TV Related Software

TV Related Software

Here, we aim to provide useful information about software applications that are directly related to or which are generally useful in some respect to the reception and manipulation of TV signals on Linux based computer systems.

In order to be most useful for the reader, this page is divided into two sections:

• A categorical overview of software
• An alphabetical listing of software

Note: If you are a new user to this aspect of computing, rather than trying single programs one after another, you might be more interested in how to quickly get a fully working system as described in the "Example setups" page. Or perhaps instead you may simply want to perform some quick tests on your system, such as like those outlined in the "Testing your DVB device" article.

A Categorical Overview

Utility Suites and Standalone Tools

Analogue Utility Suites or Standalone Tools dov4l2 [1] v4l-utils v4l2ucp V4L Test Suite xawtv

DVB Utility Suites and Standalone Tools DVBv5 Tools, with is part of v4l-utils. LinuxTV dvb-apps (legacy) DVB tools dvbsak ZapDvb dvbd JustDvb-It

Tools for performing frequency scans

• Frequency Scanning

Analogue Tools for performing frequency scans scantv (part of the xawtv package)

DVB Tools for performing frequency scans ... also see Testing your DVB device (PCI, USB, ...) ... scan & zap stuff dvbv5-scan scan / dvbscan/scandvb/atscscan w_scan scan-s2 scte65scan [2] [3] [4] stv090x-scan

Tools for tuning

• Tuning

Analogue Tools for tuning

DVB Tools for tuning ... also see Testing your DVB device (PCI, USB, ...) ... scan & zap stuff dvbv5-zap {a,s,c,t}zap dvbsnoop dvbtune szap-s2 ZapDvb

Tools for signal strength

• Testing reception quality

Analogue Tools for signal strength

DVB Tools for signal strength and monitoring femon dvb-fe-tool dvbv5-zap

Standalone Software to Watch & Record TV

Standalone Software to Watch Analogue TV fftv [5] -- tv/radio viewer/recorder -- sourcecode Gnometv [6] Gv4l [7] kdetv (also formerly known as QtVision, the rewrite of the former KWinTV) ktv [8] (web archive 2010) LinTV MPlayer SMPlayer [9] tvtime [10] TV-Viewer (for Hardware MPEG2 Encoder cards) VLC media player xawtv MoTV XdTV Xine Zapping [11] - a TV viewer for the Gnome desktop. qv4l2 with is part of v4l-utils ... also see V4L TV Viewing Analogue Capturing / Frame Grabbing Utilities V4L capturing ... also see Transcode DVR [12] Grabby [13] Streamer VideoDog [14] [15] WebVCR+ [16]

Standalone Software to Watch Digital TV Antenna DTV gdvb gnutv Kaffeine KaxTV Klear Me TV MPlayer SMPlayer [17] VLC media player xawtv ... (only version 4 for DVB) XdTV Xine gxine DVB Tools for unattended/headless recording dvbsched (in dvbd) dvbrecord (in dvbsak) atscap DvbCronRecordingPlugin for Trac Misc Tutorials, Howtos, Usage Info & Guides: Howto record multiple programs at once

Media Player Software

Media Center Software In addition to offline playback of captured & downloaded media material, many will feature live TV viewing and capturing facilities Elisa [18] Entertainer Project [19] Freevo GeeXboX Home Theater System showtime (OpenGL-based media player) tvheadend (TV streaming server) Kodi (formerly XBMC) [20] LinuxMCE [21] Linux media center - A forked project from pluto Morphine.TV [22] My Media System [23] MythTV Mini DVB Linux ?? oxine [24] pluto Rage (see the Monday, 27 March 2006 entry) SageTV [25] VDR - VDR is one of the most popular TV applications. It features watching TV, recording storage on disk, EPG, Dolby Digital, playback, multi language and much more. VDR, although originally written for FF cards, works also with budget cards, if one installs the VDR Software Decoder Plugin. Yahdr ...

Media Center Distributions Complete operating systems tailored for easy installation of everything required to have a media centre. iMedia MythTV Linux [26] LinHES (formerly KnoppMyth)(wikipedia) LinVDR [27] -- this was a Linux distro based around VDR. Now ancient history MiniMyth [28] Mythbuntu (wikipedia) MythDora (wikipedia) ... Standalone Media Players i.e. for offline playback of captured materials Kaffeine KMPlayer MPlayer SMPlayer [29] Totem VLC media player Xine ...

Network and Streaming Tools

• Streaming

Analogue TV Streaming Utilities Streaming-V4L GStreamer

Network Tools for DVB Streams dvbshout dvbsnoop dvbstream DVBStreamer dvbyell getstream Me TV mumudvb TVheadend Streaming Software for Digital TV dvbice VLC media player

Tools to Show Videotext/Teletext/Interactive Content/Closed Captioning

• Text capture

Analogue TV Tools to Show Videotext/Teletext/Interactive Content/Closed Captioning AleVT mtt (part of the xawtv package ... both v3 and v4)

DVB Tools to Show Videotext/Teletext/Interactive Content/Closed Captioning AleVT - v1.7.0 or a patched v1.6.2 mtt - (part of the xawtv package... v4 only ) RedButton MHEG Engine

Electronic Program Guide / EIT tools

Analogue TV Program Guide Tools

DVB Program Guide Tools atsc_epg - included within the LinuxTV dvb-apps tv_grab_dvb dvbsnoop DVBStreamer LoadEPG [30] MediaHighWay EPG, mhwepg [31] [32] tv_grab_dvb_plus ( was tvgrabeit ) [33] XMLTV

Tools for Editing Captured TV content

• Avidemux2
• dvbcut
• ProjectX
• MEncoder

Misc Tutorials, Howtos, Usage Info & Guides:

• Post-processing of recorded material

....

Examples of User TV Device Hardware and Software Configurations:

• Example setups

An Alphabetical Listing

A Overview of Software Applications which are useful in regards to TV on a Linux based Computer System

Software Application	Supports Analogue	Supports DVB	Recording Capabilities	Offline Playback	Editing Capabilities	Channel storage	Language	Comments
AleVT	y	y						Program to use Teletext/Videotext on analog and digital TV
Antenna DTV	n	y	y	n	n	t channels.conf format	Python	Watch, record and monitor signal level of digital TV
dvb-fe-tool	n	y	n	n	n		C	Gets frontend parameters, sets the delivery system and monitors an already running frontend.
dvb-format-convert	n	y	n	n	n	dvbv5, channel, zap and vdr (for output) file formats	C	Get frontend parameters and set the delivery system
dvbd		y					C++	Traditional UNIX daemon for DVB
dvbice	n	y	y				C	Recompress and stream audio and video to Icecast/HTTP in Theora/Vorbis
dvbsak	n	y
dvbshout	n	y						Stream radio to Icecast/multicast
dvbsnoop	n	y					C
dvbstream	n	y	y	n	n			a streaming utilitity. Part of the DVB tools project
DVBStreamer	n	y				sqlite, XMLTV format	C	PSI/SI tracking and correctly streams all PIDs including PCR
dvbv5-scan	n	y	n	n	n	dvbv5, channel, zap and vdr (for output) file formats	C	program to scan DVB channels/transponders
dvbv5-zap	n	y	y	n	n	dvbv5, channel and zap file formats	C	program to tune (zap) DVB channels/transponders/services, optionally recording or monitoring MPEG-TS streams
dvbyell	n	y	n	n	n			A DVB streaming service.
gdvb
GeeXboX
getstream	n	y
GStreamer	n	y
Gv4l								A GUI frontend for Transcode's V4L functions
Kaffeine	n	y	y	y	n	own text format	C++	Desktop TV Solution
KaxTV								obsoleted
Klear		y
LinuxTV dvb-apps	n	y	y	?	?	{a,c,t,s} channels.conf formats	C	contains dvbscan, {a,c,t,s}zap ...
MEncoder	y	y	y	n	y		C	encoding suite of tools
Me TV	n	y	y	n	n	SQLite	C++	GNOME based DVB TV viewer
Mini DVB Linux		y						Distribution with live-CD
MPlayer	y	y	y	y	n	channels.conf	C	multi-functional media player
mumudvb	n	y	n	n	n			Stream multiples channels in multicast (each channel in different group)
MythTV	y	y	y	y	y	mysql	C++	Media Center
pluto
ProjectX
RedButton MHEG Engine								MHEG-5 engine
scan-s2	n	y	n	n	n		C	frequency scanning utility which supports DVB APIv5 (for DVB-S2)
showtime							C	OpenGL-based media player
szap-s2		y	y				C	tuning utility which supports DVB APIv5 (for DVB-S2)
tv_grab_dvb		y				XMLTV format	C	dumps DVB EPG info in XMLTV format
HTS Tvheadend	y	y	y	y	y	XMLTV format	C	TV streaming server
VDR	y *	y	y	y	y	VDR format channels.conf	C++	analogue with plugins only DVB APIv5 since 1.7.2
VLC media player
w_scan	n	y	n	n	n	VDR channels.conf kaffeine zap/xine tuning data for scan	C	ATSC/DVB-C/S/S2/T frequency scanner
xawtv	y	y *	y	y	n			* only v4 supports DVB
XdTV	y	y	y					TV viewing app. Development stopped
xine		y	y	y				multi-functional media player
ZapDvb