[MPlayer-users] Unable to watch TV with mplayer, is this supported?

[Juha Pahkala]

Hi there,

First of all, sorry for the late reply, I assumed the thread was dead
already. Thank you for proving me wrong ;)


> If it is actually outputting an mpeg stream, then try cat /dev/dvb | mplayer 
> - (replacing /dev/dvb with the device) Some of the hw-mpeg2 encoders can do 
> that.
> 

the v4l device is /dev/video, but the above mentioned command doesn't
work. Infact, for some reason cat can't read the stream from /dev/video,
this is what happeneds:

bash:~# cat /dev/video            
cat: /dev/video: Invalid argument

But atleast tvtime can read from /dev/video, and thinks it's a
video4liniux device.

> >
> > Juha
> > ____________________________________________________________________
> >
> > bash:~# mplayer -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420 -vc
> > rawi420 tv://
> 
> why the i420s? That hasn't mattered for quite a while.
> 
> Btw, the man page & docs on tv need to be updated.
> 
> try this:
> mplayer -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:norm=NTSC:chan-list=us-cable 
> tv:// 
> 
> if it is a v4l2 device, append a 2 to the driver=v4l part
> 

As you guessed, I'd just look it up from the DOCS. Anyhow, this is what
I tried, but the results were pretty much the same.

bash:~# mplayer -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:norm=NTSC tv://

[snip]

Playing tv://
TV detected! ;-)
Selected driver: v4l
 name: Video 4 Linux input
 author: Alex Beregszaszi
 comment: under development
Selected device: DVB Board
 Capabilites: capture tuner overlay clipping frameram scales 
 Device type: 235
 Supported sizes: 32x32 => 768x576
 Inputs: 1
  0: DVB: tuner audio tv camera  (tuner:1, norm:ntsc)
Card reports an unknown audio mode !
Trying two channel audio. Use forcechan to override.
Card reports an unknown audio mode !
Trying two channel audio. Use forcechan to override.
Using input 'DVB'
ioctl get tuner failed: Invalid argument
Tuner isn't capable to set norm!
Error: Cannot set norm!


Exiting... (End of file)



Any ideas what could be wrong? The device is a standard v4l device
afaict. I guess I'm not just used to this since usually mplayer can
handle what ever I throw at it ;) my thanks go to all the developers of
this great player for that !!!

Juha