52:05 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 8 | is closed). The dvb-core.o module parameter "dvb_shutdown_timeout" |
Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 9 | allow you to change the timeout (default 5 seconds). Setting the |
| 10 | timeout to 0 disables the timeout feature. |
| 11 | |
| 12 | 2. How can I watch TV? |
| 13 | |
| 14 | The driver distribution includes some simple utilities which |
| 15 | are mainly intended for testing and to demonstrate how the |
| 16 | DVB API works. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | Depending on whether you have a DVB-S, DVB-C or DVB-T card, use |
| 19 | apps/szap/szap, czap or tzap. You must supply a channel list |
| 20 | in ~/.[sct]zap/channels.conf. If you are lucky you can just copy |
| 21 | one of the supplied channel lists, or you can create a new one |
| 22 | by running apps/scan/scan. If you run scan on an unknown network |
| 23 | you might have to supply some start data in apps/scan/initial.h. |
| 24 | |
| 25 | If you have a card with a built-in hardware MPEG-decoder the |
| 26 | drivers create a video4linux device (/dev/v4l/video0) which |
| 27 | you can use to watch TV with any v4l application. xawtv is known |
| 28 | to work. Note that you cannot change channels with xawtv, you |
| 29 | have to zap using [sct]zap. If you want a nice application for |
| 30 | TV watching and record/playback, have a look at VDR. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | If your card does not have a hardware MPEG decoder you need |
| 33 | a software MPEG decoder. Mplayer or xine are known to work. |
| 34 | Newsflash: MythTV also has DVB support now. |
| 35 | Note: Only very recent versions of Mplayer and xine can decode. |
| 36 | MPEG2 transport streams (TS) directly. Then, run |
| 37 | '[sct]zap channelname -r' in one xterm, and keep it running, |
| 38 | and start 'mplayer - < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0' or |
| 39 | 'xine stdin://mpeg2 < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0' in a second xterm. |
| 40 | That's all far from perfect, but it seems no one has written |
| 41 | a nice DVB application which includes a builtin software MPEG |
| 42 | decoder yet. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Newsflash: Newest xine directly supports DVB. Just copy your |
| 45 | channels.conf to ~/.xine and start 'xine dvb://', or select |
| 46 | the DVB button in the xine GUI. Channel switching works using the |
| 47 | numpad pgup/pgdown (NP9 / NP3) keys to scroll through the channel osd |
| 48 | menu and pressing numpad-enter to switch to the selected channel. |
| 49 | |
| 50 | Note: Older versions of xine and mplayer understand MPEG program |
| 51 | streams (PS) only, and can be used in conjunction with the |
| 52 | ts2ps tool from the Metzler Brother's dvb-mpegtools package. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | 3. Which other DVB applications exist? |
| 55 | |
| 56 | http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/ |
| 57 | Klaus Schmidinger's Video Disk Recorder |
| 58 | |
| 59 | http://www.metzlerbros.org/dvb/ |
| 60 | Metzler Bros. DVB development; alternate drivers and |
| 61 | DVB utilities, include dvb-mpegtools and tuxzap. |
| 62 | |
Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 63 | http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvbtools/ |
| 64 | Dave Chapman's dvbtools package, including |
| 65 | dvbstream and dvbtune |
| 66 | |
| 67 | http://www.linuxdvb.tv/ |
| 68 | Henning Holtschneider's site with many interesting |
| 69 | links and docs |
| 70 | |
| 71 | http://www.dbox2.info/ |
| 72 | LinuxDVB on the dBox2 |
| 73 | |
| 74 | http://www.tuxbox.org/ |
| 75 | http://cvs.tuxbox.org/ |
| 76 | the TuxBox CVS many interesting DVB applications and the dBox2 |
| 77 | DVB source |
| 78 | |
Justin P. Mattock | 0ea6e61 | 2010-07-23 20:51:24 -0700 | [diff] [blame^] | 79 | http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/ |
Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 80 | DVB Swiss Army Knife library and utilities |
| 81 | |
| 82 | http://www.nenie.org/misc/mpsys/ |
| 83 | MPSYS: a MPEG2 system library and tools |
| 84 | |
| 85 | http://mplayerhq.hu/ |
| 86 | mplayer |
| 87 | |
| 88 | http://xine.sourceforge.net/ |
| 89 | http://xinehq.de/ |
| 90 | xine |
| 91 | |
| 92 | http://www.mythtv.org/ |
| 93 | MythTV - analog TV PVR, but now with DVB support, too |
| 94 | (with software MPEG decode) |
| 95 | |
| 96 | http://dvbsnoop.sourceforge.net/ |
| 97 | DVB sniffer program to monitor, analyze, debug, dump |
| 98 | or view dvb/mpeg/dsm-cc/mhp stream information (TS, |
| 99 | PES, SECTION) |
| 100 | |
| 101 | 4. Can't get a signal tuned correctly |
| 102 | |
| 103 | If you are using a Technotrend/Hauppauge DVB-C card *without* analog |
| 104 | module, you might have to use module parameter adac=-1 (dvb-ttpci.o). |
| 105 | |
| 106 | 5. The dvb_net device doesn't give me any packets at all |
| 107 | |
| 108 | Run tcpdump on the dvb0_0 interface. This sets the interface |
| 109 | into promiscous mode so it accepts any packets from the PID |
| 110 | you have configured with the dvbnet utility. Check if there |
| 111 | are any packets with the IP addr and MAC addr you have |
| 112 | configured with ifconfig. |
| 113 | |
| 114 | If tcpdump doesn't give you any output, check the statistics |
| 115 | which ifconfig outputs. (Note: If the MAC address is wrong, |
| 116 | dvb_net won't get any input; thus you have to run tcpdump |
| 117 | before checking the statistics.) If there are no packets at |
| 118 | all then maybe the PID is wrong. If there are error packets, |
| 119 | then either the PID is wrong or the stream does not conform to |
| 120 | the MPE standard (EN 301 192, http://www.etsi.org/). You can |
| 121 | use e.g. dvbsnoop for debugging. |
| 122 | |
| 123 | 6. The dvb_net device doesn't give me any multicast packets |
| 124 | |
| 125 | Check your routes if they include the multicast address range. |
| 126 | Additionally make sure that "source validation by reversed path |
| 127 | lookup" is disabled: |
| 128 | $ "echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/dvb0/rp_filter" |
| 129 | |
| 130 | 7. What the hell are all those modules that need to be loaded? |
| 131 | |
| 132 | For a dvb-ttpci av7110 based full-featured card the following |
| 133 | modules are loaded: |
| 134 | |
| 135 | - videodev: Video4Linux core module. This is the base module that |
| 136 | gives you access to the "analog" tv picture of the av7110 mpeg2 |
| 137 | decoder. |
| 138 | |
| 139 | - v4l2-common: common functions for Video4Linux-2 drivers |
| 140 | |
Matt LaPlante | 6c28f2c | 2006-10-03 22:46:31 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 141 | - v4l1-compat: backward compatibility layer for Video4Linux-1 legacy |
Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 142 | applications |
| 143 | |
| 144 | - dvb-core: DVB core module. This provides you with the |
| 145 | /dev/dvb/adapter entries |
| 146 | |
| 147 | - saa7146: SAA7146 core driver. This is need to access any SAA7146 |
| 148 | based card in your system. |
| 149 | |
| 150 | - saa7146_vv: SAA7146 video and vbi functions. These are only needed |
| 151 | for full-featured cards. |
| 152 | |
Mauro Carvalho Chehab | c1accaa | 2007-08-23 16:37:49 -0300 | [diff] [blame] | 153 | - videobuf-dma-sg: capture helper module for the saa7146_vv driver. This |
Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 154 | one is responsible to handle capture buffers. |
| 155 | |
Matt LaPlante | a2ffd27 | 2006-10-03 22:49:15 +0200 | [diff] [blame] | 156 | - dvb-ttpci: The main driver for AV7110 based, full-featured |
Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 157 | DVB-S/C/T cards |
| 158 | |
| 159 | eof |