Linux TV stuff for Freeview from Crystal Palace
If you use Linux TV applications and receive your Freeview (DVB-T) signal
from the main London transmitter, you might find these files useful:
Modifying the scan utility from dvb-apps to output Freeview channel numbers
The dvb-apps utilities are very useful, and the scan utility is the one I
use to scan for new stations on the multiplexes.
Most applications seem to use the zap output format, which doesn't contain
the Freeview channel number (e.g. BBC FOUR is channel 9).
At least one application (vlc) can take the channels file as an input, and then
its playlist is the list of channels. In this playlist the channels appear in the
order they appear in the channels file, so it would be great if the channels were
in Freeview channel number. But scan can't do that. Well, a quick patch
and it can! Saves me the hassle of sorting the channels file by hand.
Getting the source
You can either download a tarball from http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps/archive/tip.tar.bz2 or use Mercurial to make a copy of the upstream repository:
hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/dvb-apps/
Patching
You need to apply my scan patch. Then rebuild scan
(I just run PERL5LIB=. make in the util/scan subdirectory).
Usage
With the patched version of scan, when using the -u switch with the (default)
zap output format each station's name is preceded with the Freeview
channel number and a hyphen. So rather than the output looking like:
BBC ONE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:600:601:4164
BBC TWO:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:610:611:4228
ITV1:481833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:520:521:8261
it will now look like:
1-BBC ONE:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:600:601:4164
2-BBC TWO:505833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_3_4:FEC_3_4:QAM_16:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:610:611:4228
3-ITV1:481833330:INVERSION_AUTO:BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ:FEC_2_3:FEC_1_2:QAM_64:TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K:GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32:HIERARCHY_NONE:520:521:8261
You probably don't want the stations to be named like this in the channels file, so what I do is run:
scan -u /usr/..../uk-CrystalPalace | sort -n | sed -e 's/^[0-9]*-//'
and now I have a channel list sorted by Freeview channel number.
Last updated: 27-October-2020