Lightweight DVB-T VCR with linux

[gerryino]

Hi,

If i have a debian machine without X installed, is it possible to add a DVB-T card and make a lightweight VCR with some command line app and maybe cron?

I mean, do i need X server or i can just install the card driver and work with... (mencoder?)

I have a mini-ITX with Atom@1.6Ghz, i think i can drop the stream on the HD and maybe process it later.

[nm]

I recommend installing VDR (http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/index.htm) for DVB receiving. It works without X and is pretty lightweight with 10-30 MB resident memory usage, depending on installed plugins. Among other uses, VDR can serve as a plain recording backend, controlled through a web interface like VDRAdmin-AM (http://andreas.vdr-developer.org/vdradmin-am/) or VDR LIVE (http://live.vdr-developer.org). Debian's VDR packages are quite good, but configuration may be a bit awkward at first. There are some Debian-specific instructions at the VDR Wiki (http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/Main_Page): http://www.linuxtv.org/vdrwiki/index.php/DEBIAN_Configuring_VDR

You could also write cron scripts and use command-line DVB tools to control the card, capture transport streams and disect them manually, but VDR already does all this and much, much more. To process VDR's MPEG-2 recordings, use Project X to demux or remux the streams and then re-encode if you wish (all this can be scripted too).

[gerryino]

Didn't know about it, thanks a lot.