NAME

dvbt-qpvr-scan - Scan DVB-T channels for Quartz PVR

SYNOPSIS

dvbt-scan [options] [ <frequency file | country code> ]

Options:

-debug level         set debug level
-verbose level       set verbosity level
-help                brief help message
-man                 full documentation
-a|dvb adap          use adapter number
-countries           list country codes
-usecfg              use config for frequencies

OPTIONS

-help

Print a brief help message and exits.

-man

Prints the manual page and exits.

-verbose

Set verbosity level. Higher values show more information.

-debug

Set debug level. Higher levels show more debugging information (only really of any interest to developers!)

-a

Use if you wish to specify which one of multiple DVB adapters to use (useful if you are recording on the default adapter).

-countries

Does not run a scan, instead it lists all the supported country codes (i.e. those country codes that have information for used DVB-T frequencies).

-usecfg

If this flag is specified, the scan will attempt to use the information stored in the configuration files rather than any specified country code or frequency file. If no frequency information is available in the configuration files, then it falls back to using the specified frequency input.

DESCRIPTION

Script that uses the perl Linux::DVB::DVBT package to provide DVB-T adapter functions.

Runs the frequency scanning function to search for Freeview channels. Stores the channel information into configuration files.

If this program is run as root then the configuration files are stored under /etc/dvb and are available for any user. Otherwise they are stored in $HOME/.tv for just the user.

The command line argument specified must be either a frequency file or a country code. Alternatively, iff a scan has been performed before, then specifying no argument causes the scan to reuse the previously saved frequencies. Note that this only works for scans performed by version 2.11 (and upwards) of the Linux::DVB::DVBT module.

The frequency file is usually something like: /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/uk-Oxford

The file contents should be something like:

# Oxford
# T freq bw fec_hi fec_lo mod transmission-mode guard-interval hierarchy
T 578000000 8MHz 2/3 NONE QAM64 2k 1/32 NONE

Frequency files are provided by the 'dvb' rpm package available for most distros. Alternatively, if you have kaffeine installed, look in $HOME/.kde/share/apps/kaffeine/dvb-t. If all else fails you can always get them from my CPAN web space:

http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/S/SD/SDPRICE/Files/dvb-t.tar.gz

To determine which file to use, check http://www.ukfree.tv/transmitters.php and enter your postcode.

Alternatively a country code (compliant with ISO 3166-1) can be specified and a (longer!) scan of all valid frequencies for that country will be performed. For example, to scan in the UK use:

$ dvbt-scan GB

For reference, a scan of 6 frequencies stored in a frequency file takes approximately 4 minutes. A scan based on the UK country code (which consists of 57 frequencies) takes approximately 24 minutes.

For full details of the DVBT functions, please see:

  perldoc Linux::DVB::DVBT