Xine

Xine is a very popular multimedia player for Linux. Above all, it's a movie player, but it also can play audio files or connect to live streams. DVB cards can be accessed using the dvb input plugin. The main advantage of Xine over other DVB clients is that it can be completely controlled using a mouse.

Xine in its graphical version gxine for X11 has a very intuitive and powerful GUI. Many users like it for providing much functionality for watching TV very easily. (On the other side, VDR has better functionality for recording / scheduled recording, for the price of more installation and configuration fiddling.)

Usage

In Debian/Ubuntu etc

 apt-get install xine

Then create the channels list using the scan utility from the LinuxTV dvb-apps.

 mkdir ~/.xine
 scan >~/.xine/channels.conf

Now start up xine and open the DVB card with

 xine dvb://

You should now see a program. You can use the mouse scroll wheel to change channels. Once a channel has been tuned Xine will display EIT data (the current program) next to the channel. To record, use "Menu 2" from the popup menu, or select "Menu 2" from the navigation panel.

GXine

GXine is a GNOME based frontend to libxine. It doesn't seem to be able to record like Xine but everything else seems to work the same as Xine.

Usage

In Debian/Ubuntu etc

 apt-get install gxine

Then create the channels list using the scan utility from the LinuxTV dvb-apps.

 mkdir ~/.xine
 scan >~/.xine/channels.conf

Now start up gxine

 gxine

and open the DVB card with

 File -> Open MRL -> dvb://

You should now see a program. You should be able to zap around using the NumPad-9 / NumPad-3 keys, the xine playlist, or using the next/previous chapter buttons in your gui.

Xine appears to only tune DVB-S channels via the channels.conf file if you are using a Universal type lnbf. That is one with an LO: 9750/10600. C-Band LO: 5150 and Ku band LO:10750 commonly used in North America seem to be unsupported as yet unless I'm missing something.

External Links

• xine Digital TV (DVB) - HOWTO use xine for DVB
• Official xine homepage