DVBSTREAM(1)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so, bestie, let me put you on: this is dvbstream, the section 1 command that transmits a DVB transport stream via RTP. it's giving "your TV signal, but make it network" 💖

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

dvbstream [ -f freq] [ -p vh] [ -s symbolrate] [ -c cardnum] [ -o ] [
-ps ] [ -i ipaddr ] [ -r port] [-a apid] [ -v vpid] p -t ttpid] [-n secs
] [ pid1 ... ]

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so here's the vibe: dvbstream takes a TS (transport stream) from a DVB (Digital Video Broadcast — and yes, that's DVB-S for satellite cards, DVB-C for cable, or DVB-T for terrestrial, cover all the letters girlie ✨) and broadcasts (a subset of) it over a LAN using the RTP protocol. lowkey iconic.

heads up bestie: some options are not available on Budget DVB cards. know your card, okay? 💀

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👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -f — the Frequency to tune into, in MHz. ✨
• -p, v|h — the polarisation; either h (horizontal) or v (vertical). pick your vibe 💅
• -s symbolrate — the symbol rate of the DVB stream, typically 27500.
• -c cardnum — select which DVB card to use. the cardnum has to be between 0 and 3. no rogue cards allowed 🎀
• -a apid — select which audio PID to output on the TV-OUT of the DVB card (Full cards only).
• -v vpid — select which video PID to output on the TV-OUT of the DVB card (Full cards only).
• -t ttpid — select which Teletext PID to output on the TV-OUT of the DVB card (Full cards only).
• -n secs — Timeout and shut down after secs seconds. (in the original this one is glued onto the end of the -t entry, but it's its own flag, iykyk 🫶)
• -ps — Output a PS rather than a (default) PES stream.
• -o — Output to stdout rather than broadcast. main character energy, no network required 💖
• -i ipaddr — IP Multicast port to output to (default is 224.0.1.2).
• -r port — IP multicast port to outpu to (default is 5004). and yes the original literally says "outpu to" — not me fixing it, periodt 😭

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🌈 SERVER USAGE 🌈

say you wanted to broadcast TVC International from Astra 19E. you would type the following command:

dvbstream -f 12441 -p v -s 27500 512 660

you can specify up to 8 PIDs on the command-line to include in the multicasted transport stream. a 10MBit/s network should be able to handle one video and one audio stream, or eight audio streams. slay, but respect the bandwidth bestie 🦋

if you also want to view the TV channel on the TV-OUT of your DVB-S card (or using xawtv or similar), then you can use the -v and -a flags before the video and audio PIDs respectively:

dvbstream -f 12441 -p v -s 27500 -v 512 -a 660

dvbstream also has the ability to map PIDs to different values before you stream it. for example, if you type

dvbstream -f 12441 -p v -s 27500 -v 512:1 -a 660:2

then the video stream will become "PID 1" and the audio stream will become "PID 2". glow-up for your PIDs 💅

also, with driver versions from October 2001 onwards, you can broadcast the entire transport stream (if you are using a budget card) with the command:

dvbstream 8192

8192 is a "dummy PID" (legal PIDs are in the range 0-8191) and the driver interprets this to mean the entire TS. obviously, it would make no sense to use the map feature on this "pid". don't do it, it's giving nonsense 🙈

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🦋 CLIENT USAGE 🦋

to receive the stream on any other machine on your LAN, use the dumprtp utility (from ts-rtp). a slightly improved version is included in this archive. e.g.

dumprtp > received.ts

if you have a DVB card on the second machine, you can use the rtpfeed command to decode the stream. type rtpfeed -h for usage information. rtpfeed was written by Guenter Wildmann <a8909020@unet.univie.ac.at> — please address any bugs or comments to Guenter. 🫶

if you don't have a DVB card on the client machine, you can use mpg123 and the mpegtools provided with the DVB driver for live audio decoding:

dumprtp | ts2es apid | mpg123 -

this command line is included with dvbstream as the "rtpradio.sh" script. radio era 💖

if you only want audio, you can run dvbstream with eight audio PIDs, and then your clients can choose which PID to play. choose-your-own-adventure but make it audio ✨

for live TV channel playing, the best solution I have found is mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu). please install the latest CVS version — mplayer is being rapidly improved. bestie it is so fast-moving, keep up 🌸

you can then view TV being streamed over the network using the following command:

dumprtp | ts2ps vpid apid | mplayer -cache 2048 -

this command line is included with dvbstream as the "rtptv.sh" script. 📺✨

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🧚 MPLAYER RTP-PS SUPPORT 🧚

the file "mplayer-libmpdemux-network.c.patch" contains a patch for the current (31 Jan 2001) CVS version of mplayer to "enable" the experimental RTP support. to apply it, check out a fresh copy of mplayer using and change into the "main/libmpdemux" directory. (yes, "using and change into" — that's what it says, I don't make the rules 💀)

then apply the command:

patch < /path_to/dvbstream-0.4pre2/mplayer-libmpdemux-network.c.patch

you can then build mplayer as normal. to receive a RTP stream broadcast with dvbstream's "-ps" option, you just need to type the following command on the client machine:

mplayer rtp://224.0.1.2:5004/ -cache 2048

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💅 TELNET INTERFACE 💅

from v0.4 onwards, DVBstream incorporates a "telnet" interface to allow you to remotely start and stop the streaming, and tune the card to a different channel. remote control era, obsessed 👑

the following commands are supported:

TUNE freq pol srate STOP ADDV pid[:map] ADDA pid[:map] ADDT pid[:map]
ADD pid[:map] QUIT

STOP closes down all PIDs and stops the streaming. the other commands should be self-explanatory. see the scripts in the TELNET directory for example usage. and yeah, there's a lone x dangling at the end of that paragraph in the original — no cap, I'm leaving it right here where it lives: x 😭

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🌸 HISTORY 🌸

dvbstream fixes a number of bugs that were present in the original ts-rtp application. glow-up arc complete 💖

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

rtpfeed(1), dumprtp(1), and ts2es(1)

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💜 AUTHORS 💜

dvbstream was written by Dave Chapman <dave@dchapman.com> 2001, 2002. and is made available under the GNU General Public License. 🫶

this man page was written by Alastair McKinstry, <mckinstry@computer.org>.

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and that's the whole thing bestie, Linux flavour, dated 4 March 2005 — literally two decades of slay in one page. stream responsibly, hydrate, and may your PIDs always be legal 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅