stationlist.xml(5)

💖 stationlist.xml — the tvtime station config file, bestie 💖

okay so this is stationlist.xml(5), a File Formats Manual page, and it's literally the file that holds all your channel lore for tvtime. let's get into it 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

stationlist.xml — tvtime station configuration file 🌸

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

~/.tvtime/stationlist.xml

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so the stationlist.xml file is where all the channel info lives for capture cards that have tuners. it's giving ✨directory of vibes✨ — a list of active channels plus their frequencies, their renumbering info, and their channel name. tvtime updates this file at runtime to stash your settings between sessions, so heads up:

🚨 do NOT edit this file while tvtime is running. your changes might get overwritten. no cap. 😭

this file gets created or updated any time channel info changes in tvtime. that happens when you renumber a channel, when you run the channel scanner, or when you manually activate/deactivate a specific channel from the list. periodt 💅

channel settings are saved specific to norm and frequency table. like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE stationlist PUBLIC "-//tvtime//DTD stationlist 1.0//EN"
  "http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/DTD/stationlist.dtd">
<stationlist xmlns="http://tvtime.sourceforge.net/DTD/">
  <list norm="NTSC" frequencies="US-Cable">
    <station ... />
    ... station list
  </list>
</stationlist>

so basically every norm/frequency combo gets its own little section in the config file. the frequencies name is not special at all — you can have frequencies="foobar" and then running

tvtime -f foobar

will do the right thing. iconic. the norm though? that one must match the norm being used. sorry bestie, that's the rules. 🌈

entries in a list look like this:

<station name="CNN" active="1" position="18"
         band="US Cable" channel="18"/>
<station name="DSF" active="1" position="12"
         band="VHF E2-E12" channel="E12"/>

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✨ STATIONS ✨

every station has its own properties that you should set. let's go one by one 💜

• name — the human-readable name of the current station.
• active — when it's set to 1, the channel is active. to deactivate the channel, set this value to 0.
• position — this one specifies the position the channel occupies on the dial. it lets users arbitrarily map any particular channel to any particular position on the dial. main character energy for your channel lineup 👑
• band
• channel

the possible bands and channels available in tvtime are:

• US Cable — 1–99
• US Cable 100 — 100–125
• US Two-Way — T7, T8, T9, T10, T11, T12 T13, T14
• US Broadcast — 2–83
• China Broadcast — 1–68, A1–A7, B1–B31, C1–C5
• Japan Broadcast — 1–62
• Japan Cable — 13–63
• VHF E2-E12 — E1–E12
• VHF S1-S41 — S1–S41
• VHF Misc — X, Y, Z, Z+1, Z+2
• VHF France — K01–K10, KB–KQ, H01–H19
• VHF Russia — R1–R12, SR1–SR19
• VHF Australia — AS1–AS12, AS5A, AS9A
• VHF Italy — A–H, H1, H2
• VHF Ireland — I1–I9
• VHF South Africa — 1–13
• UHF — U21–U69
• UHF Australia — AU28–AU69
• Australia Optus — 01–058

custom channels can be included manually by specifying the frequency in megahertz:

<station name="2" active="1" position="0"
         band="Custom" channel="55.69MHz"/>

• norm — a per-channel norm can be specified in the stationlist. this is for stations which receive both PAL and SECAM stations, so they can choose the colour encoding format per-channel. the only valid values here are either PAL or SECAM. no third option, bestie 🎀
• network — sets the name of the network for the OSD display. in NTSC regions, this is set from the XDS information in the VBI if VBI decoding is enabled.
• call — sets the call letters of the network for the OSD display. in NTSC regions, this is set from the XDS information in the VBI if VBI decoding is enabled.
• xmltvid — sets the XMLTV channel identifier to associate this channel with, for when tvtime can't automatically make the association. for the following channel definition in an XMLTV file:

<channel id="I10119.labs.zap2it.com">
  <display-name>CICA</display-name>
  <display-name>TV Ontario (CICA)</display-name>
  <display-name>Canadian Independent</display-name>
</channel>

an associated stationlist entry would be:

<station name="2" active="1" position="0"
         band="Custom" channel="55.69MHz"
         xmltvid="I10119.labs.zap2it.com"/>

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✨ AUTHORS ✨

Achim Schneider, Billy Biggs. 🫶 absolute legends, we stan.

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

tvtime(1), tvtime-command(1), tvtime-scanner(1), tvtime.xml(5).

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate it up 💅 this was tvtime 1.0RC1, dated October 2004 — yeah she's vintage, she's iconic, she's fr fr a piece of Unix history 🦋💖