Hi folks,

Newbie here. I've been trawling the web for days looking for help using freevo so I'm hoping (and begging) for help here.

I've got freevo installed on an fc4 machine, I can watch video files stored on my hard drive using freevo (with the xine player, not mplayer) but I cannot get the TV to work. I CAN however get it to work using 'kaffeine' but I want to have a fully operational media centre within freevo.

I'm using a Freecom DVB-T USB stick (which successfully working in linux using kaffeine) from within the UK (so need UK TV listings)

Now here is where the problems start. I can use 'tv_grab_uk_rt' to create a TV.xml file which the 'TV Guide' inside Freevo seems to be able to read (as it will display the channels which are in the TV.xml file BUT it cannot display any information of what is on. It says something to the effect 'The Data could not be loaded' within the guide.

When I press enter to watch one of the channels it the screen goes blank and after a couple of seconds it switches back to the TV guide.

Below is the errors I get when I run freevo and try to watch TV

============================================
Error: VIDEO_SHOW_DATA_DIR not found
WARNING: PyLirc not found, lirc remote control disabled!
no event mapping for key PIP_SWAP in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=PIP_SWAP
no event mapping for key PIP_SWAP in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=PIP_SWAP
no event mapping for key PIP_SWAP in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=PIP_SWAP
no event mapping for key GUIDE in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=GUIDE
no event mapping for key LANG in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=LANG
no event mapping for key PIP_MOVE in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=PIP_MOVE
no event mapping for key SUBTITLE in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=SUBTITLE
no event mapping for key PIP_ONOFF in context menu
send button event BUTTON arg=PIP_ONOFF
(111, 'Connection refused')
(111, 'Connection refused')
(111, 'Connection refused')
(111, 'Connection refused')
(111, 'Connection refused')
==============================================
With particular attention to the last 5 lines. These errors occur when I open the TV guide and try to watch TV.

Personally I think it is something to do with the way I have set up my local_conf.py.

I'd be REALLY appreciative if someone could post their local_conf.py file which is working using DVB or any help anyone can give to solve this brick wall I've hit. Many thanks

Benny

the radio times grabber is broken, just download the listing here instead: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/zmower/...b_uk_bleb.html or just download directly what that grabber downloads as it's in xmltv format anyway: http://www.bleb.org/tv/data/listings personally i would do the latter.

I am just having a play with Freevo myself. Not as yet with DVB.

Are you able to watch TV through Freevo without using the guide? If not, can you watch TV using mplayer or xine as stand-alone applications?

Once you get to that stage it should not be hard to do the same thing within Freevo. Dunno about the guide tho'.

Note that there are various DEBUG flags in freevo_config.py that can be redefined in local_conf.py

Yeah I was told to get my dvb card working with xine/mplayer first before tackling freevo. Unfortunately I've been bogged down with work the last fornight and havnt got back to it yet. I hope to get a go at it this weekend.

Do you have any hints at how to get the dvb (or in general a tv card) working in xine/mplayer, or should it be pretty straight forward?

Lowebb

I've managed to get the tv guide succssfully working in freevo but still cannot watch tv through either freevo or mplayer alone

I currently have mplayer working and playing videos and have got freevo playing videos with mplayer
However I am struggling to get DVB-T working with either freevo or mplayer. I have successfully got the TV guide up and running correctly.

When I try to watch something through freevo I get the error

'ERROR: Unable to get channel list fro europe-west'

When I try to watch something just though mplayer I get the error

'DVB CONFIGURATION IS EMPTY, exit'

I have created a 'channels.conf' file in the .mplayer directory and I'm not sure what other configuration needs to be performed. I fully believ both the freevo and mplayer errors are links.

I would appreciate ANY help anyone can give here, cheers.

Bumping this for the vening crew. I refuse to believe no here uses linux and mplayer to watch tv.

Sorry - I missed your reply and haven't checked the site for a couple of weeks. Maybe you have fixed all problems by now?

Anyway, something like

mplayer 'dvb://7 Digital'

works for me, where '7 Digital' is an entry in channels.conf, which in turn (as you say) is in $HOME/.mplayer.

You can test your channels.conf by trying to lock onto one of the channels with tzap. In a console run (maybe as root, not sure, my DVB card is busy...)

# tzap -c $HOME/.mplayer/channels.conf '7 Digital'

with one of your channel names instead. You should get a steady stream of messages showing the card locked on the transmission.

As a last resort you can try recompiling mplayer. This should at least ensure it is properly configured to your system.

Hi sorry for taking ages to reply. I actually got mplayer playing tv with dvb and its only now I'm back.

But I have a further problem I hope you can help with. I can get mplayer playing dvb with user root. But obviously I dont want to use this user all the time and have set up user 'freevo'

But for some reason mplayer doesnt work with this user. I've copied the exactly same channels.conf over to /home/freevo/.mplayer/channels.conf.

I've used the command about tzap and and successfully connecting to the signal but when I go to play dvb in mplayer with command

mplayer dvb://

(Which works with user root) I get the error DVB CONFIGURATION FILE IS EMPTY.

Now I cant work out why it isnt work with user freevo. ANy help you could give me would be very appreiated

Lowebb

Just an update. I was actually incorrect tzap DIDNT work (I was logged in as root when I thought it did)

The reason I couldnt get it working as any user but root is cause of the permissions on the dvb device.

My first point is. This is a significant problem which is not easily solved for a beginner and surely is a 'bug' because there is no way a piece of hardware on a computer is designated for user root only.

Secondly, I fixed this by changing the group the device belonged to. Is this the best way to do this or is there a better solution

As I expected the solution of changing the group the dvb device /dev/dvb from 'root' to 'freevo' was only a temporary solution as on reboot he device is reinitialised back to 'root'

There has GOT to be a simple solution to this. Can anyone help me out. Its GOT to be a common problem for other hardwar devices

HELP!!!

Allowing all users access to video and audio devices is a huge security hole on multi-user systems. Having special groups like 'video' and 'audio' that users need to be explicitly added to is a much better idea.

If you are using udev to dynamically create device special files like /dev/dvb I understand it is possible to control permissions by modifying the contents of /etc/udev/permissions.d. I'm not on a udev system at the moment so I can't check what's there.

The other alternative is set the UID bit on mplayer permissions, so it runs with the permissions of root, but the mplayer people strongly advise against this, also for security reasons. But if security is not an issue in your situation that's another possibility.

Yeah I'm using FC4 and it (I believe) uses udev to initialise the dvb device. I'll have a look at this when I get home from work. It seems likely that will work. Thanks for your help.

The file in FC4 is 50-udev.rules but....

I've altered the '/etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules' to

KERNEL=="dvb/*", GROUP="freevo", MODE="0660"

(it originally didnt have the group command)

but it still creates this device to user root on a reboot? Even though the GROUP omman works on other devices in the same file

I cant work out why and need any help anyone can give. Thanks very much in advance

I'm not a udev expert so I don't know what is going wrong. My rules line says

KERNEL="*dvb*", PROGRAM="/etc/udev/scripts/dvb.sh %k", NAME="%c", GROUP="video", MODE="0660"

and has the required effect.

There is also a setting in /etc/udev.conf to turn on logging, so maybe you can see what udev is doing in more detail.