Thanks, Bob, for all this good info. I'm not looking to do this myself just now for a number of reasons, but I'm keeping your post against the day I do want to do this. Question: Isn't it worth considering simply accessing the content you want over the net using a browser? Perhaps with a service like hulu.com which is supposedly quite accessible. The famous name in this space, of course, it Net Flix, but they're supposedly not so accessible. I'd love to hear a discussion of the pros and cons of such services. I am personally of the opinion that the future of broadcasting is the web, not in the least because it's fully international and intrinsically time-shift capable. Janina pigiron at gmx.com writes: > On Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:19:59 -0600 "Littlefield, Tyler" <tyler at tysdomain.com> > wrote: > > > Hello all: > > I was curious if any of you have tried using a TV tuner from the cli? > > How accessible or otherwise was it? I'm building a computer hopefully > > soon, and would like to throw in a tuner, but I don't know how it'd work > > with speakup or if there's an accessible program to interface with them. > > > > While I'm sighted, I run everything for my TV tuner from the command line > except for post editing any recorded shows. But there's even some simple CLI > video editors. I've never used them, so I can't speak to those. > > Getting everything set up correctly is definitely a head scratcher though. So > set aside gobs of time and get your zen in shape in order to keep your blood > pressure in check. > > It all starts with getting a TV tuner that Linux likes. I strongly suggest that > you buy one that the Video4Linux, otherwise known as "V4L", Linux kernel > subsystem supports. A good place to start is this web site: > > http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hardware_Device_Information > > Like most Linux documentation, it's only slightly out of date; chuckle. > > While you may find drivers and applications for non-V4L supported tuners on the > internet, you'll probably find that they are old, or not maintained, or both. > All the current action is on the V4L code, and it's been that way for awhile > now. > > You did not say which country you live in, nor which types of signals you'll be > trying to watch or capture. That will make big a difference for some of the > following information, along with which TV tuner you buy. > > One of the first puzzlers you'll encounter is all the strange new buzz words. > One is the anagram "DVB". I means Digital Video Broadcast, which differentiates > it from the old analog broadcasts and tuners. Then you'll hit things like the > words "DVB-C", "DVB-S", and "DVB-T". It took me awhile to figure out that the > letter "C" means cable. The letter "S" means satellite. And the letter "T" means > terrestrial; which is the over the air signal. You'll sometimes see that > shortened to the anagram "OTA". Confused yet? > > After you've slogged through all that, and figured out which tuner to buy, you > install it and verify that Linux likes it by checking the output of the dmesg > command. You should also now have files and directories located under > the /dev/dvb directory. > > If you get this far, you next need to create what's called a "channels" file. > This is simply a strangely formatted text file that contains all the TV channels > that the tuner finds in your local area. It's analogous to scanning the > available channels on one of those new fangled digital televisions. > > There are multiple command line programs that will create the "channels" file. > Which one you use partially depends on what type of signal you want to capture; > such as cable, satellite, or terrestrial; along with which country you live in. > Drill down from this web page for more info: > > http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Frequency_scan > > After you've successfully scanned the TV channels for your area and created the > "channels" file, you'll find that you probably need copy that sucker into > multiple directories. The mplayer program expects to find it in one place, > while the xine player expects it in another, and so on. But once you get in > place, you can now tell the player which TV channel to play by using it's name. > For example, if you want to play a station called "WCBS" using the mplayer > application you could enter the following: > > mplayer tv://WCBS > > But, how do you know what station name to use??? The answer is to look inside > that strangely formatted "channels" text file you created. Each line is a > different channel, and the first field is the TV station name. Each field > within a line is separated by the colon character. It's safe to edit the > channel file and change those TV station names to something you like. But, do > not change any other field on a line. > > Note that mplayer normally spews a ton of output to the terminal, you may > want to try the "-really-quiet" parameter to keep the output from speakup to > a minimum, or turn it off. > > If you wish to capture a show, just one simple way to do it from the command > line is to bring up a terminal and use one of the "zap" programs provided in > the "dvb-apps" package to tune your tuner to the particular TV channel. Which > "zap" program you use depends on the type of TV signal. See the following for > more info: > > http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Zap > > Next, open another terminal and simply redirect the output of your tuner device > to a file. For example, something like the following might work if you only > have one TV tuner installed: > > cat /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0 > testvideo.mpg > > While that documentation states that the "zap" programs can also be used to > record a program, the "azap" program that I use doesn't support it. > > If you attempt to capture the new ATSC over the air digital HDTV channels now > found in the USA, expect to eat up gigabytes of drive space. You'll find that > the sucker is in the MPEG Transport Stream format, and unless you live next > door to the transmitter, it will also contain errors. While mplayer and VLC > among others, will play the file, if you want to convert it into a DVD format, > you'll need to fix all those errors. I'll leave those numerous painful hints > for some other time. > > I found a really obscure command line program from a bloke in Australia that > will set up a timed recording, but I had to modify the hell out his C language > program. For one thing, he has the channels hard coded; ouch! But here's a link > if you're looking for even further frustrations: > > http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/TV_Recording.html > > You simply tell it which channel to record, the output file name, what time to > start recording, and when to stop. Kind of like a DVR. > > I could go on forever, but I've bored you enough. Hope this helps, and good > luck. > > peace, > bob > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200 sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net Chair, Open Accessibility janina at a11y.org Linux Foundation http://a11y.org Chair, Protocols & Formats Web Accessibility Initiative http://www.w3.org/wai/pf World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
