airstar 2 dvb-t
In case you own a Technisat Airstar2 DVB-T card as I do here is a very quick install guide:
- Upgrade to kernel 2.6.10 or later as the required drivers are integrated into it. ( If you cannot afford upgrading then you have to patch your kernel sources with the files found in the CVS at linuxtv.org ).
- Do a make menuconfig, choose: Device Drivers > Multimedia devices > Digital Broadcasting devices and select DVB For Linux, DVB Core Support and as module mark B2C2/Technistat Air/Sky/CableStar 2 PCI, Frontends/Zarlink MT352 based. After installing the kernel and the new modules reboot into it.
- You now have some devices in /dev/dvb/adapter0/. To make use of it you will first have to create a channels.conf file. Download the dvb-apps from linuxtv.org. After compilation use the util/scan/dvbscan utility together with a file from util/scan/dvbscan/dvb-t/ corresponding to your local area. For example:
./dvbscan dvb-t/de-Hamburg > ~/.tzap/channels.conf (be sure to create the ~/.tzap directory beforehand)
- If dvbscan was successful you now have some channels listed in the channels.conf file. Now use util/szap/tzap to tune in to a selected channel by doing f.e.:
./tzap "Das Erste" -r
- As the card does not have a MPEG-Decoder we need some software to substitute that. Of course the almighty mplayer can do that by running
mplayer - < /dev/dvb/adapter0/dvr0
- If you find that zapping through the channels has become an impossible task you should check out kaxtv as well as vdr (which you might want to install anyway!).
Edit: A very promising application is Kaffeine - unfortunately you'll have to install KDE to use it, though. But it definetely is worth the waste of HD space.
Edit2: In case you need a working channels.conf, i put mine up for download: channels.conf ( 3,7 kb )