thought it worth sharing my recent experience with those of you trying
to view Freeview HD channels in Linux. I have just installed a USB
adapter, the PCTV 209e DVB-T2 nanostick which is supported by the
em28xx driver:
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[root@altair lcl]# lsmod | grep em28
em28xx_dvb 22764 0
dvb_core 113911 2 em28xx_dvb,cxd2820r
em28xx 108572 1 em28xx_dvb
tveeprom 21249 1 em28xx
videobuf_vmalloc 13589 1 em28xx
videobuf_core 26022 2 videobuf_vmalloc,em28xx
v4l2_common 16038 1 em28xx
videodev 101959 2 v4l2_common,em28xx
rc_core 27703 11 em28xx,ir_nec_decoder,ir_rc5_decoder,ir_rc6_decoder,ir_jvc_decoder,rc_pinnacle_pctv_hd,ir_sony_decoder,ir_sanyo_decoder,ir_mce_kbd_decoder,ir_lirc_codec
i2c_core 39972 9 i2c_i801,videodev,v4l2_common,tveeprom,em28xx,em28xx_dvb,cxd2820r,tda18271,nvidia
usbcore 207173 8 ehci_hcd,uas,usb_storage,usbhid,em28xx,r8712u,em28xx_dvb
Kaffeine was already displaying SD channels via a DVB-T adapter but
since it is possible, why not go for HD? There are four free channels
available in my area. me-tv had no difficulty in scanning for them
and showing them but there were difficulties with sound and character
encodings in the EPG which put me off a bit. My general impression
was that me-tv is unstable where HD is concerned, crashing for no
apparent reason. The SD channels seemed to be OK but I did not spend
much time testing them and the audio problem remained, i.e. no sound.
Sound is available though, in vlc or whatever, for programmes recorded
from me-tv.
I could not generate a channels list file with scan|dvbscan or
kaffeine so gave up on them. Somebody on an Ubuntu forum reported
that vlc could do it, but not for me without a channels.conf file.
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vlc channels.conf
worked fine for the SD channels so I had to look around for a channel
scan utility which supported DVB-T2. w_scan fits the bill; not in the
Mageia repositories so it has to be downloaded from
http://wirbel.htpc-forum.de/w_scan/index2.html
as a tar ball (stay with the German page). No problems with
compilation and the only configure switch I used was --libdir=/usr/lib64.
To generate a channels list in the correct format for the UK run
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w_scan -A 1 -c GB -X >> xchannels.conf
and then test it with
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vlc xchannels.conf
w-scan does not need an initial scan frequency table but can generate
one (tested) and also import one, apparently.
With vlc there is no EPG so I have set up freeguide to list just the
four HD channels.