Watching TV on Linux

[jeremy1701]

What are my chances of being able to watch TV on my Linux box? Anyone have this working? I don't care about DVR features, I just want full screen, cable and maybe a remote.

Jeremy

[Nerderello]

I had it working no problems (well... more later) under Redhat 9 and FDC1. I've now bought a proper TV and watch that instead.

The problems I had were
1. Sound, the Vidio4Linux software expects the TV card to have an audio out line, that you then plug into the line in on your sound card. If you don't have this, you end up having to use "sox" and then there are problems with lip synch ( http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/top...&highlight=sox ).
2. At the time the various Linux software for viewing TV was still being developed (mythtv [ http://freshmeat.net/projects/mythtv/ ] was still in it's infancy) and there was some problems with video4linux when kernel 2.6 came along (now fixed, I believe).

Apart from that, it's a piece of cake.

have fun

Nerderello

[fingal]

I was very interested in this thread as I'm about to do the same thing, and have been asking the same questions (not on the forum as yet).

I think that as long as the card supports BTTV standards - whatever they are - you should be ok. I think it's basically a driver which runs a particular family of chips.

This link ought to help http://ldp.paradoxical.co.uk/HOWTO/BTTV-1.html

[jeremy1701]

Nerd,

Thanks for the input. I just ordered a Kworld xPert 878 from newegg. It does have the line-out to the line-in of the sound card. From what I read, it's a pretty Linux freindly card. I may have some issues with the IrDA. I'm hoping I can get it setup to work not only with MythTV (or maybe KDETv), but also with Amarok.

Now all I need are the 5.1 SurroundSound Speakers!

I'll keep you all aprised of my situation.
Jeremy

[tonedeaf]

got mine working on Core 3 recently.

You can go full blown and use mythtv. If you don't want to do that, there are a few different options to just view the stream from your tuner card.

If you have a card that does mpeg compression (I have a Hauppauge pvr 350, which does), you have to use the ivtv driver http://ivtv.sourceforge.net

When using these cards, you've got to use xine or mplayer to view the stream.

if you've got a bttv card you can use xawtv or tvtime to view the stream.

There are links off the mythtv site that will help you get all the driver and installation information you need.

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[jeremy1701]

Okay, update time:

Got the card installed and working. Mostly worked out of the box. A few issues, I had to change the modprobe to include the option plll=1 in order to get color rececption. As I'm unable to install mythtv at this time (urpmi has failed me for the first time!!) I've been using kdetv. Nice little app. However, I've also tried out xawtv and tvtime. Of the three, not one allows me to adjust the volume from the app, I have to use the mixer. Damn.

I also have no remote as of yet.

TODO:
1) Remote
2) mythTV
3) Volume control

Jeremy

[jeremy1701]

Update.

Got the remote working with TVTime. Apparently, there's some crazy work around that requires me to setup the remote specific to KDE, that way the irkick can interpret the signals from lircd. Whatever, I've already got the remote setup using lircd, why would they make a system that requires another? That's just a PITA, I'll stick with TVtime and not mess with KDELIRC.

Todo:
1) Get the correct sound settings working (see this post)
2) MythTV / Freevo (I"m thinking Freevo ATM)
3) Get the remote working with kradio (or other, if someone knows how)

Jeremy

[fingal]

Thought I'd revive this thread - I bought a Hauppage WinTV Express card which supports BTTV using BT878 - I can't get the damn thing working for love nor money (under Mandriva 10.1 Official - not sure if the Mandriva kernel is the issue). I've tried modprobing various modules in there, and ended up thinking that the tuner is the problem.

Without posting my dmesg, it said something like tuner=<NULL> -1 (sorry, not at my Linux box at the moment). I've looked at posts on other forums, and gather that some people have got this card working on other distros - So I'm feeling inadequate, as I've tried everything apart from recompiling my kernel

What happens is this ... I configure the card under the control centre, it starts up in Xawtv (at least it's picking the card up) and I can't tune in to any stations. The tuner seems to use PAL-I, but it's unusual for me to be this stuck. Any pointers, or hope that this will ever work? And yes, the arial is plugged in

[Nerderello]

there's some documentation in the /usr/src/linux****/video4linux that MAY help. You can certainly tell it (via modules.conf or whatever it's called nowadays) to use a particular card def and a particular decode (PAL NTSC SECAM etc.).

Sorry to be so vahue, but it's been years.

Nerderello

[fingal]

Hi there - thank's for the reply. I'll reading the documentation you suggest. The main chip on the board is a Conexant ... I suspect no-one has written a driver for this? I saw a previous thread which Dolda had replied to, and he suggested that X might not be properly configured for the card.

I've found the latest version of BTTV, and I'll try it with that. I've reached the 'this isn't going to work' stage though