[mythtv-users] Suggested Software for Recording HDTV

Rick Bilonick rab at nauticom.net
Mon Apr 21 02:34:07 UTC 2008


On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 17:20 -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
> On Apr 20, 2008, at 5:01 PM, Rick Bilonick wrote:
> 
> >
> > On Sun, 2008-04-20 at 11:38 -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
> >> On Apr 19, 2008, at 9:27 PM, Rick Bilonick wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Is there some stand-alone program that mythtv uses that I could  
> >>> use to
> >>> record without installing all of mythtv?
> >>
> >> I think the best "program" for dumping the stream to a file is a
> >> pretty well-known one. It's called "cat". :-)
> >>
> >> beww
> >
> > Given that no one has had any useful suggestions about stand-alone
> > programs for recording digital broadcasts (other than getatsc and
> > pchdtvr), I will have to assume that there aren't any. But it would be
> > interesting to know what mythtv uses to record the data stream.
> 
> I wasn't trying to be facetious. If you can control your card to get  
> the right program tuned etc., then just catting it to a file, perhaps  
> with a shell script, should work fine.
> 
> beww


I thought I explained things clearly but I guess not. I'm already using
getatsc which controls the channel and dumps the data stream to a file.
For example:

getatsc 25 > /hdtv/file.ts

Then I have to killall to stop it. This works perfectly fine using
crontab. Why would I resort to using cat? I want something a little
better if it exists. I'd use mythtv if I was starting from scratch. I'm
not opposed to having a complete system with a nice gui. It's just that
it's not absolutely necessary.

I am using pchdtvr on the F6 system. It's simpler to use taking only one
line, for example:

pchdtvr -s3600 25 -o /hdtv/file.ts

It tunes the dbv card, controls the length of time, and dumps the data
stream to a file. Unfortunately, as I've stated at least 10 times, it
won't run or compile under F8. Plus pchdtvr is kind of old. As is
getatsc. It's hard to believe that there is no other linux program
available. Mythtv must be using SOMETHING to do the recording. Does
anyone know what it is? Can it be used as a stand-alone recorder?

I've tried tvtime but it doesn't seem to handle digital tv. I've tried
xawtv but again could not get it to control the digital card.

Rick B.






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