Well, last night I finally did it: I succeeded in watching satellite TV from my Linux box. Turns out that DVB support is weak in Red Hat Linux (no surprise there). My Fedora Core 3 machine didn’t properly configure DVB devices until I upgraded the udev package to the latest update. I also used the CVS sources for LinuxTV for the DVB drivers and apps. It also took a little Googling to discover the importance of the lnb option of dvbscan. Putting it all together got me the satellite signal I wanted.
The only remaining issue is figuring out why dvbscan is ignoring my polarization settings for the transponders and using horizontal exclusively. If I specify it manually in the channels file, the szap tuner app will correctly lock on to the signal. But dvbscan ignores it, for some reason. It isn’t much of a bother now, as I’ve got the channels defined that I want to watch. If I start adding new channels, however, or want to automatically search for some, I’ll be in trouble.
I’m also surprised there is no graphical front-end for organizing these channels. Then again, I haven’t installed MythTV in this whole setup, which is the ultimate goal. I’m confident MythTV has some nice interface for all of this.
My other find from yesterday is an ATSC PCI card, which will allow me to use LinuxTV drivers to pull in terrestial HDTV signals (conveniently, the only HDTV channels LinuxTV includes are in the Raleigh-Durham market). It decodes both high-definition (HD) and standard-definition (SD) channels. Thus, this $180 card will get me an HD receiver which I can stream to any computer in the house. I can also distribute digital SD-quality channels from the local stations to my standard-definition TVs. That will provide my TVs with a signal whose quality far surpasses that available on Time Warner Cable, as TWC offers local channels on analog only, last I checked.
There’s one thing I’m sure of: I’ve not taken this thing as far as it will go. It opens up whole new ways of using television. MythTV is TiVo on steroids. DVB-S satellite allows for cheap uplinks/downlinks. The HD PCI card provides an easy way to snarf local signals. I could literally have a whole cable TV “headend” inside my PC.
I can’t wait to add MythTV to this mix. This is fun stuff.