The idea behind dvbd is to make maximum use of your DVB card by allowing multiple channels on the same frequency to be tuned. It is split into a daemon (dvbd) and client programs (dvbcat, dvbsched, dvblist). It is possible to associate a priority with a connection to the daemon, so that (depending on the given priority) the tuner can be made available by dropping connections of inferior priority.
A web frontend to dvbsched, called dvbdguide, is included to facilitate the scheduling of dvbd recording activities. Please note this requires an XMLTV datafeed. Check out a captured dvbdguide page.
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The daemon has a configuration file which by default is /etc/dvbd/config. The format of the file is lines of key=value. Line comments can be begun with #.
The following configuration fields are available:
At the moment there are three client programs. dvbcat, dvblist and dvbsched. dvbcat can be used to extract a stream from the dvbd for live TV.
For example:
$ dvbcat dvb-t "BBC ONE" | mplayer -
dvbsched is used to schedule a recording. Note that an output file must be specified whose containing directory must be owned by the user issuing the request. The directory must also be writable by the dvbd program.
The time format is in at(1) format. See at's manpage for more information about it.
For example:
$ mkdir /tmp/recordings $ dvbsched dvb-t "ITV 2" 19.20 32 /tmp/recordings/itv2.mpg
If there is a clash the program will ask you if you want to cancel your job.
dvblist shows the channels available to tune at the given priority (default is 10).
For example:
$ dvblist dvb-t
If there are some existing connections the list of channels may be shorter than the full list.
Feedback, bug fixes, new features, patches and suggestions are very welcome. Please send to: jak (change the at to @ and the dot to .) at users dot sourceforge dot net or post on the SourceForge project page.