DVB-S

Related articles
DVB-T
MythTV Walkthrough
DVB-S
is a satellite television standard. This article describes the setup and use of DVB-S cards on Arch Linux.
Warning
This was only tested with the Pinnacle PCTV Sat, and may not work or will not help you with different cards.
Load required kernel modules
You have to lookup the chipset of your specific card; tools like
lshwd
AUR
may help you.
Pinnacle PCTV Sat
This card uses bt878 and cx24110 as chipset. These require the
dvb-bt8xx
and
cx24110
kernel modules
.
Load them with modprobe:
# modprobe dvb-bt8xx
# modprobe cx24110
You can
load the module at boot
to automate this step.
Additional modules: S2-liplianin
Some modules not included in the kernel are available from Igor M. Liplianin's
git repository
Setup
This article or section needs language, wiki syntax or style improvements. See
Help:Style
for reference.
Reason:
This belongs to a PKGBUILD in
AUR
. (Discuss in
Talk:DVB-S
)
First of all, you have to download and prepare the source code.
$ git clone
https://github.com/crazycat69/szap-s2
To clone the repository will need to
install
git
or alternatively you can download the source code from
https://github.com/crazycat69/szap-s2/archive/refs/heads/master.zip
and extract it manually.
After obtaining the code, change the working directory to the extracted folder:
$ cd s2-liplianin
Unfortunately not all modules of liplianin are compatible with recent kernels and cause some trouble if you want to compile them hence you have to exclude these modules from the build process (if you do not need them). You can choose which modules you want to build by executing:
$ make config
which will create a configuration file:
v4l/.config
.
Note
If you want to edit the configuration file with another interface, take a look at the 'Module selection rules' section within the file
Install
.
After that, you have to build the chosen modules:
$ make
Note
It is very likely, that some modules will not compile. Try to exclude them (one step earlier) and run 'make' again.
If all configured modules were compiled successfully, you can install the modules at the kernel's default modules directory by executing:
# make install
After that, reboot your machine.
Additional firmware: LibreELEC DVB-firmware
The
LibreELEC project
provides additional firmware files for various DVB devices, eg. TechniSat SkyStar S2.
To use these firmware files you can install
libreelec-dvb-firmware-git
AUR
.
Setup permissions
To use your DVB-S card as user add it to the
video
group:
# gpasswd -a [username] video
Scanning channels
Note
You can skip this part if you use
Kaffeine
.
Most applications like szap or xine are needing a channel list created by
scan
, which is part of
dvb-utils
.
You will find the dvb-utils package under the name
linuxtv-dvb-apps
AUR
.
Using scan
scan
needs an channel to initialize scanning. In
/usr/share/dvb/dvb-s/
are some files which contain these channels; you will need that one that fits the satellite you are watching from.
The following command will scan all channels and save them to
channels.conf
:
$ scan -x0 -t1 -s1 /usr/share/dvb/dvb-s/[your satellite] | tee channels.conf
Note
The channel file does not have to be called
channels.conf
but it is more convenient as you will see later.
Depending on your satellite dish setup you may have to try other arguments.
Using w_scan_cpp
w_scan_cpp
AUR
allows for automatic scanning of channels without configuration. Install it then issue:
# w_scan_cpp -c [your country] > ~/someChannels.conf
Alternatively you can also scan using the satellite position like 19.5E for Astra 1. Scans like that can be done as follows:
# w_scan_cpp -fs -s S19E5 > ~/someChannels.conf
You can also add the -X flag to generate tzap/czap/xine output instead of vdr output.
# w_scan_cpp -X -c AU > ~/AustraliaChannels.conf
To get a file that can be loaded with VLC use the -L flag
# w_scan_cpp -L > ~/AustraliaChannels.conf
DiSEqC switch scanning (AKA multiple satellite LNB)
This article or section is out of date.
Reason:
w_scan has been replaced with
w_scan_cpp
AUR
. "-D" flag is not available anymore. (Discuss in
Talk:DVB-S
)
If you have a LNB with a DiSEqC switch in it you can manually select that using the -D option like so:
# w_scan -fs -s S23E5 -D 1c > ~/someChannels.conf
The above line should work but not all found channels where actually saved. The line below worked perfectly for me:
# w_scan -fs -s S23E5 -a 0 -D 1c -o 7 -e 2 > ~/someChannels.conf
Warning
I did found out that when using a LNB with a DiSEqC switch it is way more convenient to  use -X ouptut which you can use in for example mplayer. Just append "-X" before the ">" that you see above.
Switching channels
Note
szap only works with satellite TV.
By using
zap
, which comes with
dvb-utils
, you can switch channels, so you do not have to rely on the abilities of your player.
szap
needs the channel file we created earlier; it will try
~/.szap/channels.conf
by default. You can move the
channels.conf
there or you can use the
"-c"
command-line option.
Switching channels works like this:
$ szap -r [channel]
Note
szap needs to keep running.
You can list all available channels with:
$ szap -q
Now you can watch the stream for example with xine:
$ xine -g stdin://mpeg2 < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0
or with mplayer:
$ mplayer /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0
or with mplayer, but using DVB directly:
$ mplayer "dvb://RTL Television"
You can find all the channel names by running
szap -q
(assuming the channel list is also in
~/.szap/channels.conf
).
Software
Kaffeine
Kaffeine
is a really nice player; it supports EPG, time-shifting, and recording. Additionally Kaffeine has built-in channel-searching.
Install
it with the
kaffeine
package.
More Information
Project page
Me-tv
Me-tv is a simple but powerfull dvb-viewer, supporting EPG, recording and channel-searching with a light-weight gui.
Install
Me-tv with the
me-tv
AUR
package.
Xine
Copy your channel file to
~/.xine/channels.conf
.
Watch a specific channel with following command:
$ xine dvb://[channel]
or use the playlist editor in Xine
See also
TV Cards in general:
Ubuntuusers.de-Wiki
(German)
List of supported
DVB-S
/
DVB-S2
devices