DVB under Linux

[A|]

There are many great tools and programs for DVB under windows, but it wasn't until I started using a dvb card in linux that I realy got into this exciting technology.

There are drivers for most dvb cards in linux. http://www.linuxtv.org/developer/dvb.xml. Including your SkyStar2 card doom9 :)

Linux Kernel version 2.6.0 and up include drivers for all but the latest cards that the linuxtv.org groups drivers support, posibly because they provide the source right to the linux kernel team. If you want to test out a card that they didn't feel like the driver was quite ready for primetime, you can even get a CVS checkout from the linuxtv.org site.

While you can use the tools provided by the linuxtv.org team to pipe the video and audio out through xine or mplayer, the crown jewel of linux dvb is a program called VDR. http://www.cadsoft.de/vdr/ Unless you are good with patching source and getting creative with xine config files, you will need a SkyStar1/Hauppauge Nexus card with built in mpeg decoder. This is by far the closest tv-watching program you will find to a set top box. On screen EPG, timed recording, great plugin interface, and best of all its open source.

Well I'll step down off my soap box for now, but I hope I have sparked a few peoples interest.

[unixfs]

there's no need for pipes: mplayer and xine both have native dvb support
(but not timeshifting).
I wrote the interfacing code for mplayer, and its brother mencoder
can directly encode the TS stream in any form you want: mpeg4/2/1 in
avi/mpeg container on the fly or in two passes (if you saved it).